No, it’s not OK to waste time and money on assumptions any more
Why it’s old school to fail because you never built the bridge with the customers in the first place
When I first started working in MarComms agencies (some 20 years ago), professionals knew the drill: smart people would gather up in a room, assess the environment, the available insights (either on the particular audience we were targeting or a similar group) and the client goals, they would come up with a strategy and put their creativity to work. Sometimes fantastic ideas were brought to the table, other times struggle took the room. And did the ideas work when they were brought in front of an audience? It was a gamble.
But we always had the best intentions for the assumptions we (the agency and the client) collectively made.
More sophisticated clients employed research waves mostly to understand their “target group”. Less to test ideas before they went on air, some to measure how campaigns influenced brand equity.
Those sophisticated clients did run exhaustive research though for product development. In their HQ. Rarely in local markets.
Fast forward to an era where Design is gaining serious ground.
Once a privilege only classic Designers benefitted from, it’s now actively cultivated as it should be: a mindset that transforms businesses and organisations in order to embrace customer-centricity. In reality, not just in paper (hidden in a folder of Power Point presentations for company retreats).
A fundamental aspect of it, except for internal co-creation (involving employees in the organisation’s Service Design efforts), is putting the customers / consumers at the heart of everything you do.
And in order to do that, these Strategic Designers cannot but talk to them, observe them, design solutions they need and offer those solutions in a way customers can use them, become delighted by them and thus, talk about them as the solutions’ advocates.
Great design means great business results. And assumption-based development of products and services has no place in the equation.
However, there are companies out there who advise their clients to basically keep it old-school (coated in a fancy way, no doubt), emphasising on “quick”.
In a fast-paced environment — they say — there is no time for stalling, but achieving a minimum Time to Market. Let’s get it out there and then… we’ll fix it.
We don’t have the time for even the slightest customer / user testing — they say — because we’ll need to make adjustments once it’s out there anyway.
That last part is very true: adjustments will be made, iterations are also imperative — another fundamental element of Design. But whether any kind of product recovers from a faulty launch or the kind of resources that will be needed for the recovery, depends on the extend of the damage that will have been done.
“But the Product does not exist in the market. If we don’t get it out there first and then talk to customers, they will ask for faster horses, not cars”.
That of course, holds true if you are making breakthrough innovation. Let’s say you’ve found a way to send a person to the moon only wearing a special costume that puts Iron Man to shame.
In every other case, yes, you can have a pretty good idea if your product / site / new flagship store concept is going places or it will be bound to the ground.
Nothing exotic there. Just plain old strategic analysis (through a whole new world of methodologies, for sure) which now though, results in the right research methods and prototyping, with an aim to test before you throw significant time and money away on an “on-air” experiment.
A little note:
I believe there is a misunderstanding about what innovation really is. The most observed images in articles, trainings and presentations about innovation are crazy optical fibres and robots in abstract futuristic spaces, mostly referring to a somewhat incomprehensible mix of tech ideas that lead humanity to the world of singularity.
However, it’s not only about that.
Innovation is about creating a culture that allows people to successfully produce solutions to customers / users / citizens problems. Some untapped, some currently addressed in a non-satisfactory level. Who will be the judge of this success? The people this innovation aims at. And yet, there is still a vast majority of organisations that do not make the effort to ask them.
So, why run the research even if your goal is to decrease the Time to Market? If designing solutions for real needs doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, let’s get to the bottom line: the answer is “to save time and money”.
Counter-intuitive?
Some clients and most agencies think that going through research means an extra step in the process, thus more time. Based on the well-known quote that “time is money”, they think that research will delay their launch and may also leave room for competition to strike first
What happens though if you do launch fast though, armed only with your assumptions?
What if you launch a product of any kind (service offering, physical or digital product, website, flagship store, app, etc.) and then find out that nobody had any need for that? Or that the way it’s designed and “packaged” is incomprehensible? Or that people would like a similar solution, but it’s so challenging to use it that they give up after the first try? Imagine that: you’ve put all your resources to build the product (even as an MVP), plan its marketing and train personnel to facilitate the service behind it, all on assumptions. And the product fails or does pretty poorly.
That is not a rare case either.
95% of new products fail.
(the percentage varies according to the source, however it’s always upward 70%)
According to this article (and considerable data analysis), product failure comes “because key assumptions about the product are often flawed, and not challenged until it’s too late.”
How many times have you been present when a team just added features to a product just because the tech to facilitate them is out there? Or the competition has them? Or their spouse thought they were a good idea?
No customer insight, just assumptions.
That’s when failure happens. And what it brings along is a massive loss of budget.
Right when you thought you were gaining money by launching fast…
Let’s not forget:
What now?
Corrections, if possible. More money, that is.
Customers are coming in to use your product and are turning away perplexed or even disdained. And they tell their friends about it. When you do make the adjustments, you’ll need to persuade them to come back and re-try the product (if you’re lucky enough to succeed in getting them back there). More money, that is.
And if you add the lost revenue to that, the pile of not-so-pleasant-stuff starts smelling like, well, trouble.
But what if we write this story in a different way?
Let’s rewind to the product development phase and explore this scenario:
- Your team has an idea of a product (again, it could be a service, a website, an app, a store, a physical product)
- You’ve identified an audience that would probably find it interesting
- You run a first batch of research on this audience to see if this idea you have is even solving anything in consumers minds
- It turns out the consumers do not find any value in this product
Well, (happy) end of story.
No Design Sprints to come up with features, no team to work intensively on them, no nervous breakdowns or black circles because of working around the clock, no money invested in Design / Development / Marketing (you name it), etc.
This is obviously as much a simplistic version of the story, as it is truthful.
The same would apply — among others — in the case the Product was seen as a good Product-Market fit and the team reached the point where a website was designed. Before investing in Development or even in finalising the Design, you go back to the consumers to discover issues in the on-boarding, the user flow, the copy, etc. You correct what is not working, ideally you test again and then you launch one of these websites consumers are happy to visit each time they need to. (those are not necessarily the same ones we — the market — like to congratulate each other on, but suffer on the UX front)
How about the aspect of time though? How quick can we do that?
In qualitative user research, science says that 5 people per persona are a perfectly acceptable sample.
Quantitative research certainly needs more, but still, access to a quality pool of interviewees where you can find the audience you seek for online surveys will do magic.
If there is no other way, you can even conduct a guerrilla version of some methods, let’s say a usability test.
We even teach that version at the ADandPRLab of Panteion University of Athens, with the help of our good collaborators Dr. Panagiotis Zaharias and Antonis Birmpas. When university students are asked by the Associate Professor and Head of ADandPRLAB Betty Tsakarestou to form their own start-ups, the resources for research are obviously scarce. Still, it’s a prerequisite for their projects. The truth is that only if you experience how valuable even this simple method is and the insights it produces, only then you will wonder what you were doing without research.
So, Time to Market in asap mode? Perfectly achievable WITH research.
That should also give you a hint of the aspect of money needed for research.
There are ways you can utilise research no matter the budget. The good news is that — as mentioned above — you don’t need lengthy processes or to talk to 1000 people to get it right. In fact, the masters of research (the NN/g) say that if you have a big budget, it’s wiser to spend it on additional studies, not on more people per study.
Time and money gained (not lost, after all) and efforts well spent.
At Dollphin we recently followed that path to design a product aiming at patients in the challenging Health and Wellness field.
The wealth of insights we gathered was mind-blowing. And also forced us to stop any conversation on opinions. It’s not about what any member of our team, an “expert” or the client THINKS we should do. It’s what people who’ll use the product actually feel comfortable about — and consequently, will buy or use.
More about that soon.
So, is it OK to waste time and money on assumption-based product launches and then try to fix them? No.
In a day and age when large organisations invest millions in Strategic Design, Research, Prototyping and Testing, thankfully there are ways of asking the consumers and testing each aspect of your Product even in the most time/cost-efficient manner.
It’s a shame to waste this opportunity that may not have been available so broadly in the past.
That said, allow me a word of caution:
Customer / User Research is a science in itself. It can be run in a guerrilla way when we cannot do otherwise, but even that should be done by professionals who know what they are doing.
- So, before you start, assign the research to someone who is experienced in turning strategy into research. Lists of methodologies are all over the internet. But strategically selecting the correct ones for each opportunity and project phase is not to be taken lightly. That person will be responsible for bringing you real insights and indications of possible product flaws. Every person who’s even observed half a focus group in their lives knows how asking a question the wrong way may lead the interviewee to give you a guided answer
- Conduct the process based on a research plan. Qualitative research may involve a certain amount of freedom, however it’s essential that your encounter with the interviewees is not all over the place
- Recruitment is key. Research the wrong customers and the results will only get you right back where you started
We at Dollphin wish you the best of launches!
If you need assistance on how to navigate this somewhat complex ground or the Strategic Design of the holistic experiences you offer to your customers, give us a shout here. We are good at making things easy for you.
