Once you've created a prototype, the next step is to validate it with your
audience and to do. So you need to get out of the building, getting out of the
building, means that you're going outside of your office to go talk to your
customers, the answers to your questions, the
validity, or the invalidity of your assumptions, and hypotheses are
not going to be found within the confines of your office. You need to
get out and you need to talk to customers.
In the, in the lean ux approach, we want to do that.
Like we do everything else as a cross-functional collaborative team. And
so we use a technique called collaborative Discovery collaborative,
Discovery is taking the research process and
democratizing out it out to the entire team. So you've got Engineers
designers product managers content strategists in the field
together, talking to customers conducting interviews meeting
users of the product.
Real life. They're observing your users in context,
what they're doing, how they're doing it, what hacks? They put
together to solve the problems that they have today. They're
interviewing them. So they get an understanding of why
this is important to them and why they're working hard to solve these problems. And
then by collecting evidence and showing them the
Prototype you get an opportunity to have a back and forth conversation about
your proposed solution.
Ian for the problems that they're having.
And the question really about this is why send the whole team at we've got user researchers or we
can hire user research firm. And the answer is this first is that
you're covering more ground faster. If you take a team of
six people pair them up and send them out into the field for half a
day. They can cover a lot more ground and talk to a lot more people
bring that insight to the team faster.
And synthesize it faster, and therefore build that shared
understanding because everyone's talking to customers and then coming back in
together and debriefing each other on what they learned in the field. So you
don't have to wait for a report to be written. You don't have to wait for a report to
be read or digested or discussed or proved you're
going out as a team. You're discussing your hypotheses with potential customers.
You're coming back in together.
You discussing what you found in your building that shared understanding that shared empathy for your
target audience.
When you're going out into the field to have these conversations as a team, there are
three questions that you initially set out to answer especially during the product
Discovery and concepting phase 3 questions
that you looking to answer the first is this is there a need or opportunity in our
Persona exercise, we defined specific needs for
our Target audiences. What are their pain points?
Where's there an opportunity for us to build something to make their lives easier to make them more
productive, more efficient. That's the first thing we need to
verify does the need exists? Is there an opportunity for a product
in this space? If there isn't, then we should stop working and figure out what
needs are actually there that we can solve. And we do that through observations
watching people doing their jobs or doing the things that we think we can
help them with and interviewing them.
If you verify that there is a need and an opportunity, the next thing you want to find
out is whether your target audience values your proposed solution.
So we've identified that the customer exists, the customer does have this pain point or
this need
We have a proposed solution, would a solution actually be
valuable to someone or are the hacks that they've created to solve the problem with the
tools that they're using today. Sufficient, and perhaps our
proposed solution doesn't really add enough value to get them to switch, how they're currently doing things
today.
And this is done against through interviews for the qualitative side but also through measured
Behavior where we launched a prototype or an a/b test or
some approximation of the experience that allows us to see customer behavior in
real time.
If you validated that there's a need and that people value your solution,
the last thing you want to test is whether people can actually use your solution. This is where
usability comes in but we don't get to use ability until we've actually proven that.
There's a need to build this product
Once we've proven that, there's usability that there's need for the
product we bring in usability and let people test it out and see if they can figure out how to
perform the tasks at a screen level detail. And again we do that
through interviews and usability testing, one of the big questions that
comes up. When we talk about user research is,
do you listen to what customers say and how do you translate what they say? And the quote that people use
is attributed to Henry Ford. He didn't actually say it.
But the quote is, if I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.
But instead he built a car. And so the question is, what are we listening for?
When we do this country? When we have this conversation and we do these interviews and this user
research as a team? What are we listening for?
Because again, if you ask people what they want they would say something like I need a faster horse. And so there are
different types of needs that we need to listen for
and then dig into as researchers in the field to understand what our customers really
need. And I like to illustrate this point with a story from a friend of ours,
who used to do research on on Caltrain in the Bay Area
for years and she was sitting next to this. This was years ago, she was sitting next to a
passenger on the train.
And she asked her what was in her purse and the woman pulled
out her purse, all the stuff, including this beat-up old CD case that was
falling apart. There was that was, you know, you have CDs, kind of
falling out of it. It was broken. It wasn't really doing its job really well. And the
woman said to our friend, the researcher she said she said what I really need
is duct tape
What would make this easier for me, is duct tape and what she was expressing their was her
expressed need in her mind. Duct tape
was going to solve the problem for her, with this particular CD
case.
And so the question that we use and user interviews to dig beyond the expressed needs,
duct tape, is the equivalent of the faster horse.
The question that we use to dig beyond the expressed need
is quite literally. If you had that feature, if you had that thing,
what would it let you do?
And so we asked her are from the research or Astor. If you had duct tape, what would it
let you do? And she said, well, if I had duct tape, I could fix my CD
case, it would carry more CD's.
And I would have the an easier time transporting. My music
with me and swapping it out based on what I'm going to be doing today
or later tomorrow, you know,
to better be able to carry my music with me. And so what we're hearing there are the
implied needs. We've dug in one layer deeper from the expressed
needs from duct tape. To what I really need is an efficient and effective
way.
To carry my music with me and be able to swap it out.
Based on mood event activity, whatever it is that we need. Now, the
challenge and this is where creative
Innovative product, people have the most fun and can
be the most creative is to dig for the latent needs.
The late need here is the, is the the real
underlying pain point that is being solved by the
expressed need the duct tape. The real underlying need is that is that
our passenger on the train here? Needs an efficient way
to carry a lot of music to transport it back and forth
to change it out at will and to be able to accommodate different situations.
And so by asking that question, if you had that feature,
what would it let you do, and
Deeper, and deeper and deeper. And then being creative Innovative product people.
We could potentially extrapolate the need for something like an
iPod.
So you go from duct tape as the expressed need.
Down to the late need of a better way to carry music.
And if you're smart, creative and motivated, you could potentially come up with something like an iPod, nobody,
she never would have said. I need an iPod.
But an iPod actually solves her solution and that's our job as creative product. People
is to listen for the expressed needs to dig into the implied.
Needs to understand the latent needs and then to creatively
solve for those latent needs
and so, when you're out in the field,
and you're speaking to customers and you're developing this audience,
You need to know how to conduct the interview and how to conduct the research so that you get the best
information out of it. Now it's it takes practice and it's hard work. So
initially the first few times that you do it, you're not going to be terribly successful. But the more you practice
with these tips, the better you'll get at it.
The first tip is this talk to one person at a time?
Get that person's opinion, give that person you're full of your
full attention and don't let them get distracted by other people
participating in the conversation. Talk to one person at a time.
The second tip is to Define your roles. You're going to go out
and collaborative Discovery in pairs.
When you go out in pairs, you need to Define your roles who's going to be the interviewer, and
who's going to be the note-taker one person does. All the talking,
the other person takes all the notes. It's very difficult to conduct an interview
and capture notes at the same time,
when you finished asking questions, if the interviewer you can turn to your Note Taker and
asked, do you have anything further and if they do, you can swap places,
but when you go out and make sure that the roles are defined and you know who's going to do the talking and he's
going to do the note taking
before you go out, know your goals. What do you want to learn? When you go out, you can't
learn everything in a single interview, let's focus the interview on what we want to
learn and what questions we want? Answered ahead of time.
Write an interview guide, be sure that you've as a team, you've discussed
what we're going to learn today. What we're trying to learn today.
In the future, everything is perfect.
That's what people think in the future. I will exercise more in the future. I will eat
healthy and so we need to distinguish the reality
from the beautiful future. We can distinguish from between what people do and
what people think they'll do. And so we always want to
talk to people about something they've done in the past as opposed
to asking them to speculate about the future. If you ask people to
speculate about the future, they will tell you a much more idealistic View.
Of their behavior and their usage patterns. If you ask them to tell you a story
about something that happened in the past, you'll get details about exactly how they
behaved. And the question that we use, the the
syntax that we use for that is tell me about the last time you did
X, whatever it is. Tell me about the last time you purchase something online,
Tell me about the last time you had to buy a car seat for your infant.
And then let them tell you that story.
Because in the future, they may do it differently but talk to them about how they've done things in the past that's an
indicator of actions that they've actually taken.
When you're out in the field, get excited to hear things, you don't want to hear.
People will call your baby ugly and that's okay. You want to find this
out as soon as possible that your idea is bad, that your hypothesis is wrong.
That your design doesn't work. The sooner you can find this out. The sooner, you can make it better
and the easier it is to fix because your investment levels at this point in the conversation,
our paper pen, maybe some lightweight, prototyping,
So if you're wrong, that's great, let's find that out. Now before we invested,
millions of dollars and months of people's time to build a product that is broken.
This is the time to hear when things aren't working.
Disarm politeness training. This is this is a phenomenon in the u.s.
if you're conducting This research abroad it may or may not work as well. But definitely in the US people
want to tell you what you want to hear. They want to be nice to
you.
Especially if they know that you're somehow personally involved in this
project. So if you tell people, hey, I designed this, what do you think
they're much more likely to say? Oh, it's nice. I like it.
Terrific, great work, right? So whatever you need to do to distance
yourself from the work to allow people to, actually be
honest with you, even if you have to to,
to hide the fact that you work for the company that created this,
Anything you can do to separate yourself.
From the thing that you're testing will provide you a much more accurate answer.
Probably the hardest thing to do when you're interviewing people is to ask open-ended questions. This
is a skill that's built up over time and as you practice that you get
better and better and better at it. When you ask a closed-ended question, for
example, have you ever bought anything online?
The answer could be. Yes, the answer could be no, but the conversation stops. Right there, it
ends. And the onus is on you as the researcher to, then
start it back up again, and our goal is to get stories out of these people. So, instead of
asking a question, like, have you ever bought anything online?
Ask the question. Tell me about the last time you bought something online
Now even if the answer is, I've never bought anything online. You can
then continue that conversation. Why? Tell me about the tell
me why you don't buy anything online. But asking, open-ended questions,
creates a dialogue. Creates a conversation and keeps the storytelling
going. Which is our goal is to get people to tell us about their
experiences. And this again is one of probably the hardest thing to do in this list and the
thing that takes the most practice
If you're doing more talking than your research
subject is you're doing it wrong, ask your question, and
then be quiet. And let the person talk there might be some gaps
of awkward silence in there. But if you leave it
Without talking inevitably, the other person will fill in that Gap, give them
the opportunity.
To answer your question and to fill in that awkward silence. Listen and don't
talk just ask the questions then hang back it's
also important to encourage but not influence. So if you get
very excited about something that somebody's telling you because they're praising your approach or
something, they can people can sense that and they can tell if that's what you want
to hear and they're eager to please. And so they'll tell you more of that
instead use generic encouragement like okay,
tell me more.
can you elaborate on that to get people to give you more but not indicate whether or not you think
this is confirming or invalidating some of your
thinking
Another technique to use is called saying it back. Now, this may
sound a bit childish, it may remind you of talking to children at times,
but it's a technique that again, with practice works really well at
continuing the conversation. And essentially what you're doing here is you're saying back the
last thing that your research subjects said to you. So, for example, if you
ask them, tell me about the last time you bought something online, they would
say, well, I bought some computer speakers on Amazon and you would say, oh, you
bought some computer speakers on.
And now say and typically they'll continue the conversation. Yes, I bought computer speakers because my old ones
broke and they were 15 years ago. They were 15 years old. Yeah, they were 15 years old. I
bought them on a bought the computer. And, you know, I finally upgraded the computer. Oh, you upgraded
the computer? Now sound, it sounds like against a childish thing to do,
like you're talking to a five-year-old. But again, we'll all you're doing there is, you're
essentially asking them to continue the conversation with you and that's the whole purpose of these
interviews is for the conversations not to stop and for them to continue to
You the story so you can build this holistic view of the
challenges that your customers face in your particular domain.
The last tip for customer development, is to ask for introductions. If you find people
who fit your persona profiles,
is a really good chance that they know other people just like
themselves.
And so the end when you're when you're finished, you say, thank you very much. This is a terrific
conversation. Do you know anyone else who could help us with this
research and more than likely, they know somebody else. And that, that warm
handoff, that introduction goes, a long way to getting people to accept your
invitations, to have research conversations with them. So, always
ask for introductions at the end, especially the more
Niche that your research subjects. Get the harder. It is to
find good.
It's that people know each other in the same domain.
Ultimately it boils down to this, it's a conversation, you're not
interrogating. These people, you're giving them a platform to tell you a
story about how they do their job, how they perform a
certain function, how they entertain themselves, whatever it is, and
give them that Podium. Let them listen to you and get those
stories out of them. Have that conversation with them.