lecture 9: customer discovery

Duke ECE 490L: How to Start New Ventures in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Poornima Vijayashankerpoornima@femgineer.com

Jeff Glass jeff.glass@duke.edu

Akshay Rautar118@duke.edu

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Review

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• More on positioning!

• Digging into the Competitor

• Horizontal vs. Vertical Market

• Substitutes

• Secondary Markets

• Point Tool vs. Integrated Solutions

• Customer Discovery

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Announcements

• Quiz 1 results coming soon!

• Questions on Lab 2?

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Idea Summary

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Agenda

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• Customer Discovery

• Mental Models

• Customer Interviews

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Still no building...

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Myth of the omniscient founder.

Supplemental Reading: The Steve Jobs Way

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Customer Discovery Validation Customer CreationBusiness/Company

Formation

Early AdopterPricing Product

Distribution

Mainstream AdoptersMoney for Marketing

Market Research

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Customer Discovery Validation Customer CreationBusiness/Company

Formation

Early AdopterPricing Product

Distribution

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Test across various user segments.

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Mental Model of an early adopter.

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Mental models give you a deep understanding of people’s motivations and thought-processes, along with the emotional and philosophical landscape in which they are operating.

Supplemental Reading: Mental Models

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Mental Model per segment.

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Understand the differences to bring clarity to design and product implementation.

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Benefits of Mental Models

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• Confidence in your design: guide the design of the solution

• Clarity in direction: make good user and business decisions

• Continuity of strategy: ensure longevity of vision and opportunity

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How do you know the design is right?

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Research.

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Case Study: Frank Gehry Disney Hall

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• Disney Hall: think about how people listen

• Worked closely with acoustician to produce BIG and small sounds

• Conductor thinks about on stage• Musician’s relationship to the room

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Whole experience.

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Pay attention to the entire spectrum of interactions customer will have, not just a single service or tool.

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MM captures cognitive intent and emotion, social environment, and cultural traits of a concept.

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What does that mean?

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Science + Intuition = communicate product info

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Purpose of Mental Models

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• Validate ideas and match them to needs of customers• Mental models capture

• Cognitive intent• Emotions• Social and culture traits of a concept

• Experience Strategy = Business Strategy + UX Strategy• Jesse James Garrett

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How do we create a mental model?

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1. Learn verbs of a customer.

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e.g. Yoga studio owner

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Teach yoga classes.Take attendance.

Schedule instructors.Ask students for payments.Owns or manages studio.

Performs back office tasks or business partner does.

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e.g. Yoga instructor

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Teach yoga classes 1-1.Teach yoga classes at a studio.

Teach yoga classes in corporations.May teach full-time or part-time.

Take attendance.Ask students for payments.

Travel to teach.

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2. Create personas.

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Personas are user profiles that help design and other teams such as sales and marketing get more useful products into the hands of customers.

Supplemental Reading: Getting Your Startup Team to Understand Your Customer, About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design

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Personas Benefit Other Teams

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• Marketing• Develop positions based on personas

• Sales• Communicate how product will meet needs of customers

• Engineering• Understand importance of building not for themselves but

for the customer by understanding customer’s needs

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Personas Benefit Other Teams

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• Focus on end goals & life goals• what a person wishes to accomplish• why a person wishes to accomplish something

• Create Segments• task based: people who do similar things but don’t necessarily buy the same

product• e.g. teens & seniors are both “movie-goers”

• Avoid traditional market segment traps• list distinguishing behavior• group behavior• name groups

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Avoid Traditional Marketing Segment Traps

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• List distinguishing behaviors: Sketch out all the ways many types of individuals might behave

• Group the behaviors: study these behaviors and put them into groups

• Name the groups: assign provisional labels to the groups

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Multiple user segments, each has a different need.

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Determining needs will help with design.

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To determine needs we need to do user research.

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User Research Types.

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Data Technique Uses

PreferencesOpinions, likes, dislikes

SurveyFocus GroupMood Boards

Preference InterviewCustomer Feedback

Visual DesignBranding

Market AnalysisAdvertising Campaigns

EvaluativeWhat is understood or accomplished

with a tool.

Usability TestLog Analysis

Search AnalysisCustomer Feedback

Interaction FunctionalityScreen LayoutNomenclature

Information Architecture

GenerativeMental environment in which things

get done

Non-Directed InterviewMental Model

DiaryEthnography

Contextual Inquiry

Navigation & FlowInteraction Design

Alignment & Gap AnalysisContextual Marketing

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Set goals relating back to customer discovery.

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Personas come out of interviewing user segments.

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Collect feedback and categorize customers.

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Yoga Studio Owner/ManagerYoga Instructor

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Some needs will be the same. While others have a stark contrast.

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Results from interview will point out the general cases.

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Interview Checklist

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• How many of each audience segment to select• Demographics to select, if applicable• A qualification questionnaire for recruiters to use• Questions to make certain that the candidate is able to carry on a long enough conversation

• A schedule with available interview appointments• A list of qualifying candidates

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6 Rules for Mental Models Interviews

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1. Behaviors and philosophies, not product preferences2. Open questions only3. No words of your own4. Follow the conversation5. Not about tools6. Immediate experience

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Open-Ended Questions

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• Elicit more info• compared to yes/no

• Don’t bias answers• doesn’t distract their thinking

• Let’s people direct answers to what they think is important

• “Tell me more...”

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Examples of Open-Ended Questions

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• How did you do that? • How did you actually get that info? • So is that’s one of the things you’re doing right now? (Encouraging him to tell me more.)

• How do you keep up to date on the latest? • Can you mention a couple of examples? • Can you tell me…what are your next steps?

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Find out as much as possible about the customer.

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Digging Deeper into the Personas

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• Where do they hang out?• What do they read?• Who influences them? Or recommends products?

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Interview results.

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3. Comb for tasks.

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Type of Task Definition

Task a phrase setting an action or step to accomplish something.

Implied Taska not-so-clear phrase implying an action “Every class students come in and we need to check them in."

Third-Party Task a phrase that mentions a task someone else does “My front desk person checks students in.”

Philosophya phrase stating a belief of why tasks are done a certain way “Taking attendance should be fast and easy.”

Feelinga phrase describing a person’s feelings “When all students are checked in I know classes run smoothly.”

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Interest Level Definition

Preferencea phrase stating a person’s likes or dislikes “I don’t like asking students for money right when they check-in.”

Desire a phrase stating what the person wants “I wish students would just pre-pay for classes.”

Expectationa belief that something will happen “I think students will know how to pre-pay for classes.”

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Quote Task Type of Task

“I need to stay organized to keep my business on-track.”

Would feel business is going well if they were more organized. Desire

“I take attendance before each class.” Takes attendance. Task

“Tracking attendance and letting students see it keeps them honest about paying on time.”

Believes taking attendance keeps students honest. Feeling

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What’s the point?

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Customer Discovery Validation Customer CreationBusiness/Company

Formation

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TasksWhat customers do that

you might want to design a solution for.

Desire, Feelings, Preference, Expectations Characterizes level of need.

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4. Match personas to tasks.

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Yoga Instructor Teaches yoga.

Takes attendance.

Asks for payment.

Yoga Studio Owner Teaches at one studio.

Travels to teach yoga.

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5. Look for patterns.

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Track Attendance

Inform Students about Membership

Status

Take Payments

Task: Takes attendance before classes.

Task: Informs students they are expired.

Task: Teaches students yoga.

Desire: Get paid on time to stay in business.

Desire: Students would pre-pay.

Preference: Doesn’t like asking students to pay right when they check-in.

Task: Takes payments from students.

Desire: Wants to teach more.

Preference: Likes interacting with students.

Preference: Doesn’t enjoy doing mundane business tasks.

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6. Tasks become “stories”.

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Persona + what is it they are doing = accomplish a goal.

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As a yoga studio owner, I’d like to take attendance as students check-in to class.

Example:

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As a yoga instructor, I’d like to keep track of the students I teach privately.

Example:

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As a yoga business person, I’d like to keep track of the my students memberships.

Example:

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As a yoga business person, I’d like to get paid on time so that I can stay in business.

Example:

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7. Stories feed into features.

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Features fit into product implementation.

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More details in next lecture!

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Review

Duke ECE 490L

• More on positioning!

• Digging into the Competitor

• Horizontal vs. Vertical Market

• Substitutes

• Secondary Markets

• Point Tool vs. Integrated Solutions

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