Strategy
Much of my work in design isn’t necessarily done behind a desk. To develop solutions that both strategically and deliberately disrupt the status quo, it’s crucial in my design process I have an opportunity to truly connect with and understand my end users.
If I want to build a product for bakers,
I need to get in the kitchen!
Only by understanding who will use a product and how they will use it can we begin designing solutions that actually work.
Formulating a hypothesis is the foundation of proving—or even disproving, real use cases and ultimately any sort of product-market fit. Without identifying a strong product-market fit, we’ll end up building stuff people don’t need and won’t use.
At a high level, it’s important to take time to understand the potential needs or desires we are appealing to.
Often, ambitious entrepreneurs are resistant to investing in structured user research but this couldn't be a more costly mistake.
As a freelance designer at Mojiit, I wasn't given the opportunity to validate the use cases of Mojiit AR--a radically new type of product.
We ended up spending a few hundred thousand dollars building a product no one would use.
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"We ended up spending a few hundred thousand dollars building a product no one would use."
Who will use it?
How can this benefit them?
Why will they want it?
Why will they use it?
What needs will be satisfied?
The user research required by a project is greatly dependent on the market landscape and the unique characteristics of the product itself.
Mojichat for iMessage targeted an existing, well-established market.
As my first product at Mojiit as Head of Product & Design, we invested thoroughly in researching user behavior and response before breaking any ground on design.
During design and after, we solicited participation from users both by survey and analytics to guide design decisions.
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"Mojichat for iMessage targeted an existing, well-established market."
For products and services targeted to existing, well-defined markets, I’ll lean more heavily on data-based analytical research to substantiate design decisions. At Karuna, our core users were so well defined I was able to leverage both data from scientific studies and qualitative data from user interviews to build well rounded empathy.
For new markets or new product categories, interviews and focus groups help in understanding behaviors, preferences and predictable response of potential users even without discussing the product of interest. This becomes especially useful in validating ideas early without risk in exposing IP to potential competitors.
User Personas
Many entrepreneurs dream of creating products everyone will use. There’s over 7 billion people out there.
Although going mainstream might be a fair goal for certain consumer, no one starts there.
In consumer markets, I start by looking at the variety of potential users and develop unique profiles to divide the total market based on differentiators like demographics or intended use cases.
In enterprise, the user is likely much more specific. At Karuna, I was able to build much more robust user profiles that reflected a deep understanding of the workflows we were augmenting.
The user personas will be used to guide and categorize feedback and research that will help in understanding and tailoring products to specific end users.
The end users of greatest priority become our target market; the success of the product is determined by how well we match the benefits of the product or service with the needs or desires of this specific target market.
Interviews & Focus Groups
By far, the best way for me to understand my audience is to actually speak to them.
One-on-one interviews, group interviews and focus groups provide me with an open space to explore users on the inside and out.
By listening and observing body language and other social queues, I probe to understand existing behaviors, conscious and unconscious preferences, and to test and predict future responses.
Competitive Research
When direct or indirect competitors manifest, it’s important to not only understand the current offerings but overall business strategies so we can anticipate and prepare for potential future threats.
Also, understanding how users engage with existing solutions gives us great insight into their current preferences and pain points.
For product categories with widely used existing solutions, surveying and analyzing usage data can only go so far. I prefer to observe existing behaviors and use cases directly so I can pick up on the subtle intricacies of user behavior. Users compensate for inefficiencies in software all the time. Purely analyzing competitive data isn’t often enough.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive landscape analysis created for youPass at Think You.
Surveys & Analytical Data
Often used to validate assumptions or identify trends, quantitative research provides unique insights that interviews cannot. There are some use cases where traditional surveys might prove useful. However, subtly asking users for feedback over time can drive participation and user engagement by appealing to people’s sense of influence.
At Mojiit, I incorporated user input in our feature pipeline by building feedback channels directly into the product experience.
At the bottom of menus I provided an option to Tweet a selfie or submit a request directly to our animation team. Thousands of users participated and we were able to drive engagement and satisfaction even higher.
Mojichat
2018
By considering metrics and analytics of value in a project from the start, I can work with developers to ensure we’re capturing analytics as intended to provide useful metrics without the user’s active input in the future.
We leveraged surveys at Karuna to help us measure user satisfaction and to discover trends across user needs as I designed new products.
Throughout the design process, soliciting user feedback may help validate design decisions. Testing user response to design elements and style early help to reaffirm the overall strategy.
For early stage projects where preliminary feedback isn’t practical, a careful analysis of competitive products might elicit useful insights into user preferences.
AB Testing
At Mojiit, we would roll out small changes to a user interface and carefully track the resulting impact on the user experience.
For example, we analyzed user interaction at every point of our onboard process and tested moving or hiding certain buttons at different times to encourage the user to move forward through the process.
We’d change one small interface element, deploy to production, track user behavior and move forward with the better performing design.
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"...we analyzed user interaction at every point of our onboard process..."
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