<aside> đź’Ą The goal of this document is to present a template based on ethnographic and design research methodologies under which Global Shapers projects can be effectively assessed, monitored and closed
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At the Global Shapers hub in Paris we currently monitor the Hub’s projects progress using the Project Follow up File. It follows a structure of:
<aside> 🚧 Another problem is that the goals that are often set aren’t measurable, sometimes this is a stronger reason to use ethnographic methods to understand the impact that is taking place, but goals should also strive to be quantifiable. A good framework to use is SMART.
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Problem Statement: The existing project scoping and monitoring template lacks explicit understanding of the stakeholders in their system and data collection that is ethnographic and human-centred.
There is an explicit need to ensure problems experienced by the users in the given environment are reflected truly. It is easy to often bias impact work as a result of pre-existing understandings of the context.
As much as prior research, experience or quantitative data may allow to effectively begin understanding a problem, there is an often a strong case to run ethnographic observational work to (i) ensure the core problem is being tackled and not a symptom of the problem, and (ii) to better understand the users in their given context. This in itself will equip team members with the necessary intuition and understanding to guide the project towards a successful outcome.
Furthermore, there needs to be a temperature check at field level outside of the selected proxies that may be chosen to measure impact (think collateral damages or unexpected consequences). Rather than referring to target group, it would be beneficial to refer to specific individuals interviewed that can be guides to the problem solving, as they truly have skin in the game.
The goal of this intervention is to equip Global Shapers with the tools to assess problems with an ethnographic human centred approach, in order to enable them to generate a better understanding, intuition, and thus better decisions towards their stakeholders.
The chosen solution in order to enable such goals is that of a human-centred design research framework and toolkit that can be easily applied by any shaper for as many projects as possible, from the inception of the project, down to the in-progress assessment and for the post-mortem assessment.
Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study.