The Most Important Tool For Entrepreneurs

Save Time, Money and Yourself from Emotional Distress

That tool is conducting user research effectively; something that I wish I fully understood before moving forward on any product idea, let alone starting a company. I’ve only recently come to understand, implement and realize the power of effective user research. Hopefully this post can help those that are in a similar position as I have been in the past, save time, money and decrease the volatility of the emotional roller coaster that all entrepreneurs go through.

As an entrepreneur you tend to hear high level words of wisdom from others such as, “Go out and talk to users, build a product that users love, find a problem to solve”, but very few actually tell you how to do these things and many don’t actually know how. To solve an actual problem, build a product users love and to continue building valuable features for your users it all comes down to doing user research effectively. The methods for effective user research are unnatural. Without formal training and making a conscious decision to implement these methodologies, you, as an entrepreneur, will inevitably lead the product in the wrong direction.

The Steps Towards Effective User Research:

1. There are multiple books, college degrees and research papers focused on effective user research. As a result, it cannot be covered in a <10 min post but the most succinct explanation of effective research that I’ve come across is the book “Talking to Humans”. It is free and roughly 60 pages. So you can crank through it in about an hour and save yourself months or years of frustration. To get a glimpse into the process here is a 10 min. video of Louis Theroux, a documentarian, using effective user research methodologies to obtain information from interviewees.
2. As mentioned, these methodologies are not natural. Before interviewing users, practice with others by doing mock interviews and prepping for them (write up your script, topic maps, etc) with what you learned from Talking to Humans.
3. Go out and interview users. Fight against your emotions, natural instincts, remain objective and consciously focus on following the effective user research methodologies. Since you should have a designated note taker during interviews it would help if that person also went through steps one and two so they can provide feedback to you after the interview.
4. Iterate on the methodologies to determine what works best for your industry/type of users.

Why Is Effective User Research The Most Important Tool?

This tool defines the product/service, users, and future enhancements. With a product/service being the heart of any company then effective user research is the best medicine to keep that heart beating. It is also something that you will continue to do no matter what stage your company/product is in. Whether you are just getting started on an idea or are a fortune 500 company with multiple product lines, you should be continuously doing user research.

Effective user research can not only tell you what to build but also what not to build. For those that have gone through the process of building a product for customers before, you have probably heard a potential customer say, “that product sounds great, we’d love to use that here” and then after development they are slow to adopt. Effective user research saves you from these circumstances so you do not waste your time, money or the stress of the customer not actually adopting the product you built for them.

The success of a product lies in the research, not in the development. You could build a technically amazing product but if it is a product that brings no value to potential users then it will fail. A recent client drew the diagram below on what he thought the ratio was between research and development for creating a successful product when he first arrived at Pivotal Labs.

After a few months working with us, he quickly realized that it is mostly determined by research and re-drew the circles. He has now gone back to his company pioneering the way he and his company builds software.

In terms of saving time and money, here at Pivotal Labs we build teams composed of designers, product managers and developers. The slowest portion is the actual development. As we push for for fast feedback loops to save time, which in turn save money, the designers and product managers can move quickly to do research before a line of code is even written.

Break Down Your Research Into Three Parts:

You will see this breakdown in the book but wanted to call it out on a high level as this is where I see most entrepreneurs fail. These forms of effective user research are used for new products or features. Once out in user’s hands it is important to incorporate analytics into the decisions. It is important to always think about what stage you are in with a product or feature. Below are the three ways you should approach your user research along with some best practices. Most entrepreneurs skip to stage 2, validation, missing the most crucial step to determine if there is even a problem that needs solving.

1. Exploratory — What are the problems/needs of the user?

The goal of the exploratory interviews is to gain empathy. If you understand the user’s world, their needs and workflows you can make really great decisions about what to build for them.

Most business or product ideas stem from noticing a problem and coming up with a potential solution for that problem. Most people do not take a step back to really understand if that is a problem worth solving, if the solution you have is the best solution and even if there needs to be a solution.

Many make the mistake of mentioning their product in this phase. DO NOT MENTION YOUR PRODUCT. You are here to understand what problems people have, their current solutions and any hacks they are doing to solve their problem.

Dos:

• Understand the biggest risk to your product
• Prepare a script before hand to get at those risks
• Elicit stories that describe past behaviors (Examples: “ Tell me about the last time you …”, “Tell me about the best time..”)
• Have at least one dedicated note-taker
• Record what the customer says, not what you think it implies
• Listen much more than you talk
• Be comfortable with uncomfortable pauses
• Try to follow up important answers with “Why” and “How”
• If there is a hack, ask them to tell you about it
• Ask “If you could wave a magic wand to fix this problem, what would you have happen?”

Don’t:

• Don’t talk about or sell your solution
• Don’t ask your customer what they want
• Don’t Interview multiple people at the same time
• Don’t ask Yes or No questions
• Don’t get biased by one person’s feedback. You need multiple customers saying the same thing.
• Don’t use surveys!

2. Validation — Does our solution/idea solve their problems?

At this stage you can show potential users the designs of the product. However, it is important to not guide or bias the user. You can provide context as to where they are sitting within the application but you should not give insight to what is exactly on the page. You can then ask questions such as:

• What do you see here?
• What do you think would happen if you clicked that button or scrolled over this area?
• What would you do next from here?
• Why is that
• If you had a magic wand to add anything or to change the experience what would you do with it?

During these sessions it is important for them to think out loud and provide rationale for everything that they do.

3. Usability — Can they use the solution?

Usability tests measure a user’s ability to complete tasks. Each of these tasks have a specific goal with effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction and emotional responses identified in a specified context of use. Tests are conducted in a usability lab, which consists of two parts: the test room and the observation room. Tests can be conducted with live websites, apps or different forms of prototypes (ex. invision app).

It is important to let them struggle if they are having issues with the application to see how they respond. If they are absolutely stuck then you can help them through to the next task.

Similar to validation it is important to take them though tasks but this time focused on flows, speed and general ease of use. An example of a task would be, could you please scan a bag onto the plane with the device? vs. Hit the scan button then mark the bag into the pit of the plane that it needs to go to, now go back to the other screen to scan it again. You want to make sure it is intuitive or if there is a better flow. Once in production it can be very helpful to watch over the user’s shoulder to see how they interact with the product.

Practice Practice Practice

As mentioned, implementation of doing user research effectively is not easy and takes time. I urge you to practice with others, try different methods with users and refine your craft. It must be a conscious decision to use the principles and fight against what feels natural. This tool can give you a competitive advantage against your competitors and ensure that you are heading in the right direction while others may not.