As I coordinated another design research, I thought it is a good opportunity for me to write down some of the things I remind myself whenever I conduct a design research.

Or stockings. Because you have to take off your shoes. You might be tempted for sandals or mules in summer, best that you do not venture.

Make sure your pair of shoes can be taken away within 10 seconds. Japanese home entrance is very confined and can often accommodate one person at a time. Taking care of shoelaces can be time-consuming and particularly if you are a team.

This seems like a matter-of-fact, but not necessarily if you are conducting a global research under multi-lingual environment. If there is a researcher who does not speak the language, make that person address the question. That way everyone somehow involved in the conversation, interviewee worries less about boring anyone.

In addition, if someone new is joining the team, encourage them to make themselves busy either by taking notes or shoot photographs. The primary reason why is to make sure that there will be no one who is just staring at the interviewer.

I’m not kidding. This actually happened to me and trust me, can be quite tough to convince someone to dress down when they are not used to. I realized that some people think researchers are being rude: “You are meeting customers, so why do researchers tell me that I should not wear a tie?” The primary reason why I suggest the research team to dress casual is because I want to minimize our informants to change how they behave. We should also remember, that not everyone is in a suit environment in their everyday lives. Setting the occasion in a formal manner can make people nervous.

I suggest not. I have two reasons why I do not offer my business cards, unless the informant him or herself suggests to do so. One is because a research team often consists of people from the client’s company and someone hired locally. Explaining the composition of the team could in fact confuse who you are working for, and may bring unnecessary questions to be answered. I also sensed, that housewives, which consist of majority of Japanese women who are in 40s or older, might feel embarrassed they don’t have one to give back.

Needless to say. I believe this is common for most cultures.

In some cases, I received an email or a phone call from an informant specifically requesting how they could receive the honorariums for the interview. It is often men, and they ask if we could pay in cash, not to banks.

The motivation is very simple. These people would like to have cash so that they have an income not controlled by their housewives. In most single income households, salaries paid to the bank go straight to housewives control. They of course, fix the amount of money their husbands can spend freely.

Whether you accept this request or not is up to you. But I do enjoy hearing their whispers at the very end of the interview about their little plans about how to spend the money for. It also highlights some of the hidden desires.

Place bills into dedicated envelopes and make sure front (face) side of the bill are placed at the top. This seems like a detail but it is quite important as this is the way how cash is dealt whenever paid to someone else. When you hand out, make sure to ask them to open and check inside, otherwise Japanese will not do this in front of you because they find the act impolite (I know this is not the case in China: In China, I see checking the cash transaction face to face reasonable, which avoids any trouble later on.) And if you decide to deal things with cash, make sure you have some kind of receipts that informant can place their signatures to.

Conclusion: Nothing is hard science and I believe some of them are common reminders to any research location. But the important thing is, some are different. Many are such details, but be prepared to pay attention to such details saves me from a few small panics which I could live without in intense research times.

It is a known fact in Japan, that first-year employees go through many trainings. Take business cards for example. If you meet a client and exchange business cards, you should never present your business card in a higher position than your client. Such small but essential tips for Japanese business are one of the few things people typically learn in the first year of their first company.

But recently I learned something interesting. Someone who works for an ad agency told me, that in his first year he learned how to use sticky notes. He was instructed that he should write neat letters because clients have to read them. He also told me that he learned that he should place post-it notes in a straight line, both vertically and horizontally. He didn’t explain the reason why, but it could perhaps be to save space and make sure clients find them easy to read.

His explanation convinced me how important the group communication is increasingly important in business. And I heard from my fellow design researchers that they are now using mini post-its a lot for mobile or personal affinity wall/desk/note creation to make their brain work in the same way as in the workshop. Now these approximately 5 cm x 5 cm pads come in a recycled paper with a nice recycled carbon box, too.

I am practicing their tips and also doing the same for myself. It works really well when I am preparing for the interview to organize questions. I recommend that my fellow researchers to try this, too.