The Tools I use for Research

The other day, I wrote about the tools that I use to help me design Business Design workshops. I thought I should also write about the tools I use for on-ground research, considering I’m currently working on a fairly complicated project that requires me to visit small towns and villages in my home state of Karnataka to conduct field research. While I cannot disclose details about the project itself, I can certainly write about the tools I use.

Secondary Research

Though the project brief was very specific with the outcome that was expected, I needed to zoom out a bit, to get a sense of the overall ecosystem I was working in. Research papers, news reports and white papers by large consulting firms are generally a good starting point.

• I use the Duckduckgo Search engine on Firefox Web Browser to search for papers
• I use Zotero to store these papers and use it’s citation system when I need to cite them later.
• I use Zotero’s FIrefox Plugin to download papers directly into my Zotero database
• I store links and news snippets in org-roam, an efficient and extensible personal wiki in Emacs
• Sometimes I need to OCR things. On this project, someone sent me a photo of a local newspaper article. I used an online Kannada language OCR service to grab the text, then Google Translate to translate it into english.
• I make notes when I read these papers. Although Zotero let’s you highlight and annotate the PDF, I prefer using org-noter for Emacs. Org-noter saves the highlights and my annotations as org-mode files – this keeps all my material in one place.
• I use Freeplane to mindmap concepts. Reading existing research is like wandering about in the jungle. There are no clear, preset paths to traverse. You only recognise recurring patterns, and make your way from there. I use Mindmaps to keep loose track of themes that emerge during secondary research, and categorise them over time, as I learn more about the ecosystem.

Fieldwork

The tools that I use on field, are basic. A day on field typically involves:

• Preparing the topics and questions for the day’s interviews – I use Org-roam’s Dailies feature to maintain a daily field journal. This is a list of people I met, locations I met them at, and so on.
• When I am interviewing people, and if I have permission to record audio, I use 2 lapel mikes, one for me and the other for the person I am speaking with. I transcribe these into notes later.
• When I can’t record audio, I write in a book. This feels more comforting to the other person than me writing on my phone.
• When I can, I take plenty of pictures and video clips. I don’t use cloud services to backup these up anymore¹. I use Syncthing to directly copy them into my computer, which I backup onto hard-disks when I’m back in the studio.
• I also buy local products and merchandise related to the industry that I am researching – these artefacts add additional context
• At the end of each day, I record notes for the day.

Interviews are generally conducted in informal settings. The idea is to build a relationship with the subject and have them feel comfortable enough to discuss things without the Hawthorne Effect kicking in.

Synthesis

When I come home from the field, I need to start the process of making sense of all the data that I have gathered. These include notes and observations, audio and video clips, local artefacts, new contacts and so on. All of these need to be structured and stored so I can start making sense of the overall corpus of research, write reports and create ‘findings-decks’.

• I write everything in Emacs Org-mode, which is among other things, an outliner. The outline lets me create hierarchical trees, which are great to cluster different types of information. So interviews go under ethnographic, while papers go under meta analysis.
• I structure my sources, that is, interviews, news sources, policy papers, research and so on – into a tree.
• I expand these trees, by adding notes and interview transcripts (using pseudonyms to protect the privacy of participants.)
• To organise media, such as photos, audio and video I use shotwell, but I want to try Tropy, because it seems like it was made for projects like these.
• When I have structured all my text files, I use org-remark to annotate and code the notes and interviews. This is important because I want to be able to see cross sections. For instance, if I want to hear what interview participants say about the economics of their industry, I want to see interview snippets relating to economics across all participants. In Emacs Org-mode, I use org-remark to grab snippets and code (or tag) them with terms such as economics, culture, labourpolicies and so on. Then use the org-sparse trees function to filter the tree – so I only see snippets that relate to a single term, say – economics.

To synthesise information, I use mindmaps and concept maps. I lay out the themes, concepts and issues using visual maps, move them around, categorise them until I have some sense of the big picture. Once this is done, I can write my report.

I write in Emacs because I can transclude interview snippets using org-transclusion , link between notes and cite prior research using the zotxt plugin.

Reporting

When I’m writing, I allocate space for images and tables to be added later, but focus on the writing alone with none of the distractions that come from fiddling with page layouts. Formatting, adding images and so on are done later – in Google Docs.

When I’m done, I export my text as a markdown file, and then use this converter to convert markdown to html. I paste the resulting html into a Google doc, which gives me a mostly formatted, final document ready to go.

Once I email the report, wrapping up is only a matter of creating a deck that is an abridged version of the report, calling for a meeting with the client or other stakeholders, presenting the main observations and the implications in person, and fielding questions.

This is why I prefer to move data between devices using software like Syncthing instead of services such as Dropbox or Google Drive. However, this is not always an easy decision to make, especially when I work with some client teams who prefer convenience to security. In such cases, I try to mask as much private data as I can when I share over the cloud, and only discuss sensitive material in physical meetings. Again, this is not always possible – but I try.