Consulting

Identifying New Customer Requirements

Ethnography is a technique that is, more well known, to be based on observations and interviews. However, its more than just looking at what users do.

"In knowing who you are and who I am, more important is the relationship in between," words said by Ajahn Brahmavamso. I would like to use the same in explaining ethnography. More than just how customers use the product, more importantly, is the relationship between the product and its environment.

No community stays still. Observing in-situ, changing conditions within customers environment can be identified. This is where ethnography is best at. A trained ethnographer is objective and sensitive to why and how users behave.

Deliverables
What drives them to use the product? Is the product good enough? Will it change? How? Does it need to change? When? Its it harming or bringing good to the users?

Improving an Existing Product

Usability analysis are a class of techniques in testing products. Users are given a prototype and asked to do a set of tasks. It sometimes take place in a lab, but mostly in a quiet room.

Because of the defined task and place, its best suited at looking deep into a product. Usability analysis can generate a lot of details, e.g. efficiency and effectivenes, information layout, and safety issues.

Deliverables
Is the product usable? How effective are the functionalities? How can I simplify the product? How does it perform compare to our competitions?

Identifying Customer Requirements in Matured Markets

Have a discussion with the user(s). One or many users at one time. Former is called in-depth interview. Latter is called focus group. Questions are usually structured, but are usually less so than survey. Users are free to express their own subjective point of view.

Interviews are very quick in getting a lot of details. However, due to biases, selective attention, recency effects, and so forth, interviews tend to be more accurate for customers who are well familiar with that product.

Deliverables
What do my customer care about? Who are they? What are their pain points? What do they like to see in the future?

Quantitative Analysis

Usually done between 30-500 customers. Respondents are selected from a stratified group or random, depending on target users. Effective surveys have to be as structured as possible, not overly long, in simple and clear language, and suited for statistical treatment.

Surveys confirm or disprove ideas. If you have beliefs about the customers, surveys will be good for you.

Deliverables
Are my assumptions correct? Segmentation of customers.