Service Design Drinks Singapore #2 Design x User Research

Join us at the second Service Design Drinks Singapore!

Through the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and the sharing of experiences with our speakers, let us further the conversation on user research by looking at different techniques used for design research.

Drinks start at 6:30 PM, and the speaker sharing session shortly after 7.
Light snacks will be provided, but do feel free to bring in your own food.

Speakers:

Xintian Zhang | Insights Manager (Qualitative, Ethnography, and Semiotics) @ Nielsen

Xintian works as an ethnographer and a qualitative researcher in Nielsen. Her daily job includes stalking people, and getting into their minds and hearts. She then translates these human stories into actionable insights to make powerful brands and create new products and services.
In her previous life, she majored in History and worked as a bilingual journalist. When she is not busy following people around, she enjoys a peace of mind doing yoga and meditation.

*Xintian will share her experience incorporating ethnography as a research methodology for a snacking innovation.

Shaun Sandu | Corporate Investigator @ Monetary Authority of Singapore

Shaun is incessantly curious about the variety of mental models, beliefs and cultural assumptions that people have. Trained as a corporate investigator at Kroll (kroll.com), he has worked in a multidisciplinary team of former spies, journalists and prosecutors to investigate fraud, corruption, and broadly the intersection of business and politics in Southeast Asia. The aim: obtaining intelligence to guide business decisions using mixed-methods research; combining covert fieldwork and creative use of public and proprietary data sources. He was first exposed to ethnography at Quantum Consumer Solutions (quantumcs.com) during a sabbatical, which got him hooked on the field of design research.
Presently, Shaun investigates insider trading at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (mas.gov.sg), while contemplating a career move. His plan is to apply his skills of deduction, problem-solving and observation to a different challenge— understanding how mindsets influence how people interact and relate to products and services. Outside work, Shaun will happily talk your ear off about the wonderful world of Weird Facebook, the local indie music scene or medieval fencing.

*Shaun will be presenting on research methods in the corporate investigations field, particularly on how investigators develop research questions and approach 'mixed methods research'. Alongside this will be case studies of how these methods work in practice.

Yvonne Ng | Service Designer and User Researcher @ Ideactio

As a multi-faceted Industrial Designer, Yvonne has been trained in Design Thinking Methodology and she is a worker of different mediums; including hands-on prototyping, visual softwares and scrawling ideas on paper.

Joining Ideactio as a Service Designer & User Researcher, Yvonne works with organisations to help them understand their users through the process of User Research, conducting in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders. Their journey maps, touch points, and pain-points are identified and mapped out so that there can be empathy for the users, and ideas and solutions can be designed with the users in mind.

*Yvonne will be sharing some Tips for Hacking Challenges in User Research.