Product Management Certificate Program Week 3 – Customer Research

WELCOME! 2

Agenda Current Events (15 min) Stand-ups (15 min) Quick Summary from Last Week (15 min) Customer Interviews (60 min) Empathy Mapping & Distilling Insights (60 min)

Introduction to strategy and PdM frameworks (Week 2) Customer research (Week 3) Market & competitive analysis (Week 4) Intro to Strategy & Research Market segmentation (week 5) Defining target customer (week 6) Target Customer Define problem to be solved (Week 7) Define competitive positioning (week 7) Problem Statement & Competitive Positioning Developing a release theme/driver (week 8) Release Theme/Driver Sales Channels and Pricing Strategy (week 8) Creating Business Value (week 9) Business Value Fall 2014: Where are we?

Learning Objective Ability to engage directly with customers for research and feedback and discern between various customer types. Customer Research Fundamentals: Identifying and reaching out to customers Building context of the activity your product supports Interview styles & techniques Empathy mapping Gathering information & distilling insights

CUSTOMER RESEARCH FUNDAMENTALS

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Why Start with Customers? “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” -Agile Manifesto Opportunity to deeply understand your customers’ needs and goals. Improve the probability that you’re building the right product the right way. (Or making an existing product more functional & easier to use) Increase customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. Improve the effectiveness of sales, and identify the most effective marketing messages and sellable features. Uncover breakthrough opportunities.

Who are my customers? Users Indirect Users Customers Stakeholders

Who are my customers? Users – the person who interacts directly with the product or system to produce a desired result. Indirect Users – depend on the results of the system even if they do not use it directly. Customers – are the people who derive value from the system: users’ management, the purchaser, possibly the IT department that has to maintain the system. Stakeholders – are people in the development organization who depend on the system being correct. Management of the development team, the product owner, and the marketing team are all potential stakeholders.

The Lean Startup Approach 1.Do customers recognize that they have the problem we are trying to solve? 2.If we had the solution would they buy it? 3.Would they buy it from us? 4.Can we build the solution at scale?

Building context of the activity your product supports Users are not good at articulating what they do. Users want to be helpful. Users are not available as team members. Surrogate users aren’t. Marketing methods do not collect design data. Online data collection is incomplete.

Contextual Inquiry Observe work directly - Interview users in their workplaces – Watch work activities – Talking to them about what they are doing and why Interview consumers in their home, cars, stores or other life contexts, observing the life task the new product will address. Primary focus is not on design at all. – The focus is on how people perform the work, – What they are trying to accomplish, – How they go about it, – What gets in their way. “What is the context of the activity you’re supporting?”

Empathy Interview The problems we are trying to solve are rarely our own – they are those of a particular user. Have a beginners mindset Build empathy for who they are and what is important to them Pay attention to nonverbal cues. Look for inconsistencies between say and do. Uncover needs that people have which they may or may not be aware of. Discover the emotions that guide behaviors.

Beginner’s Mindset Don’t Judge! Question everything Be truly curious Find patterns Listen. Really. “I’m not an expert at your job…”

What, How, and Why? Start with concrete observations Move to understanding Step out on a limb of interpretation – Why is this person doing what they are doing? – Make informed guesses regarding motivation and emotions – Often reveals assumptions that you can test, and unexpected insights

Interviewing for Empathy

Question Everything Don’t ever say “usually” or start with “Do you _____? ” Ask about specific behaviors or occurrences: – How often do you___________? – Tell me about the last time you ___________. – When do you ___________? – To what extent do you___________? – Describe what makes a “good” day for you. – Describe what makes a “bad” day for you. – Step me through your process for doing___________. – Tell me more about that...

More Practicals Don’t be afraid of silence. Don’t suggest answers to your questions. – Unintentionally get people to say things that agree with your expectations. Ask questions neutrally. – “What do you think about this idea?” is a better question than “Don’t you think this idea is great?” Don’t ask binary questions. – host a conversation built upon stories. Only ten words to a question - one question at a time - one person at a time. – Resist the urge to ambush your user. Paraphrase what you heard. Make sure you’re prepared to capture. – Always interview in pairs! – If this is absolutely impossible, you MUST use a voice recorder—it is impossible to engage a user and take detailed notes at the same time.

How does your customer obtain food?

Empathy Mapping SAY: What are some quotes and defining words your user said? DO: What actions and behaviors did you notice? THINK: What might your user be thinking? What does this tell you about his or her beliefs? FEEL: What emotions might your subject be feeling? GUESS ! OBSERVEDINFERRED

Identify Needs & Insights – The share with your teams!! NEEDS INSIGHTS “Needs” are human emotional or physical necessities. Needs are verbs, not nouns (solutions). Insights are unexpected revelations that often grow from contradictions or from asking yourself, “Why?” SAY DO Quotes & defining words your customer said. Actions & behaviors you notice. FEEL What emotions might your customer be feeling? What might your customer be thinking? What can you infer about their beliefs? THINK

SAY DO Quotes & defining words your customer said. Actions & behaviors you notice. FEEL What emotions might your customer be feeling? What might your customer be thinking? What can you infer about their beliefs? THINKNEEDS INSIGHTS “Needs” are human emotional or physical necessities. Needs are verbs, not nouns (solutions). Insights are unexpected revelations that often grow from contradictions or from asking yourself, “Why?”

Developing a Problem Statement The who needs a because unexpectedly The small business owner overwhelmed with running his business needs a marketing solution from a trusted partner that delivers clear value to him because unexpectedly even if they had the time to do it themselves they wouldn’t know what to do.

Homework Identify potential customer research list and plan to conduct 5 interviews by week 5 (each team member must participate in 2 interviews). Complete empathy map slide for final presentation (draft by week 4)

Resources The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Amazon Amazon d.School Stanford Bootcamp User-Centered Agile Methods by Hugh Beyer Amazon Amazon