Having done this many times over , I know I am good at it and that if given the opportunity to talk to users/customers I can in most instances overtime identify key “insights” that can differentiate and improve the value of our products. I am not a trained psychologist and I don’t think I am better than those who interview for a living. However, I do feel what I do have is “empathy” – a quality that helps me connect with individuals and get them to talk about our products about their jobs in a way that helps me in the end get the answers that I want.

I recently came across a very good talk by “Marc Pachter” – The Art of the Interview. Although the context is slightly different, this particular talk resonated with me. Although, I cannot claim to have achieved the level of empathy that he describes in his talk, it is something that I feel I can always strive for. In concluding the talk he says – The key point (to interviewing) is “empathy” – because everybody in their lives is really waiting for people to ask them questions so that they can be truthful about who they are and how they became what they are.

The art of customer interview for me is the ability to ask that one key question to the customer, which opens him/her up and reveals the true nature of their actions and behaviour. It’s not a question that can be scripted or pre thought but is something that reveals itself if one is truly curious , empathetic and can see the world through the eyes of their customer.

Over the last few months, I have been involved in “relaunching” existing online products with the aim towards making them usable and intuitive to our customers. Not too long ago, I was interviewing a user who had been using our product for about 3+ years. As I was showing him the wireframes, at one point he pointed at a feature and said “It’s great that your introducing this features, I can see myself using it”.

Such a positive reaction normally brings smile to my face, but in this instance it did not! – reason being that the feature in question had been in the product for atleast last 5 years. As I interviewed more customers it became apparent that this was not an isolated incident and that mere act of “repositioning” and “highlighting” certain aspects of the product had a profound impact on what customers perceived they could do with the product.

The lesson to be learnt is that it is important from time to time take stock of “features” that are not being used by our customers. Some of it could be down to the fact that it is not relevant to certain groups of users. However, it won’t be unusual to find features which although relevant and useful are not being used either because they have not been properly designed or emphasized within the product. Identifying and developing such features first will ensure that we don’t continue to add more features without first deriving maximum value from those already in the product.

Design Process

Do you have designs that are visually brilliant but poor in interaction? Do you struggle with stakeholders who send you back to make “expensive” design changes? If so, have you followed the below basic design process?

I  have always viewed “Design” as a 3-step process comprised of  – wireframes, interaction design & visual design. I would define them as follows -

Wireframes - The process of creating low fidelity “sketches” that define the structure of the website, it’s pages and how they relate to one another. Wireframes done at the “right” level of detail can help stakeholders “visualise” the solution being proposed.

Interaction Design – The process of creating “storyboards” that helps stakeholders visualise the “flow” through the website. One could define a storyboard for e.g. for a “wizard on the website” or for a “checkout process” on an online shop. The “storyboards” need not be different than “wireframes” but build upon them adding details wherever necessary

Visual Design – The process of visually (through shapes, fonts, colours) expressing the product to deliver the intended effect and reaffirm brand values. The “intended effect” is critical – as for an online shop it could mean motivating user to click the “buy” button whereas for a news website it could mean getting users to read “related news”.

Ideally you would have staff who is an “expert” on each step of this process. However, in practice, it isn’t unusual to have just one person that is responsible for all three aspects. The key point to note is that whether its a team of 3 or a team of 1 – each step of the process needs due diligence and care. Focus/Skip one or the other and one gets designs that are visually brilliant but poor in interaction or great in interaction but lacking a visual appeal.

Language of the user

As an organization grows it tends to build and develop its own vocabulary. A new individual joining an organization almost always has to confront the challenges of being able to learn and appreciate this vocabulary filled up with company jargon, marketing buzzwords and abbreviations. But why should we expect our customers who use our products and services to learn this “internal” vocabulary.

More often than not such words creep into the product and given that everyone in the company is so familiar with it no one realizes its a impediment to customers more readily adopting the product. A few suggestions on how it could be easily remidied.

1. As you talk with customers, pay attention to “Keywords” they use. The customers themselves could have developed their own vocabulary around your product and at times its probably more readily describes the features and functions.

2. Some buzzwords are industry specific and are widely acknowledged and understood. However, learn to appreciate your user base, at times it might be easier to use a plain speake alternative unless the words are so entrenched that not having them would actually has the effect of users getting confused.

3. An easy way is to grab new employees as they join the company and ask them to trial the product and note down words for which they seek more information.

The operational aspects of these at times could be difficult because these words are part of the identity and culture of the organization. However, it could start with the front line staff who train or service the users. Using plain-speak doesn’t mean eliminating branding within your collateral or your in your marketing efforts. But , as with all these efforts its important to get your message across and for that there is no alternative but to – speak the language of the user.

Justifying Design

During the product design process choices need to be often made with regards to navigation methods, color schemes and interactions amongst others. Sticking to established best practices is a good thing. For some designers such best practice is something that they studied in university, for others it could be something that the corporate style guide has clearly laid out.

As new trends get established on the web there is an aspiration on the part of the designer and also sometimes the wider stakeholders to see if or how they could be adapted within their product. It isn’t too uncommon to hear from stakeholders – I really like how you can filter and search for products on Amazon, Ebay why can’t we do the same for our website ?

What is more worrying is the attempt by Web Designers to explain away/justify design solely based on its apparent use by top brand named or trafficked websites.  “Amazon/BBC/CNN/Ebay are using it , they probably have spent thousands of dollars doing market research and usability studies, so I think its perfectly fair for us to use it as well”.

I don’t completely dismiss this argument. The pace of technological change means that there are now new and different ways in which one can interact with a website. Looking at a top branded website for leadership/inspiration seems like a completely sensible thing to do. However, I would like to point out to a few pitfalls in following this strategy

1. Know your audience -What matters most is not where your source your design ideas from, but whether your design works for your audience. It is great to introduce social features such as “sharing” within your product but lets not do it because everyone else is doing it. Lets do so because our customer on seeing the design tell us that,  “Yes !  this is a great feature and I can see myself using it”
2. Experient! – but be Agile - Designer often get back to me and say , but it will take 1/2 a day to implement, can’t we just implement it and see if it works. I think experimenting with new design concepts is a great idea! However, understand the risks to your customers and have a well defined exit criteria to roll back design ideas if they seem like they are not having the desired effect. If there is no clear exit criteria, you run the risk of overtime being left with a bloated product.
3. Your inspirations could change – Unless you have an inside view or verifiable information on why a certain design has reaped rewards for a company don’t assume that such is the case and not subject to change. A end result rarely provides information about the problem it was supposed to have solved.

Nandos Customer Feedback

Restaurant reviews are not new. However, I found a very interesting example that takes it up a notch. While visiting Nando’s website to look at their menu,  I chanced up their implementation to collect customer feedback for individual items within a menu. I haven’t seen many restaurants providing such opportunity for their customers to leave feedback. Given that most restaurants have menus that one can look up online, this seems a logical next step.  It would be interesting to see if restaurants and other food establishments pick up on these over the next few years.

When studying for my MBA at Oxford, I did think about a website where one could do exactly the same for local takeaways and other restaurants. However, the logistical issue surrounding gathering menu information proved a hindrance. However, as more restaurants go online, it would be possible to scrap information off their website and build such a website. Imagine being able to search for which restaurant has had the more favourable comments for a dish that you devour or being able to look up a restaurant and find out the most popular dish on the menu. I for one am certainly watching how this space develops.

To demonstrate how quantitative and qualitative research can go hand in hand let us consider the problem. Based on quantitative data you realize that email functionality within your product is being seldom used. Such quantiative data could come from usage analysis of the website or online poll that marketing conducted on your website in which “email” ranked as the least useful feature.

A quantiative research in this case only takes you so far as to appreciate that some features of your product is less used than others. From a business perspective, it is in the companies interest that users use the “email” functionality, as it helps spread the word about your excellent content which in turn might attract new users to the product.

The next logical step is to start the process of  qualitative research. First step is to identify customers who fit your profile of ones who would are more likely to use the “email” functionality. This could take the form of groups of users who used to use it before but have stopped doing so or it could be ones who use it very infrequently. The users you choose to visit would depend on the the personas that you have identified. By visiting customers and observing them  you might learn.

1. Customer tend to copy paste the link and send it through their own email systems as that way they can have a conversation with the person they are sending email too.
2. Your product forces the receiver to have an account before they can see the emailed link.
3. Customers complain that email delivery is not instantaneous and the receiver is unsure who has emailed him/her
4. …

Based on your learnings you would then be in a position to form a hypothesis -  “if the product has a reliable email delivery system and the receiver doesn’t have to sign up there is a good chance that users might find the ‘email’ functionality more useful”.  The next step is to test the hypothesis – through quantitative research. For some products it might mean  quickly changing the functionality and through usage statistics identifying if there is an uptick in use. For others where change is difficult or risk too great it might be a case of using a quantiative research technique such as survey to appreciate the potential benefit.

In conclusion, Quantitative research that is not informed by insightful qualitative research may end up being precise but lacking in customer insight. On the other hand, customer insights that are not validated with quantitative research may end up being interesting but not representative of mainstream customers”[1]

“Qualitative research provides the eyes but quantiative research provides the legs of validation”.

[1] : Source: Insights into Customer Insights, Mohan Sawhney

The best way to appreciate difference between Quantitative and Qualitative research approaches is to contrast them.

The key point to note when undertaking Customer Research to build/improve new/existing product is that: it isn’t simply a choice between choosing either a Qualitative and Quantitative approach. As Mohan Sawhney rightly puts it

Qualitative research and quantiative research need to go hand in hand for true customer understanding. Qualitative research generates insights, while quantitative research validates insights. You need both research traditions, and in the right sequence

Feature Creep

For a Product Manager receiving regular customer feedback is crucial and is integral to the good product development process. However, it is essential that each request be evaluated on merit as opposed to it being based on how soon we can get the guys in IT to implement it.

The rigor applied to deciding if a feature, which takes 2 weeks to implement should be no different to one that takes 2 days or 2 hours.

A simple and effective way to literally “push-back” on features is simply to ask details about the customers asking for them. It isn’t unusual to find statements “Many customers are asking for it”, “I have had many customers ask for it within the last 6 months” to be exaggerated. It is often the result of comment received in the last meeting + ones personal preference.  The simple fact is that a business case cannot be based on anecdotal evidence.

Although, there is a danger in “pushing back” and being branded as unresponsive and forever stuck in analysis. It is important to note that its an effective way to stop your product from being bloated with too many features. From a efficiency/usability perspective too many features are just as bad as too few features.

What's the Problem

I don’t seem to get enough of  “so what’s the problem?”

I was in a discussion with a web designer recently who was showing me the designs for one of the products he was working on. Apparently, the users were not aware that there was a section in the product in which they could download ready made reports. The sales group thought that the current product design wasn’t helping the users to get to the reports that they sought.

Fair enough, I thought -  “Users can’t get to the reports they are looking for”….and waited… er…. is there a discussion on how the users look up a report, any use cases, any preferred mode by which user accesses the reports. No not really – is the answer I get.. Thats all that the brief said.. and the sales like the new design. I can’t stop myself for asking so how and what did you design for if you didn’t actually know about the users and the challenges they face in retrieving the reports. Furthermore, how would anyone test the efficacy of the solution if there is really no measurable test that can be defined for it.

If the problem perhaps, was such that 5 times out of 10 when users search for a report they get a message “report not found” and hence cannot get to the reports they are looking for. At the very least, we could test it with the same set of search inputs and verify if the number is any different or the results “better” or design the products to give helpful hints on searching if no reports are found. In the absence of such crisply defined problem there was really no objective way to evaluate a solution.

In all fairness, the solution did look “better” than what they currently had but that was just my personal opinion. A proposed product design needs an objective way of proving that it  meets the needs of the user. However, to do so one needs to have a deeper understanding of the problem. I see the statement “Users cannot find the reports” as the conclusion, the often difficult bit is – Why is it that they cannot find the Report?  – The answer’s to this question will help define the problem ! .. So there we go again – Whats the Problem?