Kern forms Joint Venture with HumanCentric

Kern Communications Pvt. Ltd., India's leading user research and usability consulting company announces a joint venture with USA's HumanCentric, an award-winning and integrated product design company committed to make consumer-friendly products by studying and understanding the end-user.

This joint venture comes in at a critical juncture for both the companies. HumanCentric and Kern partnership will help both the companies extend their expertise and services to both the geographies. As a part of joint venture, Kern will help HumanCentric's worldwide clients with the necessary cultural knowledge and user research expertise to design mobile, automotive, medical, consumer, and software products for the booming India market. On the other hand, HumanCentric brings its product design and product engineering expertise to help companies in India take their products global.

Kern and HumanCentric share similar ideologies and complementary skills while user-centered design and user research are the core competencies of both companies. The joint venture brings in increased reach across geographies, global expertise, consolidated experience, and pooled resources that will help Kern and HumanCentric offer solutions to clients globally.

"The joint venture with HumanCentric brings together two companies with complementary skill sets, vision and commitment to excellence to provide world class services to clients. HumanCentric is well known for its team of highly skilled professionals and award winning design solutions. This joint venture will help leverage Kern's skills and expertise in usability and help HumanCentric gain better understanding of the Indian market." says Ripul Kumar, Director of Kern Communications.

"This joint venture with Kern Communications represents a wonderful opportunity for HumanCentric," says Barry H. Beith, CEO and Chief Technical Officer of HumanCentric. "Not only is Kern Communications a very talented and high quality design house, but their skill set, perspective, and attitudes are very complementary and compatible with our team. They provide the necessary cultural knowledge and perspective that gives HumanCentric the ability to provide the proper research and design support needed by our US clients to successfully introduce products into the emerging marketplace in India, a marketplace that is 350 million users strong. HumanCentric, on the other hand, provides Kern Communications with a bridge to potential clients in the United States and a strong partner to provide Indian firms with design support for American and European clients. Companies such as Tata Automotive, which just bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford, can now turn to Kern Communications in order to bridge Indian and U.S. product design needs. "

About Kern

Kern is a leading usability consulting and learning solutions company in India. Kern works with top financial institutions, start-ups, established software product companies, online gaming companies, and mobile phone makers to help them make their products easy and pleasurable to use.

Kern designs solutions that are easy to use and fun to learn. Kern's strengths lie in understanding users and translating to useful, usable, effective, and successful solutions. Kern consultants are experts in the field of usability, user research, and pedagogy. Today, Kern boasts of an impressive client list and diverse project experience. Kern helps companies understand their users' life, work, goals, and motivations.

Making things "simple, useful and usable" is our business!

Press Contacts

Geeta Bose
geeta at kern-comm dot com
+91 40 401 71313
http://www.kern-comm.com

Why does usability research requires only a few users?

Usability research is usually qualitative, or driven by insight (why users don't understand). Qualitative research follows different research rules to quantitative research and it is typical that sample size is low.

The end result of usability testing is not statistical validity per say but verification of insights and assumptions based on behavioral observation - quantitative vs. qualitative.

·       We are looking for behavioral based insight, like what people do.

·       Statistics tell half the story and often are devoid of context, like why did they fail?.

·       Research clearly shows that even with low numbers, you can gain valid data.

·       Usability testing is being used industry-wide and has been for past 25 years. Experts, authors and academics put their reputations and credentials behind the methodology.

As mentioned earlier, Usability research is behavior-driven: You observe what people do, not what they say.

In contrast, market research is largely opinion-driven: You ask people what they think and what they think they think. For this, big samples are needed for market research. This is why phone or web surveys require hundreds or thousands of responses.

Behavior-driven research is more predictable. Basically, if 10/15 users are confused you can assume that many more will also be confused as well.

Market Research Vs. User Research

Market research and user research are analogous to each other but have completely different goals. They sometimes share common goals and inform one another.

Both disciplines have different approaches, their own strengths, and weaknesses. Which method to use and when to use it depends on what problem you are trying to solve.

Marketing research may start this effort with demographic data, while user researchers find information that challenges and qualifies the segmentation. Both types of research have a role in innovation; both can find gaps that may drive new product ideas.

Here is quick comparison of each method:

Market Research	User Research
Goal - Buying Patterns: Aims to understand buying patterns: understands who will buy which product/services and peoples opinions about a product/service.	Goal - Usage Patterns: user research focuses on usage patterns: how and in what circumstances users use products and services, and observes what people actually do.
Markets: What products or services people are willing to buy?	Usage: What are the usage patterns of a specific product or service? In which environment(s) do they use?
Customers: Which segments of people are willing to buy a defined product or service?	Users: Will specified use a specific product or service? What are the key roadblocks for using a product or service?
Competitors: Who are the competitors? What are the key success factors in the given industry?	Comparison: In which way people use competitors products differently for doing same task?
Attributes: What features and attributes of a product or service is important for a buying decision?	Implementation: How is a feature or group of features implemented? Efficiency, Learnability, Memorability, Errors, Subjective Satisfaction.
Marketing Department: Conducted by marketing department.	User Research Department: Conducted by usability or user research department.
Opinion Based: Aims to understand what people's opinions about products and services are.	Observation Based: Observes what and how people interact with products and services not what they say.
Big Sample Size: Needs huge number of respondents to get statistically accurate results. 800 ~ 2000	Very Small Sample Size: Need only 5-15 participants in a particular group for statistically relevant as well as for uncovering most usability problems.
Geography Based: Buying patterns change across smaller geographies. So research is needed in many cities, town, and villages.	Culture Based: Usage patterns change with change in sub-cultures. So, research is not needed across similar cities. The results are going to be similar.

How Does Each Type of Research Help the Other?

a. Market research finds out which users may buy a service or product. User research focuses on product/service usage by specified users.

b. Market research narrows on which products/services people may buy. User research focuses on how easy is to use the important ones.

c. User research uncovers unusual usage patterns of users. Market research can then conduct studies to find out if that is rampant and if products need to be designed catering to certain usage patterns.

References:

a. Market Research and Usability

b. What is a usability professional's role in conducting traditional market research?

c. Marketing and User Research