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In the Hands of God: Do You Want to Live?

By frog - February 25, 2013

in Articles | Strategy & Research

By Jan Chipchase, Mark Rolston and Cara Silver

In the coming week we'll be publishing posts by frog's researchers drawing on their experience of working for commercial and non-commercial clients in some of the less predictable places of the world: Afghanistan; post-revolution Egypt; Rwanda; Burundi; Brazil, Ethiopia; South Sudan; India and China—the list of countries is extensive, the global insights team ratchet up more than 150 projects a year across industries— financial inclusion, healthcare, automotive, fast moving consumer goods.

In this series, the posts are written by Jan Chipchase, Cara Silver and Mark Rolston to coincide with the publication of their new report: In The Hands of God: A Study of Risk and Savings in Afghanistan that explored issues related to the design and adoption of mobile money services. As you might expect from a country at war, Afghanistan is very much an outlier, but as such it can reveal behaviours that are far more difficult to spot elsewhere in much the same way that lead users are different from mainstream users. It's a journey that revealed the best and worst of humanity: from the family bonds, trust, betrayal and even an attempted kidnapping.

The series starts on Tuesday (tomorrow) with a deep dive onto the streets of Kabul and Herat with a post on how to mitigate risk. On Wednesday we'll be donning more conservative clothes and covering issues around researching extreme gender dynamics. On Thursday we'll publish the report itself, putting these issues into the context of what the team learned and how impacts future designs in Afghanistan and beyond. On Friday we'll shift gears and look at the emotional highs and lows of conducting this kind of research. In the following week we'll look at how to manage expectations in your organisation that understandably is a tad nervous as what you're getting up to in field; and turn out attention to conducting rural research.

Finally we'll reflect on "those" projects, the ones that leave us with memories that last a lifetime, and that ultimately shape who we are and who we want to be.

Do you want to live?

Prove it.

* * *

frog presents In The Hands of God - Insights on ethnographic research in some of the less predictable places of the world:

» Do You Want to Live?

» Mitigating Risk

» Extreme Gender Dynamics

» In the Hands of God: A Study of Risk and Savings in Afghanistan

» The 10 Emotional Stages of Working in High Risk Evnironments

» Managing Expectations in the Organization

» Thoughts on Rural Research

» Research Dynamics in Agrarian Societies

» "Those" Projects

This project was co-funded by the IMTFI and frog.

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DJ

11 years ago

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how cool of a job is that!? Nobody will believe it.

"so what do you do?"

"I'm a designer, travelling the world for ethnographic research."

"no really. what do you do?"
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Tom Mc

11 years ago

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".I wonder what the front lobby would look like."

Probably like a bomb shelter. Americans make good victims.
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bob

11 years ago

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this is a very exciting development-
I imagine there are going to be lots more shakeups like this in a world with lightspeed world communication
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masood siddiqui

11 years ago

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Frog didn't have to leave San Fran to find the Afghan way of life. There are plenty of refugees and descendants of refugees who would have given them plenty of fodder before heading over to Khurasan. If they only just looked into their own local neighborhoods. Lets see how Frog Kabul fairs...I wonder what the front lobby would look like.
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