Discovering User Requirements
We take a direct approach to discovering users’ needs and requirements - one that eliminates the guesswork and does not rely on customers' memories, interpretations or speculations.
We walk in the shoes of your customer - literally working alongside the user - and we closely observe their behavior, their goals, and their world. And ... we take you with us!
It works! You'll be amazed at the results!
What user requirements discovery gives you
Our approach results in a rich description of your customers and users, the environment in which they use their tools, applications and systems, and a description of realistic user activities.
We reveal unmet needs - the critical triggers for identifying key system functions - and we present these in the actual context of use.
We provide you with detailed:
- User profiles
- Environment profiles
- Task profiles
- A list of unmet needs
- Recommendations for meeting those needs
User profiles
Our profiles, or personas, depict archetypes of your key user groups, against whose needs and characteristics you can explicitly design your product or system. Critically, they are created from real user data. And we bring them to life. They are real enough to become virtual members of your design team.
Environment profiles
We provide the details of typical surroundings in which users are working towards their goals, and we show how the surroundings - physical, social and cultural - affect the users and their goals.
Task profiles
We identify the precise goals that the user is trying to achieve (the obvious ones and the not so obvious ones) and we detail the tasks they use to try and achieve these goals. We characterize tasks in terms of their importance to the user as well as the frequency with which they are typically performed. These data lead you directly to the kinds of features you need to build into your solution.
Time-to-market pressure will yield to user-experience demands. Firms that continue to rush ahead with features and functions that don’t serve user needs will fly headlong into failure. Unsatisfied users will flock to, and stick with, competitors offering a better user experience.
Forrester Report
The benefits of our discovery method
If you are trying to develop new products, systems and interfaces based on the opinions of internal stakeholders, or on 'the way we have always done things' then ... stop! It's not going to work. You need real user data.
Our deep-dive approach will give you a clear picture of your users' goals and will show you precisely what they need to achieve in order for them to succeed (remember, people don't care about your product - they care about being successful at their job!). We will show you the tasks they really must accomplish and the environments in which they work. You will get to see the gaps and the pressure points that result from unmet user needs - these are your product opportunities!
The findings from our research will drive your ideation for new systems and new features - and our tailored follow-up innovation workshop will take you all the way through to new product solutions. Market research data and conventional focus group research cannot get you there. You need to actually observe people doing their jobs! We can help you do that.
Strong stakeholder 'buy-in'
Our approach always achieves strong 'buy-in' from internal stakeholders because we take you with us into the field and make sure you are engaged in the research and data analysis throughout. So, as you can imagine, it makes for very effective design communication.
Hitting the target
Because the insights are based on objective user behaviors rather than simply on opinions and speculation, you can have increased confidence that your solutions are addressing real-life user problems. You will have a clearer view of the design target you should aim for, and you will enjoy a reduction in development time and cost.
