Discovering Customer Needs
20 likes8,795 views
The document outlines methods for discovering customer needs, categorizing them into latent, direct, and assumed types, and emphasizes observation and conversation as key techniques. It highlights the importance of market segmentation and user personas in gathering insights and stresses continuous validation through prototyping. Insights from field experiences are crucial for accurately understanding customer expectations and enhancing product features.
Discovering Customer Needs
- 1. Customer NeedsAaron CarranoJune 4, 2010
- 3. Conversation
- 5. Direct
- 6. AssumedWhat I’m CoveringValidating Customer NeedsPrototyping
- 7. User testingMy BackgroundEducationUniversity Of California Berkeley, BSMESan Jose State University, 24 units towards MSME University of Santa Clara, MBA (expected 2013)Over 9 years of Professional ExperienceManufacturing Engineer, 3 yearsMechanical Design Engineer, 2 yearsProduct Manager, 4+ years
- 10. Types of “Needs”
- 11. Types of “Needs”
- 12. Latent NeedsNeeds that the user is unaware ofWhen met, they deliver delight, exceed expectations and resonateCan be difficult to uncoverUsers do different things than they sayObservation is best method to discover
- 13. Direct NeedsNeeds that the user directly communicatesPhone, e-mail, web form, etc. Customer typically doesn’t tell you exactly what they wantNeed to be cautious
- 14. Assumed NeedsMost often come from internal sourcesStrong possibility of being wrong
- 16. Discovering Customer Needs“You’ll learn more by meeting a real, live customer and spending an hour with him than you can learn from fifty research studies or analysts’ reports”-Adrian Slywotsky, The Art of Profitability
- 17. Market SegmentationBefore talking with customers, identify the appropriate market segment and associated user personasAlign with business strategy
- 19. SegmentationBefore talking with customers, identify the appropriate segmentn=1 or n=manyn=many
- 20. Process
- 21. ObservationObserve user in natural settingRemember they are “experts”Put yourself in the user’s shoesMinimize your influence on their actionsAllow them to get frustratedWatch for:WorkaroundsBody languageAnything that is surprisingAnything that challenges your assumptions
- 22. ConversationMake the user feel as comfortable as possibleGenerate 2-way conversationResist reading from a script, keep it dynamicAsk open-ended questionsMake the conversation about the user and not the productAsk naïve questions to draw out responses
- 23. DocumentationCapture EVERYTHINGTake photos of the environmentDocument as quickly as possible after the interview/ observationRecordThe things that are most important to the userExpressionsDirect quotes
- 25. Share with internal team
- 26. Compare notes with previous field reports
- 27. Identify further areas of questioning
- 28. Distill notes into problem statements
- 29. Keep solutions separate during definition of problem
- 30. Identify features to add or improve
- 31. Force-rank features based on the resources required versus the value perceived by the customer (ROI)
- 32. Quality Function Deployment (QFD)Validating Customer Needs"What the people in the business think they know about the customer is more likely to be wrong than right." -Peter Drucker
- 33. Continuous ValidationPrototypeSoftware (evolutionary or throw-away code), Foam mockup, Alpha prototypeFeedback
- 34. AlternativelyBring users in during the validation phase of developmentIf feedback is attained early enough, changes can still be made
- 35. Customer Needs“A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one” -Henry FordAaron CarranoJune 4, 2010