Using Desirability studies to find a better product-market fit
Finding product-market fit can be a daunting and time-consuming task since you’re not only serving a user need, but also making sure it aligns with your business strategy.
Around 30–49% of new product ideas fail (depending on industry), and a 2017 journal pointed to several reasons why, however the one thing that stood out the most was that same strong rigor and testing applied prior to allowing the product to move to the next phases of marketing and execution, didn’t follow through.
The truth is, first impressions last, and if users have a positive first impression of the design aesthetics, they are more likely to overlook or forgive poor usability or limited functionality. With a negative first impression, users are more likely to find fault with an interaction, even if a product’s overall usability is good and the product offers real value.
Can I just ask my users if they like it then?
With limited knowledge, budget or time, this happens frequently, however while it is tempting to seek the opinion of your participants, their statements may be truthful, but those type of responses don’t help you assess the emotional impact of a design. In addition, some participants have a difficult time articulating what it is about a design they like or dislike and without a structured framework for providing feedback, they may be at a loss for words when it comes to describing why they like or dislike it.
This is where desirability studies may come in handy.
What are desirability studies?
Desirability studies, help you measure your users first impressions through their initial emotional response to a product’s visual aesthetics. This approach was famously used by Joey Benedek and Trish Miner of Microsoft where they had a list of adjectives printed on reaction cards, that participants could use to describe their reactions to a user interface. These adjectives represented a mix of descriptions that people might consider positive or negative. They showed participants a user interface, then asked them to select the three to five of these adjectives they thought best described it.
Here’s an example of a few of these adjectives (there are 118 in total, but it is recommended to shorted the list to around 25, relevant to your product)
- Boring
- Busy
- Calm
- Cheap
- Creative
- Cutting-edge
- Exciting
- Expensive
- …
By analyzing the resulting data across participants, researchers can align certain adjectives (see diagram below) with each visual design option and assess how each option aligns with a business’s intended emotional response and brand attributes. This approach can be used in both user interviews (qualitative research) or in surveys (quantitative) and the data can be plotted similarly to below.
The idea here is to group opposing adjectives and plot each iteration results to inform you on what’s the impact on desirability with the changes applied between each iteration.
Conclusion
Combining desirability studies with user interviews or surveys and extracting the emotional impact of a product design is key to help you measure the impact of changes applied following each iteration, while at the same time ensure that there is the product-market fit which will ensure your business can further invest time and money in the idea.
