How to run user-centred product research phase for startups ?
Early product design phases raise questions like which research tool should be applied to uncover authentic product opportunity, define product problem or validate product direction ? Furthermore there’s also a risk of picking the wrong direction or committing to expensive delivery, that can result in poor adoption of product by target users or no buy-in from gatekeepers who “release the funds”.
Even while at marllm our focus is on scalable acquisition for B2Bs, using genAI , the insights are versatile and relevant across various sectors we engage in, including financial , legal and others!
For the above reasons suitable research methods can be applied to answer the important questions like what problem the product is solving and for who, validate product direction, give rise to product brief and ground later design stages in user research that leads to true product-market fit !
It starts with talking to target users and the tool itself is interviews with well defined questions script. The intent of interviews should be a specific output that not only answers the high-level questions, but grounds further product and service design stages . The research output should be a map of existing user journey. More on both of these next
A place and a time
Knowing what style for interview to apply and what shape of outcome it should take requires strategic know-how. The below focuses on conducting research to answering vital strategic questions for a chance at a winning sticky product or service:
- What is the opportunity for product or service to target user ?
- Who is the exact user (or ICP ideal customer profile) the product should be tailored for?
- What are their key pain-points the product should be solving?
- What is their wider journey product would be serving ?
For these and similar questions to be answered with confidence —wider user journey has to be mapped out. User journey map captures the actions, thoughts and feelings of each step user takes and reveals areas with pain-points — which later become human-centred product opportunities . Wider user journey map is the best starting point for product brief, service design, product direction and product-market fit problems.
To achieve this interview should contain non-leading questions script. Here is what I mean by that.
Leading vs. Non-leading interview questions
Non-leading interview are centred around user — interviews with open-ended questions suitable for discovering user’s wider journey, their authentic pain-points and needs, discovering ICP- ideal customer profile, and validating product-market fit,
Leading interviews are centred around product, suitable for testing later stages design prototypes, refining product, holding a focused discovery (e.g. new feature) or gather priority preferences etc.
But why non leading questions specifically ? Here are a few reasons
- Users very often are un-conscious of their unique pains in domain (non-leading interviews might be the first time they ever reflected on their role) — therefore asking them leading questions will guide them astray and ruin the opportunity to extract authentic pain-points, user journey, product opportunity, ICP, and product-market-fit
- Non-leading Qs extract authentic pain-points and needs from their story without putting words in their mouth
- Leading Qs bring in assumption that might not be authentically there for users in the first place
- Leading Qs bring in our assumption bias (our assumption that the product-market fit is a given, which is referred to as assumption-driven design)
- Leading Qs skew neutral learnings on their pain-points about their authentic situation
What is the difference between the two styles of questions script? Here are some examples of questions:
In conclusion…
Non-leading interviews should always be conducted before Leading interviews for best change of product success (product-market fit, good adoption by target user, designs tailored to user’s authentic need).
The script should be carefully tailored to ask non-leading/open-ended questions; get interviewee to recall last occurrences and context of their journey.
Interviewer should not shy away from asking similar open-ended questions that are paraphrased in order to probe and get the full steps interviewee took with their thoughts, feelings, blockers etc.
The interviews can then be mapped into wider users journey with clear pain-points emerging for the further tailoring of product direction, product brief, and service design.
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