Going freelance.
Welcome to my new website!
It’s strange to think how long I’ve been wanting to spread my wings and go it alone. Now here I am writing this blog post. So why now?
Essentially it’s because my sense of frustration with the research world as I’ve come to know it reached I fever pitch this year and I’m hoping I can do things a bit differently on my own terms.
Having spent nearly five years now in research I feel I’ve got a fairly decent grasp of what’s happening, what I like and dislike about the industry and where I think it’s heading in the next decade.
What’s happening?
Research as it was conceived back in the 20th century is basically dead. Client side research teams appear to care less and less about answering their big strategic questions by understanding what their human audience wants and more with dealing with intense pressures placed upon them by their internal stakeholders. Technology is gearing up to change the way research is done beyond comprehension. Big data still doesn’t mean big insight.
Likes and dislikes
Likes - When you actually find out something new and helpful because you asked relevant questions no one has asked before. The use of online ethnographic methods i.e. permalurking. Picking apart a logo for three days and really grasping with sincere and pure alacrity why it’s shit.
Dislikes - Twelve page discussion guides (see: survey). Clients being bullied by stakeholders. Design thinking. Focus groups (they don’t really work anymore). Getting lost in Hartlepool and not having any petty cash for taxi’s.
The future
I think research is headed for a really big challenge in the next ten years. My predication is that there will be a renaissance of 1940s style, academically informed qualitative methods i.e. unguided discussion groups, proper anthropology and extended desk research. This will be in tandem with a revolutionised approach to gathering quantitative using mobile/IOT for everything save the hardest to reach audiences. Big data will still struggle to mean big insight, but it might improve.
Anyhow, I’ll try to update this blog regularly and try to flesh out some of my premonitions in due course.