Researching User Needs Course (How To)

Many products are developed based on a hunch, a judgement call, and incomplete information. Needless to say, most of them fail miserably. Startup founders and business owners then ask themselves why. This course takes a different, risk-mitigating, more scientific approach to the art of starting a business. You’ll learn how to develop a product people really need by uncovering these needs well in advance. Before you write one line of code, before you hire a large team, before you take a big risk. You’ll learn the ins and outs of learning if people need your product by implementing three activities to learn from your future customers - Experience Sampling, Field Observation, and Interviewing. After making sense of it all, you’ll be able to kick-start your business with confidence in your knowledge and wisdom.

What you'll learn

• What's a problem worth solving?
• How to find participants for research
• How to run an Experience Sampling study
• How to conduct a field observation
• How to interview users
• Techniques for analyzing & synthesizing research data

Solving an Important Problem

Before you start developing your idea, you need to make sure it solves a real problem or meets a need people care about. Explore the idea of obsessing about a problem to solve.

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• What is a Problem?

  3:41

• What is a Need

  1:25

• The Difference Between a Need and a Want

  2:43

• Needs and Wants Quiz

  3 questions

• Requirements and hypotheses

  2:45

• Developing Empathy

  1:55

• Assignment: Empathize!

  2:11

• Solving an Important Problem Quiz

  3 questions

Finding Participants for Your Learning Activity

Recruiting unbiased, representative participants for your learning activities ensures the validity and reliability of the data and feedback you gather. Get to know hands-on techniques for finding learning activity participants.

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• Why It’s Important to Recruit the Right People

  2:42

• Identifying Participant Criteria

  2:40

• Transforming criteria into screening questions

  3:24

• Creating a screening questionnaire

  1:04

• Quiz for Finding Participants for Your Learning Activity

  5 questions

• Identifying keywords for your audience

  6:52

• Finding target groups and pages on Facebook

  4:28

• Finding target hashtags on Twitter

  3:47

• Finding target communities and pages on Google Plus

  3:28

• Posting screener to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus

  4:15

• Tracking responses and selecting participants

  3:04

• Quiz on Finding Research Participants

  5 questions

Learning activity: Experience Sampling

In Experience Sampling, representative customers are interrupted several times a day to note their experience in real time. Understand the method, and go through a short, practical how-to guide.

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• Introduction to Experience Sampling

  1:24

• Let’s try it out!

  0:59

• Interacting with participants

  5:20

• Experience Sampling Quiz

  4 questions

• Step-by-step

  2:17

• Why Experience Sampling works

  1:44

• Assignment: Run an Experience Sampling learning activity

  1:35

• Experience Sampling Study Quiz

  4 questions

Learning activity: Field Observation

Observing people in their natural context of using products or services can take you a long way into uncovering their needs. Learn what to look for when observing people and how to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.

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• Introduction to Field Observation

  2:10

• The Field Guide

  2:48

• What to Look For

  5:00

• Activity: Watch Field Observation sessions

  1:38

• Activity Recap

  1:16

• Step-by-Step for Field Observation

  1:36

• The quick debrief

  1:09

• Field Observation Quiz

  6 questions

Learning activity: Interviewing

Interviewing is a craft you must master when learning from customers. Learn how to conduct an interview and what are the key questions you should ask your customers.

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• Introduction to Interviewing Users

  2:58

• Preparing for Interviews

  2:19

• Interview questions

  3:26

• Quiz on Interviewing Users

  4 questions

• Follow-up questions

  1:09

• Activity: Identify Leading Questions

  0:14

• Identify Leading Questions Quiz

  7 questions

• Leading Questions - Solutions

  1:25

• Leading Questions - What Not to Do

  1:13

• Assignment: Plan an Interview

  0:17

• Do or Don't Do: Interview Questions

  5 questions

Making Sense of it All

You collected a lot of rich data during these learning activities. Not all of them make sense right away. Get the tools and techniques for synthesizing your data from information into knowledge you can use to make product decisions.

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• Introduction to Analysis and Synthesis

  1:37

• Shared Understanding

  2:15

• Experience Sampling Classification

  4:13

• Affinity diagram

  1:09

• Quiz on Interpreting your Data

  3 questions

• Creative Brief

  1:25

• Design Studio Methodology

  4:40

• Assignment: Analyze and Synthesize

  0:43

• Quiz for Making Sense of it All

  5 questions

• Do People Need Your Product?

  1:07