User research in India runs into a cultural pattern that quietly invalidates a great deal of it: participants are reluctant to criticise something to the face of the person who made it, particularly across a status gap. Ask an Indian user whether they liked your product and you will frequently be told yes, sincerely and warmly, by someone who will never open it again. Research that does not account for this produces confident, wrong conclusions.
The defence is to stop asking about opinions and start observing behaviour. Rather than do you find this easy, say show me how you would do this and then stay quiet while they struggle. What you learn from watching someone hesitate for eleven seconds over a button is not obtainable by asking. And where you must ask, ask about the past rather than the future: what did you do the last time this happened is answerable, whereas would you use this invites a polite yes.
Reduce the status gap deliberately, because it drives most of the distortion. Have someone other than the founder or designer run the session. Say explicitly and repeatedly that you did not build this and that criticism helps you. Interview in the participant's preferred language even if they speak English competently, because people are more candid and more precise in their first language. And go to where they work rather than bringing them to your office, which reverses the hosting dynamic.
Watch for the specific tells that the answer is polite rather than true. Enthusiasm without specifics. Praise that could apply to any product. Agreement that arrives before you finish the question. And the strongest signal of all: what they do when the session ends. A participant who asks how to get access, or who mentions a colleague who needs this, is telling you something their words did not.
Recruit beyond the people who are easy to reach. Research conducted with urban, English-speaking, smartphone-comfortable participants describes a segment that may not be your market, and it is the segment that responds to a LinkedIn request. If your users are shopkeepers, field staff, farmers or first-time internet users, the research has to happen where they are, and it will be slower and less convenient and considerably more useful than the alternative.
