RESEARCH PROPOSAL at UST

In my time at UST, I worked with a UIUX team developing for transitioning to a modern format of website. My supervisors provided me the freedom to work parallel on research I wanted to focus on.

RECONFIGURING DESIGN

A major portion of my time with UIUX Designers involved a reconfiguration of my perspective of design: To focus on the problem not the solution. This, in my previous projects had become the theme where I was disillusioned about the problem and focusing solely on the product.

USER RESEARCH

FOCUS

My research was based on "Formulating a simple way for newcomers in the industry who stutter to feel supported at their workplace". It took me a while to understand the problem and how I could approach it as it was something rarely mentioned in corporate circles, while those who stuttered felt reserved about sharing their side.

Stuttering was a delicate issue and I had minimal knowledge on it. The secondary research proved to be not as helpful as I had hoped.

I began preparing a list of questions which could help me tap into an area where potential pain points existed.

To tackle misinformation, I prepared a list of assumptions I involuntarily, and even after extreme care ended up assuming about people who stutter.

I also created a set of How Might We questions to help me stick to the problem and not jump to any conclusions about the pain points.

INTERVIEWING

After a few weeks of perfecting the questions and removing any sort of assumption from them, I conducted interviews with two close friends of mine, one living in the United States and another in India to gather two sides of the issue of dealing with stuttering as an adult.

DECODING INTERVIEWS

Decoding the interviews was interesting as both suffered bullying at a young age due to stuttering and felt a need to overcompensate to maintain a sense of fitting in.

Both felt that various exercises and speech therapy helped them reduce stuttering to an unnoticeable level.

As adults, though they realized that it had a smaller effect on their personal and professional lives and they gained dignity and self-value by contributing to their work and achieving in their lives.