Contextual Inquiry

Partnered with one of the world’s leading plastic packaging companies as part of a semester-long project for Contextual Inquiry & Consulting course at UMSI to improve sustainability communication strategy as it relates to the needs of key stakeholders and the business groups who interact with them. The client was a large corporation with: 13 billion annual revenue, 40 countries, 250 sites, 50,000 employees. Products handled by our client include: beverages, food, healthcare, home care, personal care, pet care, technical applications. We conducted interviews, collected observations & artifacts, analyzed our findings, and presented them in a *report.

Collaboration with our client was through the University of Michigan SI 501 course Contextual Inquiry course.

*An NDA was signed as part of this project, and the report can be accessed upon request once the partnered client approves viewing.

Data Collection

To better diagnose the issue our client brought to our attention, our team used a user-centered qualitative research methodology known as Contextual Inquiry to understand the challenges faced by the client’s sustainability committee. The contextual inquiry process begins with data collection via conducting semi-structured interviews.

We conducted a total of six interviews, all of which were also recorded, with our pool of participants all being employees with our client. In order to better understand the problem we were provided, we made sure to interview employees involved with sustainability, as well as members of the Sales and Marketing teams. These interviews ranged from 40-60 minutes and focused on how employees were sharing and accessing information on sustainability-related issues. We asked participants about the current information-sharing process to collect different perspectives on how information is communicated between employees. During each interview, we designated one primary interviewer and one primary note-taker. While the interviewer engaged the interviewee in discussion, the note-taker captured individual pieces of information to reference during our analysis process.

Data Analysis

In addition to conducting interviews, we also attempted to observe participants in their natural work environment to better understand their workflow. The analysis process involved interpreting interviews and formulating an affinity diagram. Once our analysis process was complete, our team came together to provide a number of recommendations.

To interpret the data we collected, we listened to the audio recordings for each interview and formulated a series of affinity notes--a sentence that captures an arisen fact--for each interview to form an affinity wall/diagram. We documented about one affinity note for every minute of an interview and each affinity note was first typed, then transcribed on a yellow post-it note. These notes were then spread out individually, before being moved into clusters by related content under a pink post-it note describing the relevant pattern of the cluster. This process was repeated again to form meta-clusters and, finally, overall high-level themes to form four overall groups consolidating and grouping all notes into other similar groups to highlight summaries of the overarching findings from the interviews.

Overarching Findings and Recommendations

The following seven key findings are the result of our research methodology. We believe that by addressing some of these areas, our client can improve its sustainability communication pipeline.

Findings:

F1: Our client has taken action to pursue sustainability. Our client committed to producing fully compostable, recyclable, or reusable products by the year 2025. Internally, our client had continued its existing sustainability efforts and introduced new initiatives:

• Sustainability committee

• Annual Sustainability Report

• Participating in sustainability programs

• Development technology

F2: There is a disconnect between our client’s sustainability pledge and its implementation

• Knowledge discrepancies: employees reported a lack of understanding regarding the client’s sustainability pledge.

• Roadmap: concerns related to a lack of a clear plan for implementing sustainability goals for our client. 

F3: Information sharing processes are fragmented.

• Internal information sharing: multiple communication channels, lack of processes for internal communication, and information silos between teams were employees’ top concerns.

• Client information sharing: the sales team relies heavily on “experts” to deliver sustainability information.

F4: Our client has made efforts to share sustainability information with teams.

• Sustainability Report is posted on the SharePoint and corporate website, however it is not being accessed / utilized by all employees.

• Town Hall meetings keep employees in-the-know on high level happenings, including sustainability.

F5: Our client uses SharePoint to share information.

• Used for documents, guidelines, and sharing information within business groups.

• Pain points: underutilization, confusion on protocol and maintenance, lack of notification system, and competing mediums of communication (email).

F6: Client has developed a sustainability committee.

• Currently is comprised of 15 self-selected members who meet every other week.

• Primary function is creating and organizing internal sustainability resources.

• Filling “void” of previous sustainability point person, however there is currently no defined point person on committee.

F7: There is little incentivization for the Sales team to increase sustainable product sales. 

• Sales team members are incentivized to close a sale, regardless of whether products are sustainable or not.

• There is little incentive for sales team members to be proactive in seeking sustainability information, since they refer clients to the “expert”.

Recommendations

R1: Start at the top when changing company culture for information sharing (F1 - F2)

• Acknowledge and address: The communication gap between corporate and business groups The lack of corporate process for sustainability

• Emphasize ‘sustainability’ as one of our client’s core values.

• Establish a company-wide roadmap to outline milestones. Currently: annual Sustainability Report

R2: Restructure SharePoint and develop best practices to emphasize quality of quantity of sites (F3 - F5)

• Utilize analytics 

• Consolidate information

• Establish maintenance process

• Incentivize use

R3: Sustainability experts whose primary job function is to educate and empower our client’s employees (F6)

• Dedicated sustainability team (rather than committee)

• Assign a sustainability expert for each product team (i.e., health care, food, personal care)