Executing the wrong plan perfectly


 
Report of the meetup organized by Ekio with Tomer Sharon – User Researcher at Google.

Two energetic “top gun” developers (MIT & Stanford) wasted $200 developing the wrong product – that is, without considering user needs before starting development. However, at first, the idea seemed good…

How to avoid failure?

We must first understand the reasons for their failure. For Tom Sharon, there are six:

  1. they did not fall in love with the problem: it is absolutely necessary focus on the problem to be solved before attacking the solution.
  2. They focused their research on friends and family, in other words, anyone who will tell you what you want to hear.
  3. they listened to users. Unfortunately, users lie, you don't have to listen to them, you have to observe them.
  4. they don't have not tested the most risky hypotheses : for example, is the product really suitable for mobile use?
  5. “bob the builder” mentality: too impatient to start building and coding. Out, you have to start with (1) validate that the problem exists, (2) validate that there is a market  – enough people who encounter the problem and (3) validate that the product solves the problem.
  6. In summary, they executed the wrong plan perfectly.

 

The solution: Lean User Research.

In a Lean Startup context, the user search must satisfy 3 key points:

  1. to be fast : not possible to do 6 months of research, the unit of time is the week or the day.
  2. be of good quality : no room for error.
  3. be actionable: research must lead to action. Be actionable to create customer value.

3 “Lean User Research” techniques

  1. Experience sampling.
    This involves asking the same question 5 times a day for 5 days to the same group of users (about 100). Example of a question: "what annoyed you recently" or "why did you take your notes on paper". The question must be well formulated, to identify a recurring behavior. No binary question (Y/N), no opinion, it must be about behavior. The key is to ask the question less often than the occurrence of the behavior eg “why did you last update your website”.
  2. Observation
    The demonstration is made by showing a 90 second video, a user interview in a supermarket. Tom highlights the quantity and quality of user information (user insight) that passes through in such a short time. 
  3. fake doors
    The fake doors technique consists in offering the purchase or subscription to the service before it exists (with a -30% reduction for example). The objective is to measure the market's appetite for the new service.

Conclusion

User research is a key success factor for innovative projects. Faced with the reluctance that there may be in relation to the costs generated, it must be remembered that it always costs less thanexecute the wrong plan perfectly.

Thanks again for this great meetup!

Antoine Visonneau – Associate UX-Designer @UX-Republic