How to Identify your Customer's needs - Alan Klement, Revealed-UXDX Europe 2019:

today I've been asked to come here and talk about customer needs consumer needs demand all that good stuff right this is a topic I love talking about with others because it involves so many other exciting fields of study that I also like to investigate fields like psychology cybernetics complexity systems so on right all these kind of contribute I believe to really important understanding of what motivates people to go out and adopt and use products now I've got really good news everybody that is the answer to what customers want how do we think about needs how do we communicate those needs it's very simple really comes down to two things on the one hand you've got the environments that people want to create and maintain for themselves and now on the other hand you've got constraints right things that get in the way and block and make it hard for people to create and maintain these environments that they want to have for themselves and when those two collide and come together it creates this emergent phenomenon of needs so give you an idea I want to visualize this up in my mind this this is how I think about it right you've got desired environment right there we want to create for ourselves then our situated constraints and they clash together is smash and then the output needs and of course other behavior right you know shopping I'm gonna look for something different maybe reinvention okay well I need something so I'm gonna mess around with what I have and maybe try to tweak it a little bit and so this is how I think about you know how needs are created and how we you know should think about it and communicate with others now I think mo for most people the idea of situate constraints I mean that's pretty straightforward right constraints are just things that get in our way right where maybe people are not so familiar with the idea of environments so that's what I'm gonna kind of start off with today and spend most of my time today talking about environments like what does that mean when consumers are aspiring to create and maintain certain environments for themselves and how is this different than outcomes and what's that relationship between outcomes and environments alright so I'll begin I believe the story of environments is very fascinating actually a place that I like to begin is with singer singer was a philosopher of science who lived a late 19th century early 20th century and he did something quite revolutionary actually it was a revolutionary he changed science forever see up until this point when he started writing in the 1890s science was done it was approached in a very they call it billiard ball cause and effect right meaning like if I'm holding the pull the pull stick and I hit it it hits the cue ball which it's the three ball which goes into the pocket right it's a very simple cause and effect this is was how science was done for hundreds hundreds of hundred years right or thought about but he proved that that's not how the world works now he did this actually through a long complicated proof which I'm not going to go through today right I don't anyone here wants to hear me go through ten minutes of a mathematical proof so I'll give you the illustrative version of what he was what he showed goes like this if I plant an acorn in the ground is the outcome and oak right now something you might be thinking okay that's a it's probably a trick question in there right so I'll make it easier if I plan a corn in the ground will that cause an oak or if I plant an acorn in the Sahara Desert will that create an oak how about if I do it at the bottom of the ocean or an iceberg well those actions that I do create the outcome of an oak now I think intuitively we all know of course not right well why not well it's because actually planting in the Acorn in the ground is not enough you actually need a environment of things working together in order to grow that oak and allow it to flourish things like nutrients in the soil moisture content in the soil humidity in the air sunlight not too much not too little all those things must work together to create that oak so that's the first thing that singer pointed out the second thing he Illustrated is that well now that we've moved away from cause and effect to environments producing outcomes then you can't really give fault or blame to any one particular contributor to those outcomes it's like for example suppose I do plant an acorn in the ground and it becomes an oak can I take credit for that can I say I made that oak tree of course not but the inverse is true as well if I plant an oak tree or an oak I'm sorry an acorn and it doesn't create an oak is it my fault so those are two things that really huge impact on how people thought about the world and understanding the world right you need environments of things all working together to produce outcomes but also that if you do or don't get a certain outcome you you can't really blame or Gryff give credit to one particular factor of that all right so this idea of environments caught on and the next person to introduce it thinking was Walter Shu heart he was working he was a mathematician working at Bell Labs and he thought about okay Sandra singing environments and so he brought that thinking to manufacturing and he also can revolutionize on manufacturing talk to anyone who's familiar with quality control or running plants and you know they probably may not remember Xu harp with a big oh yeah I was supposed to study that guy some point in school so that was it so how did he revolutionize manufacturing and did it by introducing this this is the control chart what this is describing is the environment of the manufacturing process and it's sampling important variables of that manufacturing process to try to figure out which which things are out of scope and which things are in scope but also things like you know trends that are telling us maybe something is wrong something's off because shoe heart from singer recognized that you know focusing on the output to the outcomes of our manufacturing processes well that's too late right you know you've already made the product and so if it's no good it's it's too late it's difficult to figure out what the problem is because then you have to work backwards and figure out okay well why why was this lot of telephones no good that's maybe a little hard to figure out so instead if you want to get the outcomes and outputs that you want you have to create and facilitate the right an environment and monitor that continuously so that's you heart next thing right Deming so damming then also took xu heart's ideas and singers ideas so also Deming was protege I guess you would say of Shu heart they work together Deming apply this idea of environments to management right and so I think this quote illustrates dimming quite well right we should work on our process is not the outcomes of our processes same thing focus on the environment and the certain processes in that environment right and then if you take care of that you'll get the outcomes you want all right so I've been going on for 10 minutes some of you might be thinking oh thanks for the history lesson all very fascinating thank you but we're thought to do with customer needs in design how is it relevant to us to my work well I'm going to argue that this is immeasurably relevant and important to your work and actually I have been talking about needs all this time so I'll bring it back to this have any of you seen something like this before right ok that's awesome hands going up actually let me change that that question you have seen this before right does anyone know what what that is you mean describe oh sorry I go back put too much customer journey map see what we're describing here is a manufacturing environment and sampling that over time and testing for certain variables okay are the instance co-op out of scope same thing for customer journey map you're describing an environment for which a consumer is interacting with a brand or product continuously sampling that experience those important variables and seeing are the the in scope or data scope right this is very helpful to figuring out okay well where you know where they're running into problems are they unhappy where are maybe huge swings and the experience and again similar the same thing instead of just waiting for the the customer to so similar here right that the PERT the reason why this was so useful to manufacturers that they could anticipate problems right they could say okay here on August 18th right between in this month right April and May we had this time where the manufacturing process was really acting really odd they can anticipate that the outputs that whatever widgets they're making are going to have defects so same thing here you can get a head of the customer and think okay they're having a bad experience in here even before they leave your product or they start complaining you can anticipate that they're probably going to complain or be unhappy about this all right so that's at a high level the idea of environments now I want to go a little deeper into it Tapan environments vs. outcomes so I'm going to use the brexit example when describe me outcomes and also comparing that with environments all right so I don't have to explain this I mean the Americans need to come here and explain brexit to you all but it's basically if I could just kind of reduce it down right so you've got the referendum and the vote of voters so CG almost can think about is voters like the users and the referendum is the product say for example or the brand interaction right came together on a certain day cast their vote and then you had basically two outcomes of that possible outcomes of it because it passes Beggs it fails and of course we all know what the outcome of that was now I want to describe some important characteristics of outcomes so I'm gonna call the for a group of people right brexit passing right that was that was an outcome goal for them right why are you showing up to the poll and why are you casting your vote well I want brexit the pass for example important characteristics of that I believe our notice it's an output of a specific interaction all right so there's a referendum and users and you could say okay they're coming together a certain time and date and that's that's the interaction and then there's a particular outcome of that also is notice how there's a clear start and end of that interaction right so brexit passing mattered only for that one particular day right you could argue maybe people were anticipating it and was important up before them but really mattered on that day and then afterwards it didn't really matter so much if one vote when one way or the other for a group of people because it already happened so that's the outcome goals now does this does this really describe though what these people wanted I mean you could argue yeah well they they they wanted their rec room in the past and they wanted the UK to leave the EU that's that's what they wanted but is that really you know what they wanted well luckily we know people have gone out and asked them well why did you want the referendum to pass and to the big reasons they they said or decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK and also UK has control over immigration in its own borders these are a little different I think right you know it's like are we really is this is this are these the outputs of a specific interaction right or is there really clear defined start and end right is there well you know immigration control matters on Monday but not on Tuesday and then maybe it matters again on Friday I don't think so I think and I consider these environment goals so using control over immigration as an example let's kind of unpack some of these characteristics of an environmental goal so it's describing an attribute of a state meaning that as long as it's important for me to have a particular vision of how I think UK should be control over immigration is gonna be irrelevant to me right so it's describing actually the state as long as that state is important to me that goal is good also in this but necessary be important as well the other thing there's no defined start and end right as I mentioned before it's not like control over immigration matters on Monday and Tuesday but no the day of the week and I like to visualize it this way in my mind right think about kind of barbell for outcome goals well here's where it matters here's when it matters here's what does it matter whereas environmental goals it's this process it's always going it's always relevant to me all right so I'm going to make the argue or make the case that consumers really want the environments and not the outcomes now I'm generally speaking I'm not going to say outcomes are never important so on and so forth but they're intermediary goals and that really will come what they're aspiring for certain environments and so I'm gonna prove that this was a research project did a couple years ago with Arlo so Arlo the story here is Arlo had established itself as a number one brand product for the consumer home security market in fact they probably kind of created that market and as often happens right when someone creates a market as very lucrative and grows it tracks competition so they reached out to us and they said ok we okay we have to grow our product or to get more people to buy it we also want to you know stimulate innovation right how can we find more growth opportunities for us and also how can we fight against the competition help us stay ahead of our competitors who we know are going to come on in and do their best to steal our customers so that's what we did my team and I we went in and we started talking to people who had recently purchased these Arlo cameras and at first the arlov team was a little confused by what we were doing because we weren't asking about the product at all I mean a little bit you know but most the conversation was about other stuff you know the the our look team was like okay how easy was it to set up ask him ask him what was like to set it up or okay you know the picture quality you know to ask him what they want the picture quality and like what's supposed to show and not supposed to show things of that nature but that's not what we talked him about we sort of asked them questions like all right before you you were using the Arlo camera what what else were you using all right what did the Arlo camera for place for you or and this is a magic question now that you have the Arlo camera what can you do now that you couldn't do before how how has your environment changed this is also another great question to ask your customers to really get at what they're trying to get to and that's saying okay compare you with the Arlo camera of today and how you were three months ago when you didn't have it let's compare and contrast those as we ask these questions more and more the Arlo team started to get it we started understanding that what we were driving at was what was the environment that these consumers are trying to create and maintain for themselves and so we came across two types of them actually multiple environments but for this talk I'll keep it the two so one environment that we call protect and defend and the other environment we'll call Karen aware so some attributes other protect and defend things like I can work with my neighbor's to fight crime I know who is in and around my house criminals don't see my house as a target so that's things of that nature describe the environment of what it feels like the experience of protecting or yeah protecting and defending my home what about Karen or where things like we heard we heard things like well now that I have this camera I can keep an eye on my kids while I'm away I know that they're okay some people talked about being really excited about knowing what kind of wildlife was on their property a lot of people we talked with lived in the Midwest of the United States and so they loved seeing turkeys and deer and things of the you know other little wildlife creatures kind of roaming around their property other thing is well I want to always know about a gas or heat or water problems going on all right so if it's a gas leak I want to know about it right away if someone left a window open and all and that's and that's causing the air conditioner work overtime use up lots of energy temperature drop problem I want to know about that and then another one which I really liked was a woman I want my home to welcome me when I arrive so these were the again the the characteristics of this environment that they were hoping to experience and create a main theme for themselves so armed with this new thinking they did some improvements to the camera right but they were now able to abstract and think about opportunities outside of just their camera so like for example they started creating multi sensors right that you could just pop around your house that could and you could have it check for moisture water leaks gas carbon monoxide temperature light motion things of that nature then they also thought about okay now how can we adjust or make changes to the app so like for example here is a one really important change that they made was like the old way was they always people would complain about getting all these notifications right like every time the camera would see motion you know it would pop up a motion detected what do you you know what do you wanna do about it or anything I guess nothing ryan currently and then their weight and then people would complain on its to me notifications and so the team thought okay well we'll just there's a sensitivity that will what had them so you know that's how the control the amount of notifications but once they recognized that it was about a particular environment they could actually create more meaningful push notifications so they did something really cool which is match it for example with facial recognition so instead of saying motion at the front door and then like oh what is that okay not important they would say the mailman just came or not or you could say michael just got home or just left like your son or some or things like unrecognized person has been detected so now you create more meaningful push notifications to people and also you know not directly responding to their complaint about too many notifications so that was one really big changes they are lap another thing right there are low remote with this thought that was great again tying it back to the experience of well whenever I come home I want my home to welcome me and so they came up this thing well you can actually pre program certain welcome home sequences right I like to have two driveway light up and the certain things you know front door and so on and so forth I know but also you know we heard stories about well I also when I come home you know if there's any bad guys in there I want them to be frightened away so that's what they kind of have like security options here too so it's kind of dual purpose right so I welcomes me home scares away inside but if that person is still inside I can hit the the warning button and call the police and then another thing here is the the are low siren right strobe-light right to put if it's an unrecognized face right bad guy seen trying a spotlight on them make sure they've been seen but also a red strobe light you know so they're to notify the neighbors okay so this is kind of also touching in that goal of help me work with my neighbors to fight crime so this is kind of one one way of notifying the neighbors hey there's there's something going on here please respond so the way I like to think about this is you know as a you know experienced designer you know think about you know not just your project itself right but how you know how might we create a constellation of products and services that work together as a system to create maintains environments that consumers are hoping to have alright so as I wind down here are some do's and don'ts that I I want to kind of leave you all with don't think of outcomes as what customers want I'm speaking generally yes I'm not saying outcomes that important but I probably should say only don't think of outcomes only as what as what customers want rather think about environments right that's really what they want to get to and these outcomes are really means to help creating and maintaining those environments another big don't I believe is study consumers in their current environments only instead I recommend well study the environments that consumers aspire to create and maintain for themselves I'm gonna I call it environment experience yes maybe they'll catch on who knows so again this is again this so this is me like I'm not a huge fan of the ethnography methodology and contextual like embedded contextual design or research I think that's good for a usability and kind of like finding you know issues with your current product but I think if you want to really you know figure out what kind of environments that they aspire to you you have to talk to them about that it's a different type of research don't again don't think of yourself as a problem solver only again think of yourself as a gardener again think back to what shoe heart was doing with his control chart and the same thing for the customer journey map you're not really being a problem solver in a sense of okay here is we've identify a problem now let's go find the cause of it and solve it alright give it again that's that's the billiard ball cause and effect model that's gonna be very difficult to figure out instead like where's a gardener do-right as a gardener really a problem solver right or she's someone who has an idea in their mind of kind of garden they want a design for themselves and they figure out okay what do I need to do to make sure this garden is is thriving right what kind of soil content needs to be just right the sunlight you know so and so forth you know she doesn't wait until the tomato plant dies before recognizing it needs more sunlight right she's looking at the sunlight figuring out okay how much more or less do we need to add and then adjusting like that alright so that's all I have thank you [Applause]

Channel: UXDX

Views: 4,640

Keywords: Alan Klement, Partner, Revealed, JTBD, UXDX, UXDX19, Product, Teams, Jobs to be Done, customer centricity, customer experience

Id: s0TPFtvd-Zc

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019