What You Find When You Find No One: Finding the Light out of Darkness

Abstract

In the past year, our team encountered unexpected friction when recruiting efforts resulted in zero participants for two different user populations on two health projects. For one project, we were searching for women experiencing pain related to their perimenopause. And for the other project, we were searching for people who were in early stages of their chronic kidney disease. We hadn't experienced finding no one before. We were forced to pause and question our approach and work. It all felt heavy – zero recruits, the need to find direction for what to do next, and ability to discover the insight for why this happened. Finding no one had critical design and business impact for our team and cross-functional partners.

Join us as we share how we emerged from the darkness of zero, how we found motivation to push through and unpack the friction, and how we ended up in a better position because of zero. We hope our story helps the community see friction as a gift when they encounter it in the future, and that it inspires us, as research practitioners, to question what blind spots might exist within our practice and work.