Focus on what your user doesn’t even know she/he wants
It’s hard to deliver value to users
Where is value?
While we build products, delivering value is always our number 1 focus. An application has no interest if it doesn’t bring value and help a user solve a problem it is facing. However, it’s always hard to deliver value because value in itself is always hard to identify.
As PM / product builder, we’re always biased towards solution. We always have a tendency to think that our product is delivering value to the users. It’s scary and difficult to humbly ask your end-users if the product is efficient in solving its problem, if it’s giving him a fulfilling experience or solving its needs. And if we do, users might not be able to answer right to these questions.
In fact, we must treat with cautious even the opinion of the most willing-to-help users.
When users know what they want
- What they want may change: users’ need might change and fluctuate
- They might have difficulties to verbalize what they want, which makes it harder for a PM to understand the right need behind
- They might know what they want and verbalize it clearly but be biased towards an answer, for instance they might just twist their answer because they want to give you the answer that pleases you
When users don’t know what they want
- In that case, there’s hardly a chance you can get a clear explanation of what would bring value to the users. Worst case scenario, users might not even know the solution to their problem exist
When users know what they want, it’s easier, with careful analysis and awareness of biases dangers, you might be able to identify their needs.
But the last point is the hardest one, how can you help someone that can’t know how he/she could be helped?
Let’s hear a quick story about how someone achieved great success facing such problematic.
How a terrifying MRI was transformed into a playful pirate vessel
That’s Doug Dietz story, twenty year engineer veteran at General Electrics, as it is related in the great book Creative Confidence written by Tom and David Kelley.
Context: an MRI specialist on a trip to see its device in action
- Doug Dietz worked at General Electrics for several years and worked on several improvements on the very famous and succesful MRI. A device that enables to see “magically” inside the body of a patient without any physical pain for him.
- The device improved by Doug’s work was installed in several hospitals and had even been submitted for an Excellence award: “Oscars of design”.
- When Doug had the opportunity to see his invention in action; he jumped on it and went to a hospital in order to see his machine in action.
Trigger: a kid that seems to dislike the user experience of the device
- As he was about to leave, he noticed a child with his mother that was actually very afraid of going inside the MRI. Despite the encouragements of her parents, the kid was still terrified. In the end, she was so scared that the technician had to call an anesthesiologist to sedate her.
- This helped Doug understanding that even his device was extremely efficient, its kid-experience could be improved. And that it was actually a great opportunity to make MRI more valuable through a fresh perspective so that kids feel reinsured and nurtured in the MRI environment
Solution: a kid-centric device to make MRI a positive and memorable experience
- Through a lot of exchanges, workshops and prototyping Doug transformed MRI into a kid’s adventure story. The device is rebranded into a pirate vessel and the kid is the hero of an adventure in this vessel. They even pushed the realism to create a script for the technician so young patients are lead in the adventure.
- Of course the results were measurable and showed an impressive success : the satisfaction of patient increased and the need of sedation reduced a lot accordingly. Nonetheless, the biggest measure of user satisfaction for Doug was seeing a little girl asking to her mom after going out of the MRI “can we come back tomorrow?” (as a matter of fact, a feedback he got from unbiased observation and not direct interviews)
Three ideas to help you dealing with this kind of situations: data; unbiasedness to raise empathy; open-mind
Good data don’t lie
But it might be hard to perceive the right signal when you listen to it: in the MRI, there was this statistic that 80% of children were sedated, but was Doug aware of the stat? And was it possible to establish the link between the sedation and the fact that MRI was scary for kids?
Unbiased observation is key
Doug Dietz discovered about how kids were terrified, only by chance, when he was in the hallways and just observed silently the family with the little girl entering the MRI.
There’s hardly a chance that he would have been aware of the problem and able to develop empathy without this kind of unbiased observation. By asking directly a kid, he/she might either censored itself or just couldn’t have pictured a more user-friendly way to go through MRI
Always keep an open mind
Even if your device / product is succesful and state-of-the-art, there’s always room for improvement. Therefore, keep doing user research, continuous discovery and cycles of prototyping along with confrountation of profiles from different services and industries. It will give you a broader perspective.
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