Challenge:

• A foundational LATAM user research was proposed by the research team - important to first make stakeholders understand the need for such a foundational piece, as most were not exposed to this type of research and were unclear on the need for it

• Connecting with users in their native language as opposed to English for more comfortable and authentic interactions - with no Portuguese / Spanish speakers in the Viki team
   

Approach: setting the stage first, followed then by qualitative research with external agency support

It took a few months of keeping at it, and leveraging friends within the system to back the need for such a research as well as budgets to fund external agencies to conduct it on our behalf. But with the stage set, a final push and realisation came through creating a board and encouraging stakeholders to dump in all their possible queries about the LATAM user. The resultant questions (e.g. what made LATAM users view asian dramas in the first place, how do they think about subscriptions / paid platforms, etc.) highlighted the big gap between knowing LATAM users as a statistical life versus as a lived life. 

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With the need established, we engaged an agency on ground to recruit and conduct in-depth interviews, pre-faced with a mobile based self-ethnography to capture users' typical routines and viewing behaviours. This helped us close say-do gaps through photo / video evidence to trigger questions, and validate users' claimed behaviours. 

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Resultant findings were put together into a comprehensive report that was deemed useful for:

• Product experience team

• Social media marketing team

• User acquisition and go-to-market teams

• Growth & monetization team

• CRM team

• UX design

• Data analytics

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Impact:

✔️ Helped provide context on specific data patterns and LATAM specific deviations from the norm 

✔️ Propelled creation of a dedicated social media handle for Brazil - run in Portuguese 

✔️ Prompted the exploration of Kuaishou as a social media platform to have presence on 

✔️ Made cross-functional teams more sensitive to the issue of localisation for design and copy 

✔️ Provided food for thought on how to leverage varied viewing occasions / time of day to trigger certain desirable viewing behaviours