What is the Goal of Development Research?
Before we get into the particulars, I wanted to review what the point of research is. It’s easy to jump into methods and point to the copious amounts of articles and books, but a broad overview is critical to understand.
Google “how to do product research,” and you’re going to get over a billion results. That’s billion with a “B”. There are tons of different methods for conducting research. With good reason. Research is part art and part science. Regardless of the approach, I think research has two fundamental goals that must be kept in mind. They are 1) Get me an idea I can test as soon as possible and 2) incorporate my potential customers.
Get me an idea I can test as soon as possible.
I’ve written about this more here and here, but in this newsletter, as we discuss a development process, I’m speaking about something I can test that is representative of the product. What kinds of code already exists that if I tweak will help me check this product idea. What if I glue two product together to test a concept? It’s OK if the answer is no. But you have to ask.
The odds that what you want to do is truly unique and doesn’t exist in some form is extremely low. As in, not likely. As in, you need to assume it does exist. That’s ok. That’s why you innovate. You make existing ideas better, or you use existing ideas to tackle a needed solution to a variation of the problem that your customers have. It doesn’t have to be invented, but it does have to innovate.
So, you can find code or products that are close and modify them yourself. Will this give you your final solution? Probably not. Will it get you asking a ton of questions? Yup. Just the process of looking at something and tearing it apart to see how you can make it do what you want will allow your brain to make all kinds of new assumptions. New ways of thinking about the problem. Understanding what the conventions are. How do they work. What your customer is already assuming about what you’ve built.
Stitching something together from other sources is a great way to get to feedback. Hell, if you have to, build it out of Legos!
Incorporate my potential customers.
You can’t build a product without customer feedback. You simply can’t. Even in a crowded market, with lot’s of competitors, if you go talk to customers and find out what pains them about what they are using, you will find a way to beat out the competition. Because you are listening. It’s that simple.
I know about the quote “If I asked the people what they wanted they’d ask for a faster horse.” Well, you know what? THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT HENRY FORD EVER SAID THAT!
Go read this Forbes article: “Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote”
It’s a great story of how the man attributed to one of the most annoying quotes in design didn’t listen to customers and lost market share!
But what about creative vision? What about new ideas?
This is not that kind of feedback cycle. At this point in the process, we are beyond that. We are now building the thing, and the building of the thing means that we need to get feedback about what we are building and we need to listen to that feedback as we go.
So, as you think about what kind of research method you want to use, keep in mind it needs to do two things.
1) Get me an idea I can test as soon as possible.
2) Incorporate my potential customers.
More next week on methods.
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This is the from the archive of an ongoing series called Making Things That Matter. Each week I will send you an email with another step in the process of building products and launching ideas. Signup here to join the conversation.
