One common practice when testing the marketing potential of a product is to ask customers if they are satisfied with a product or service. Focus groups are the favorite method to invite customers to provide feedback. One should think customers will buy your products or services because they are satisfied with them, right? Well, not really.

I have already written about the challenge of asking customers if they are satisfied with your products or services. But asking customers whether they are satisfied or not is not really helpful either. Everyone using a five blade shaver is probably satisfied with the results compared to a four blade shaver but how many would really buy a five blade shaver?

What questions do we need to ask in order to get an answer that predicts the probability that customers will buy? In order to predict whether anyone will buy your products, you have to find out if your products or services provide any value to the customer. If they do provide value, is this value unique and you are not facing other competitors?

Buying is an exchange of value and a customer is only willing to buy your product if you are providing value. So even though customers might be satisfied with your products or services, they still might not be interested in buying it because they do not provide value.

Why do I blog this? A quick reminder that customer satisfaction is a valuable tool to answer the right set of questions. But one has to understand more aspects than just customer satisfaction to fully describe the success of a new product or service. Of course we can extend the meaning of the word “satisfaction” but at the end you will always end up referring to (perceived) customer value.

Photo courtesy of lyricsboy

Posted in customer satisfaction, customer value | Permalink | No Comments »

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong”
H.L.Mencken

Found in the May 2008 Issue of Harvard Business Review. I think you can easily translate it into something else as well:

“There is always an easy answer to every question about your customers – neat, plausible and wrong”.

If you have ever attended a meeting with managers talking about customers and making “uninformed decisions” without evidence, you know what I am talking about.

Posted in thoughtful | Permalink | No Comments »

Consumers buy products and services to reach a certain outcome or get a specific job done. You buy a car to drive to work and maybe improve your status (if you chose BMW, Audi or a similar premium brand) and you buy a BlackBerry to be able to do your email during a business trip.

Understanding these goals is essential when developing new breakthrough ideas because only then designers and developers are able to create products and services that makes it easier and faster for customers to reach a certain outcome. The best example for this is the integration of the Apple iPod with iTunes. The customer’s goal is to listen to music and this requires also to download music from the Internet and seamlessly upload it to your MP3 player.

In the May 2008 Issue of the Harvard Business Review, the Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick, consultants at Strategyn have published an article titled “The Customer-Centered Innovation Map” that introduces a tool kit to analyze customer’s job to discover opportunities for breakthrough products and services.

The article can be found online at the HBR store.

Why do I blog this? My research is directed in a similar direction. The goal is to develop a formal method to understand consumer goals and model their behavior using different resources (i.e. products, services, skills) to reach a certain outcome. If you are working in this field as well or if you are interested to find out more, send me an email, I would be interested in exchanging ideas.

Posted in customer process | Permalink | No Comments »

This is a picture of a prototyping set-up for an innovative mobile device that a team of students from the University of St. Gallen and the University of Stanford have built in the course "E310: Global Team-Based Design Innovation”.

I really like this approach to prototyping and the students have done a great job, yet my experience is that if you show prototypes like this around, designer (in this case students) will be confronted with two different kinds of feedback. One response is “I don’t know what this should be and if you try to build it like that it will never work.” Another response is “Yes, I get it. Maybe you can try this and integrate it like that”. It is sometimes difficult to understand how one single design can induce such different reactions but to understand it, one has to look at the different outcomes in an innovation process.

Initially there is an idea, which has to be evaluated and might then be transferred into a concept. This concept itself is evaluated and then transferred into a state that is ready for production. This results in two different kinds of prototypes: one that is the “proof of idea” (showing that your idea actually works and is helpful) and the other one which is a “proof of concept” (that your idea fits into an overall concept).

The reason for the different answers is that for one group prototyping works as a “proof of ideas” while the other group looks at the prototype and interprets it as a “proof of concept” that is ready for production - ready to make money from.

These different perspectives are both valid, yet it is important to communicate what kind of prototype you are showing and what kind of answers you expect. It is no problem when people see a “proof of concept” and think it is a “proof of idea”. The problem is if you show a “proof of idea” and people think it is a “proof of concept” that is ready for manufacturing. Then their feedback will focus on reasons why it is not ready for production (when you actually haven’t even tried to present something that is ready for production).

Is this only relevant for designers creating tangible prototypes? No, it applies to everyone who is working with different ideas to create a concept no matter if it’s a graphic designer, web designer or industrial designer.

The essential point is to present different ideas and explain how they shape the overall concept but one has to clearly distinguish and communicate if it is an “idea prototype” or a “concept prototype”.

Posted in prototyping | Permalink | No Comments »

Jensen Harris recently gave a talk at MiX08 titled “The Story of the Ribbon”. He told the story of the development of the new Microsoft Office 2007 user interface. There are great insights on how Microsoft solved the challenge of “menu clutter”, various methods to collect user insights and how to setup an iterative prototyping process to create a product that radically improves the users experience when working with a word processor or excel sheet.

The story of the development of the new Office UI starts with identifying the real problem with Office suits. While conventional wisdom might suggest that Office is already “Good Enough”, when asking real people how they felt about it they came up with different stories. People felt that Office is powerful, but they don’t know how to use it anymore. Jenson makes a good point:

The goal was to give back the user the feeling of mastery and to find a way so that working with Microsoft Office makes fun again. Harris stresses that interface design is one part art and one part science and he presents his insights on art and science of interface design.

Instead of generating wild ideas through brainstorming sessions, the UI team focused on two main activities: gathering user insights and building a “culture of iteration” through prototypes.

Here are some slides that give more insight how user insights were collected.

The method of planning to iterate as well as some prototypes for the UI are shown below.

So has Microsoft been successful with creating an Office Suite that gives users a feeling of mastery and which is fun to use? Here are the results of an survey of users of all skill levels after 2 months of use.

Nearly 90% of users agree that the software makes it easier to create professional looking documents and about 85% percent of user agree that the software is more fun to use.

The key lessons from his talk are:

• You can turn using a “boring” product into fun and enjoyable experience
• The key to success is not about brainstorming but about gathering user insights and iterative prototyping
• Even a mature company can create radical products by setting the focus right: on the user

You can watch the talk online or download it. Powerpoint slides are available too. Highly recommended.

Posted in user experience | Permalink | No Comments »