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Uncovering the underlying challenges of customers and anticipating their needs are essential to creating products with unique benefits and compelling value. When you are working with unfamiliar markets, new technologies, or customers that are unable to articulate their needs, how can you gain this critical knowledge? The answer is through direct observation and interviewing of target users and buyers in their natural environment. You need to look for the right clues and ask the right questions. You need to understand what they really do and why they do it.
In this PSN educational workshop, you will learn how two qualitative research tools - observation and contextual interviewing - can be used together on visits to customer sites. These are powerful "field ethnography" tools especially when used in the early stages of developing products. They help to clarify and focus product concepts, and to uncover unexpected problems and their causes. You will understand how to conduct the research, the types of information to collect, tools for analyzing the data, and how to map the findings to actionable customer requirements. You will have an opportunity to use the tools and techniques through cases and hands-on exercises.
Do you have these challenges?
- Difficulty discerning the priorities of multiple market/customer requirements
- Spending time and money developing unused or unimportant features
- You don't understand the connection between customer needs and the value to their business if you meet those needs.
- There are long delays between the time of a customer request and the release of a product or feature to satisfy that request
What You Will Learn
- You'll understand how to employ and benefit from qualitative research tools when scoping, planning and/or defining your product
- You will be able to identify the key informational items that you need to begin an effective research project
- You will know how to get insights into your customer's unarticulated needs
- You will learn the key factors for planning and managing a successful qualitative research project
Who Should Attend
This workshop is designed for the professionals, managers and executives who are responsible for investigating product opportunities and market needs, defining new products/solutions, and leading product development. It is best for situations where you need a better understanding of human interactions with the product and its environment. New product planners, product managers, business development managers, market development managers, marketing managers, product development managers, innovation managers, business analysts, and others with similar responsibilities will find this educational workshop to be most valuable.
Our Instructors
The Product Strategy Network instructors highly experienced professionals who have a unique blend of practical industry and teaching experience. The instructor for this workshop will be either Diane Harris or Tom Kubilius.
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The workshop showed me how to get at the customer's underlying motivations and needs, as well as the technical and functional requirements, in our customer visits. As a result, we'll be able to provide the unspoken benefits that customers often don't know they need until they are made available."
Mary Boone , Director of Market Development, Plextronics
"Our product management team now has a formal method to ensure that we truly understand the needs of our market. With this, we can prioritize these needs and develop solutions that meet our customers stated and unstated expectations. Plus, as a result of taking the workshop as a team, our product managers will use the same approach to understanding customer needs."
Dan Torrens, Vice President of Product Management, Confluence
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