A golden rule for good Product Discovery
The challenge of figuring out what customers want is not a new thing. Past one century, the famous quote from Henry Ford (“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”) still shows us that there is a huge gap between what people say and what companies must offer. Discovering the correct thing to do is almost as hard as doing the thing itself.
In the digital era, with information technology enabling almost anything to become reality, the challenge becomes even harder. Product managers, supported by UX researchers and data analysts, must make really tough decisions, as we never know if customers say what they think. Or even worse, we don’t know if they act the way they say they act. But it shouldn’t be like this.
During my onboarding at Gympass, two senior leaders recommended a good book for product development. They said the book was short, straightforward, and even had a really funny name: The Mom Test from Rob Fitzpatrick.
The book stayed on my reading list, and some weeks ago during a holiday, I decided to take some time to read it. I find out that the mom test is a golden rule for asking good questions for customers.
The author of the book identifies a key issue in making questions for customers. They will probably lie to you! They don’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you they won’t buy your product, just like your mother. Any idea you present to your mother will be received as great, as your mother doesn’t want you to feel bad.
Based on the idea that your mother and your customer don’t want to say the truth because it will probably be rude, the mom test can be summarized as the following: never talk about your idea, ask always about the customer’s life, habits, and past experience. If your mother would give a useful answer to your question, the question is good. Otherwise, it failed the mom test!
For example, imagine you’re building an app that suggests restaurants to people. You’re excited about your idea and believe it will solve a problem for everybody: finding a nice place to eat. You decide to go out to confirm your hypothesis with customers. Your initial idea is to show the app and ask people whether they would use it. You think this is a good question.
As you ask people: “This app recommends restaurants. Would you use it?”. Most people say: “Of course”. Some of them even give you some ideas of features you should add to the app, such as coupons and location-based suggestions. So you believe you validated the hypothesis because people seem to love the app! Wrong. Terrible question!
You don’t want people to praise your idea, you want to figure out if they would buy it. Through the Mom test, you would know that this question is totally useless. It gives you no information, as gives space to customers to avoid talking about themselves and only accept your purpose.
Now, if you used the Mom, asking yourself: “Would my mom be able to lie to me?”. You would change the question to: “How do you choose restaurants to visit? How did you choose it last time?”.
The answer to the questions could be: “Well, I usually go to restaurants suggested by friends”. And after that, you ask: “Do you usually look for options somewhere?”. And they could continue: “No, I usually do not trust internet suggestions. I prefer that friends or relatives give it to me”. Now you have information! You know that customers usually trust recommendations from known people, so your product may be perceived suspiciously.
This would be a good question, as not even your mother could lie to you, as it is now about your idea. It’s about discovering how people do things today, or in the past, and use this information to build a product that matches their needs.
The 3 simple rules to guide any customer interview are:
- Talk about their life instead of your idea;
- Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future;
- Talk less and listen more.
Here at Gympass, our UX Research team has the mission of asking questions to users and stakeholders in the right way to avoid bias, but I strongly believe that it should be a skill for anyone working with digital products.
The Mom Test is a golden rule to ensure you’re asking questions that give you insight about customer behavior, even if you ask your mother!
