There Are No “Unmet Needs” Left to Uncover
What could you accomplish if you stopped chasing them?
Job postings and conference talks are littered with the phrase “uncovering unmet needs”, as though we’re all in the pursuit of some elusive secret that, when found, will lead to a treasure trove of riches and high MRR.
But what if ‘uncovering unmet needs’ wasn’t where we’re struggling?
What if we already know everything we need to know, and we’re fumbling with what to do with the information?
A few months ago I read a book called “Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services” by Lance Bettencourt. It was a fantastic book that really helped me reflect on how to approach service design from a customer perspective.
One of the points was — people know what they want to achieve. As they are considering how to move forward to accomplishing their goals, they really only use three criteria to pick a solution. These are: input, process, and output.
- Input: minimize the investment I have to make to do this thing. I’m committed to do it, but I want to spend as little time, money or energy as I can to get it done.
2. Process: reduce variability. Help me make it more predictable. Reduce the risk of errors, or reduce the risk of things just going totally off the rails.
3. Output: optimize the results. Whatever I do, make sure what comes out of it is valuable and useful. As valuable and useful as possible.
This short list stuck with me as such a simple concept, but a incredibly powerful one. If you look at the decisions we make, and the solutions we try to accomplish our goals, I think this explains them all.
I’ve had a few twitter exchanges lately and these three lenses were right there in front of me.
1. Why is process such a dirty word?
“when executed wrong”. There’s a risk here of variability (topped off with sub-optimal results). Ironically, we may hold disdain for the ‘process’ of process.
2. Humans vs algorithms
“An algorithm in limited by the assumptions that created it. It has inherent limitations.” Here, there’s skepticism related to the output: that we’ll get the optimal results. We believe there’s a better solution that will render a better result.
3. Surveys aren’t inherently wrong
The last discussion was surveys. We don’t like surveys. Why don’t we like surveys? Because we might rely on them too much and they might give us crazy wacky data.
So we don’t like surveys because people might mess them up — which is the same as for algorithms. “People might mess them up”. Ok, so we would prefer a solution that lowers the risk of variability.
The decisions we make all come back to those three things: minimizing effort, minimizing variability, improving results.
I’ve tried to think of some alternatives: What are some other ways to evaluate things in your life?
I couldn’t think of any.
So if those are the only three ways that we pick one solution over another? As we’re trying to achieve anything, we want it to be faster, more predictable and lead to the best results possible. Can all customer needs be labeled as one of the three?
Then in a specific context, we can dig into what should be quicker or less labor-intensive (input). We can find out where they want to have the guardrails and guidance to reduce variability (process). We can understand how they’d measure ‘optimized results’ (output). Those are their needs. Where there’s a gap between their ideal and current state? Those are ‘unmet’.
That’s it. Those are the three things. Lower effort, lower uncertainty, improve your output. Is there an example where you would choose the opposite?
Sure, there’s some details to worry about. Market segments can be carved out based on how much they value or struggle with any of these three along the way of getting a given job done. But whether you’re designing a new transportation medium, or a collaboration platform, or a way to help people get a clean shave, there’s no new needs that are going to pop up. You just need to figure out how those three lenses apply to what they’re trying to achieve.
Customer needs are to do things as quickly, accurately and cheaply as possible. People aren’t going to choose to pay more if they don’t have to. Potentially you could not want something to be completely predictable, but if so, that’s b/c you want the possibility for an improved outcome. You’d never want something to be worse, all else being equal.
It’s just so simple, I feel I’ve got to be missing something. What am I missing?
Because if this is it: if we can stop trying to discover “new” unmet needs and just focus on making things quicker, better and cheaper, shouldn’t we be doing that?
[And if we actually want to focus on quantifying/evaluating unmet needs, not uncovering them, shouldn’t we be saying that?]
Learned something? Click the 👏 to say “thanks!” and help others find this article.
Andrea Hill is the principal consultant at Frameplay. Frameplay is an innovation consultancy that helps companies become more customer-focused and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Learn more at frameplay.co
