Leave the magic to Gandalf — make your research better

With the success and adoption of Lean practices more and more companies are conducting regular and organized consumer research. That’s great! Build, Measure, Learn is not a fad, it’s now taken for granted that this is the way to build successful products. For some companies getting in front of consumers is something relatively new and they are still trying to figure out how to talk to consumers. I’ve observed over recent years that a question that is used a lot is, “If you had a magic wand what would you do differently” or a variation of that involving some sort of wizardry. That may seem like a harmless question but it’s not, it sends the wrong message to the team and organization. I want to unpack this question a little more and talk about why I feel it’s doing more harm than good.

Stuck with current limitations and thinking

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” Henry Ford.

A famous quote that we hear quite a lot in the product scene, and even more relevant in the 21st century. Do we expect customers to understand what’s feasible, what we can and can’t do with technology? How can we expect customers to dream up a better way to solve their problems? Henry Ford understood that customers are stuck in the now and can only imagine incremental improvements based on current experiences and existing products.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” Steve Jobs, he was even more expressive about customers not being the source of innovation or product ideation. I’ll know it when I see it even has its own acronym, IKIWISI but yet still we persist in asking our customers to come up with some magic.

Stated preference is not the same as the revealed preference

So if we are not supposed to ask customers what they want, what are we trying to gather from our research? Well we need to understand the progress that customers are trying to make. What are they trying to achieve and which products, tools and actions are they taking to make that progress? This will help us to understand the struggle they encounter and provide the team with the framing they need to ideate potential solutions to help consumers better make that progress.

Let’s use an example to highlight the difference of understanding progress vs asking what customers want. Low cost airlines have been around for almost 20 years, in Europe there is easyJet, in North America it’s Southwest and in Asia there is Tiger. They all have something in common, no thrills and many hidden added costs! When I first took one of these flights I had to pay for my checked in luggage, bring a printed boarding pass or have to pay for one to be provided. I had 1 hand luggage entitlement that was much smaller than the standard size. Pay for food and drinks on the plane as well as paying extra if I wanted an assigned seat. If all of this wasn’t enough to put up with I was also flying to an airport that was miles away from the known airport of the city I was visiting.

So if we had run some consumer research before these low cost airlines were around and asked the magic wand question we would probably hear something around;

Stated Preference

• Leg room
• Comfortable chairs
• Excellent customer service
• Wifi
• Entertainment
• Great Food

etc. etc.

However the reality is the following;

Revealed Preference

• Paying for checked-in luggage
• Limited hand luggage
• An airport in the middle of nowhere
• Paying for food
• Paying for entertainment
• No customer service
• Greater risk of cancellations
• We would put up with the above to save money on travel to spend more on entertainment during our visit

The damage the magic wand can have on your teams

Unmeaningful response — The answer will only be action-orientated — you will get a solution/feature/product but no understanding of the progress they are trying to achieve. Think of what you lose here, the opportunity to create something that solves a need like the automobile when it was released or the iPod. You are not providing the framing of the problem space for your teams to come up with something innovative. If anyone has the magic, it’s our teams.

Feature bloat and stale products — If you act on this you are likely to create features that give your product a distinct lack of identity and not help your customer make the progress they are seeking. Your teams will become reliant on this information and create stale products.

Poor research — This question is usually asked last when you have run out of things to say. How insightful have your interviews been if you need to ask this question, it probably means you haven’t really understood the progress, the struggle and the pain points of your consumers. Dig deeper so you don’t feel the need to ask the customer for magic, understand the progress and struggle and you and your team can provide the magic!

These are some thoughts around why I personally do not like using the magic wand question, if you are using it to wrap up your interviews here’s a better way that works for me.

“In 60 seconds or less, can you summarize the top 3 things we should keep in mind from today’s interview, as we continue on with our research?”

Hope you find that magical!