A while ago, Nicki was preparing a presentation for SheSays and she asked me for my take on where good ideas come from.
Tough one to answer given there is never going to be one right answer to this question (how boring would it be if there was?) but I replied:
Working with potential users introduces an element of chaos into the creative process. By bringing in this foreign element you set the scene for serendipitous discovery.
Lately this has been bothering me. Very few people seem to see customer development as an approach which can fuel creativity and good thinking. In fact, worryingly, some even view it as a replacement for these vital elements in the product development process.
I have a hypothesis that people who do this are focused on solutions not problems.
Either they think they have an amazing idea and want to get it confirmed by 'research' or they don't know what to do and want someone else to tell them the answer. Invariably these people are obsessive about numbers and percentages. They want to know that 38.9% say they would do a thing versus 17.2% who would prefer something else versus 23.5% who want a mix of the two versus 12.6% who just want to go home now. Although in fact those percentages are never so clear cut. They are produced via a tortuous and opaque process of adding, subtracting and dividing hundreds of answers to epicly hellish surveys, which by the way, probably gave your respondents decision fatigue. They would kind of, sort of like anything after getting through that. Every single one of these insights is a little golden nugget of bullshit.
What I think is important, and please get back to me in the comments if you disagree, is being so fucking passionate about the problem you want to solve that you'd be crazy not to try and understand it through the eyes of your audience. It's not about asking people what they want. And it's really difficult, that's why there won't ever be a handbook for this stuff. Sure there are tools, tips and techniques, and it's amazing to find out how other people approach it, but it can't be distilled into one definitive process.
Because there's a thing that has to happen between learning more about the people you want to make something for and figuring out what to make, and it involves using your brain.
It has also been directly inspired by some real life work experiences which shall not be named.
I'd love to know what you think about this in the comments. How do you get around gung-ho market research driven solutioneering?
8 comments
Agreed. I think there are a lot of people out there, companies and clients, who want to make things because they’ve got a great idea or want to think they have a great idea. Then they use research and numbers to validate it. To make it real. Because to them, numbers are “real.”They understand numbers. Good numbers = less risk.
There’s a difference between asking people what they want and understanding who they are, their needs, their emotions and their desires. Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of ZIBA Design, wrote in a recent Fast Co. article, “If you don’t come out of a research effort feeling like a different person, you’re doing it wrong.”
Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to how we can get around the “gung-ho market research driven solutioneering.” But I think that we might be able to turn the numbers driven solutioneering approach on its head. We can do our part in trying to understand the people we’re making things for, identifying the real (emotionally driven) problems the things we’re making need to solve, and then use numbers (from wherever the hell we can find them) to help make a case for the thing we want to make.
After all, our clients use numbers because they need proof that their decisions have high potential to work. I think we can work in a way that helps us (the makers of things) solve real problems while satisfying the clint’s need to mitigate risk. Even if it means going to the ends of the earth to find numbers that support what we’re doing.
Interesting that you don’t use the word ‘insight’ here. Is that the missing link? I mean ‘insight’ in it’s proper, true sense, not marketingspeak.
I don’t know if you’re bundling all customer research together but it’s always helpful to get a sense of who you’re designing for and what they need. Quant alone won’t get you that.
My answer to this tyranny is to be as involved as possible in the research process, ensure the most appropriate questions are asked, of the right people.
@Kelly Rupp – I know what you’re saying, and it’s definitely something that we do too. But while it lets you side step the problem, it doesn’t deal with the fundamental issue. I love that quote from Sohrab Vossoughi. It reminds me of one I saw on Twitter over the weekend from someone at #lsmlondon about how we should talk about invalidating our hypotheses rather than validating them. That approach – trying to prove you are wrong rather than right, and then learning from that – is what’s missing in a lot of businesses.
@Kate Bordwell – yeah insight is a word that has been sadly misappropriated by the world of marketing.
I’m not saying that research is invalid, on the contrary I’m all for it where it’s useful, but I think it’s abused to rubber stamp bad ideas and pet projects.
And totally agree with you about being involved in the research process – it’s crucial. It drives me nuts when another agency is brought in to manage the research and prepare the insights for you. You don’t learn anything if you’re not hands on.
“Because there’s a thing that has to happen between learning more about the people you want to make something for and figuring out what to make, and it involves using your brain.”
I think that’s a great definition of ‘innovation’!
Agreed. Good ideas don’t come from understanding people and their problems alone and hardly ever from researching how people do things now. There’s been a comparable but different debate running in the design / design research community, with Don Norman at the forefront of research naysayers (research doesn’t equal innovation: technology first, needs last). It would be pathetically bad if customer development fell into the same pitfalls as the design research community, where a lot of the ill comes from the separation research and product development into two camps, two linear processes. See http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html and http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/12/technology_vs_c.html
@Cath: Maybe I’m not quite following. When you say “research” what are you referring to? Quant resarch? Qual research? Ethnographic research? All of it?
Is Customer Development not another form of research?
I guess I was just trying to say that we either have to do a whole lot of heavy lifting in educating our clients about the importance of customer development. Or, we can show them how important it is using a language they can understand. But maybe I’m being too optimistic in thinking that it’s possible to get what we want while giving them what they want…
@Kelly: yep, customer development is a form of research – and it gets its fair share of abuse!
Re. the debate about whether to do the heavy lifting or change the way you communicate, I think this is why it’s important to get the right clients – the kind who are willing to work with you and try out new processes. In my experience this is much harder to achieve when you’re working with big organisations but it can be done if you’re working with a progressive team.