Speak the Language of Business: Conducting Targeted Market Research as a Designer
Learn to speak the language of business by conducting market research
As a designer, have you ever received a design assignment at last minute without seeing the bigger picture? Have you ever felt excluded from shaping strategy? Have you ever experienced a lack of insights that hindered your participation and contribution to strategic decisions? Learning to speak the language of business can greatly help address these challenges and empower designers to have a more strategic impact. Developing a deep understanding of market dynamics, client needs, and overall business objectives allows designers to effectively bridge the gap between design and strategy. One powerful way to achieve this is through conducting market research. If we compare user research to a detailed view of one tree, then market research provides a bird’s eye view of the entire forest. It empowers us to become forward-thinking leaders and speak the same language as product managers during collaboration.
Extract insights: Leverage market research beyond simple information gathering
Now, you might be thinking, “Aren’t there already a bunch of market reports from external sources like Garner, Forrester, IDC, and more? Why should I bother with market research? And how can I do targeted research that actually influences product design and development?”
Well, let me share with you how to do it right:
When you start searching for market reports related to your product or industry, there could be hundreds of thousands of market data reports and perspectives. This can make you feel lost and overwhelmed. Finding the information you need can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Conducting your own market research gets you what you need. That’s why the process of market research goes beyond simple information gathering, it’s about digesting the data to construct your perspective with solid evidence and generate actionable recommendations for your product.
Here are 3 steps to do market research.
Step 1: Digest raw data
Thoroughly analyze the raw data by focusing on three key aspects: market landscape, competitor analysis, and client cases. By keeping the research goal in mind, you should search for the most relevant data and viewpoints that align with your product.
Step 2: Consolidate findings and draw your conclusion
Consolidate your findings and extract valuable insights from the market, competitors, and client cases. Key areas to consider include:
- Market size, growth and drivers
- Market share and key players
- Threats and opportunities
- Gaps between your product and client needs
- Factors influencing purchase decision and user adoption
Step 3: Generate cross-validated insights
Integrate all the findings and insights into a cohesive framework. Translate your analysis into actionable recommendations that can guide your product development, marketing strategies, and overall business approach.
Now let’s dive deeper into some important aspects of these steps.
Learn the market landscape
It’s important to understand the market landscape and build a context. The market size, share and growth figures just provide you a general understanding of market performance. What’s more important is to understand what drives the market demand and development to estimate its sustainability. If you are shaping a product for global markets, you also need to consider the regional market to validate the regional market’s importance and potential. For example, in the case of cloud management platform, China is the 2nd largest cloud market and growing at a rapid clip twice the rate of the global market. Understanding key players in that market and identifying any unique market demands compared to primary markets like North America is vital to your research.
Conduct competitor analysis
Competitor analysis is another important piece to help you connect market insights with your own product. A comprehensive competitor analysis can cover many dimensions such as features, product user experience, differentiators, pricing, geography, target clients, service, training, regulation compliance, business model, and more. You don’t need to cover all of them, just focus on the dimensions for comparison to identify threats and opportunities aligned with your specified research goals. For example, validating your marketing message. You can compare your value proposition with your competitors’ to identify or validate your product’s unique value point, what you are doing right and where you might be falling short. The common values reflect the market demands, while the unique values reflect advantages and differentiators.
Dive deeper into real client cases
A huge piece of the research jigsaw is client case studies. By deeply understanding the gaps between your product and user needs, the factors influencing purchase decision and user adoption through real client cases, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of how your product aligns with user requirement and identify areas for improvement. One common challenge is the diversity of customer requirements. To effectively consolidate and prioritize these requirements, consider categorizing client needs based on factors such as their size, industry, stage of digital transformation, cloud adoption, or journey to AI.
Generate cross-validated insights
Once you have gathered the necessary data and build a holistic view about the market, competitor, and client, it’s time to bring it all together. Take a step back, analyze your findings, and draw meaningful conclusion.
To transform your research into actionable insights, consider using the SWOT analysis framework. By identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can consolidate all your findings into a comprehensive and consumable view. Connect the dots between your insights and articulate your recommendations for a go-to-market strategy and product enhancements. This step allows you to generate cross-validated insights that are impactful and aligned with your research goals.
The value of market research for designers
Market research empowers designers to become influential leaders within their organizations by bridging the gap between design and business. By speaking the language of business through targeted market research, designers ensure that their design decisions are not only user-centric but also aligned with business objectives. This enables them to contribute to shaping product strategy and have greater impact on the overall business.
Lily Yue is zAIOps Portfolio Design Strategist, IBM Infrastructure based in IBM Studios Shanghai. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
