What we learned from our diary study cemented our conviction for Knowcast
The foundations of great product design come from great understanding of user needs: when, where and how users experience an unmet need. Here I explain how our diary study with a dozen people in the field helped us design Knowcast.
This is an article about how I used a diary study to understand the needs of people who want to learn from podcasts while on the go.
The numbers: most participants did spend 3h/week listening to podcasts
- 3 x 2-week cohorts over mid June 2021 to end of July.
- 11 participants, 3 withdrawals (27% — cf researcher attrition number of 20%)
- 619 video clip / screen shot submissions via WhatsApp
- Participant qualifier: “listens to podcasts 3 or more hours a week”
- Median time per week for 8 participants: 3.4h (max 5.8, min 1.7, std 1.57)
- Most minutes listened to over 2 weeks: 929 minutes (5 1/4 hours)
Key insights: some people wanted to take notes, others weren’t interested
This is an audience that has been carefully prequalified to determine they were certain they did use podcasts for learning rather than general interest. Behaviour however, trumps opinions, and the outcomes were revealing:
- Two participants of the eight that completed the study didn’t find anything they heard worthy of remembering or taking notes from
- The remaining 6 did however
Is this realistic?
We believe so. The inherent bias in studies is people have it more front-of-mind than they might otherwise do. However the lightweight nature of the method we used I’m confident was a fair sample.
What could we do better?
You can always do more studies to improve confidence.
Output of diary study: video showcase and participant cards
We created a video showcase that took highlights from the 600+ videos to bring the problem to life. This was about 20 minutes and was used to educate stakeholders such as future team members, investors, and others.
We also created participant cards for the 8 participants. that showed a condensed profile of the participants. Chris Boud has generously given us permission to share his personal details:
What did all this mean?
- We had field evidence that learning on the go was a problem for the majority of our target audience
- We learnt a stack about the factors that influence how they do this and the surrounding activities that effect htis.
What next? Rapid prototyping!
On to prototoyping! As a product designer, this was my favourite part. My enthusiasm was further intensified with the field evidence we’d captured. We knew what the problem was, where it happened, and how often.
Product design question: can we design a highly user-friendly solution that works well where people need it most?
Behaviour science question: could we design a solution that was compelling enough for them to change their existing behaviour?
Commercialisation question: what would they pay for this solution?
Finance question: can we get enough funding to take this to the target market?
Next: prototyping again!
