Customer validation with Diary Studies

Customer Validation using Diary Studies
LeanCamp London 2
January 18, 2012
@boonych • #leandiary

About me
UX designer at SapientNitro
Formerly a developer (startups, prototyping, telecoms, rich internet apps)
MSc Human-Computer Interaction
UXCampLondon organiser
@boonych • #leandiary uxcamplondon.org

Why this talk
Lean startup “epiphany”
Gaps: Need more qualitative methods for holistic view
Applying & integrating
Learning & sharing

The point
Plan and visualize with _validated_ data
Improve customer understanding and decision making process
Improve chances of building what customers really want

Some assumptions @boonych • #leandiary

“ The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible.”
Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

“ The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build— the thing customers want and will pay for — as quickly as possible. ”
@boonych • #leandiary Validated customer insight Actionable learning, tightly integrated with tools & metrics

“… customer archetype is a hypothesis, not a fact. The customer profile should be considered provisional until the strategy has shown via validated learning that we can serve this type of customer in a sustainable way.”

“… customer archetype is a hypothesis , not a fact. The customer profile should be considered provisional until the strategy has shown via validated learning that we can serve this type of customer in a sustainable way.”
@boonych • #leandiary Continuous research Improve research methods iteratively Evolve the data & learning

Customer Validation @boonych • #leandiary Diary Studies help here

Caveats
Only the basics
Not a silver bullet
There is help around
Learn from each other

Diary Studies from 30,000 feet
What? How? Why?
Analyzing and gaining insights
Practical tips
Ideas on how to apply

A diary study involves participants reporting their activities over a specific period of time, usually apart from the researcher and in their normal daily lives.

Benefits
Why users behave a certain way
Right context & environment
Remote
Sample over a duration
Bridge qualitative & quantitative
Integrate with metrics & tools
Flexibility

@boonych • #leandiary Users record thoughts, comments, etc. over time http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanessabertozzi/877910821 http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3599753183/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/3020452399/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jevnin/390234217/ Interview users Gather feedback, data Organise and analyse (affinity maps, analytics)

Participants keep a record of
“ When” data
Date & time
Duration
Activity / task
“ What" data
Activity / task
Feelings / mood
Environment / setting

No one right way to collect data @boonych • #leandiary Structured Yes/no Select a category Date & time Multiple choice Unstructured Open-ended Opinions / thoughts / feelings Notes / comments http://www.flickr.com/photos/roboppy/9625780/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanessabertozzi/877910821 Combine / mix & match

Organize before analyze @boonych • #leandiary
Affinity mapping (integrate with “To the whiteboard”* exercises)
Extract notes from interview data
Place similar notes together, repeat
“ tag” clusters according to topic, title, concept, etc.
Extract learning and insights by illustrating the whole concept
See “Rich Pictures” from Soft Systems Methodology
*See “Enterprise guide to customer development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits

Demo time!
How to make sense of your data

“ Hygiene ” aspects
At the beginning
Introduction / get-to-know-you
Demographics & psychographics, profiling
Instructions / Setting expectations
At the end
Follow-up
Thanks / token gift
Reflection

Pitfalls
Belief bias
Behavior adjustment
Ramp-up time
Failure to recall

Ideas! @boonych • #leandiary http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieloop/5336396524/

Start small, be nimble
Low-tech (email, SMS, twitter, paper/pen, phone interviews)
Simple, not complex, diary forms
Let users just ‘dump’ facts, don’t force them to think so much
Catch up regularly & share often
Tweak on the fly

Bring an observer or two
Efficiency is shared experience
Bring one or two key stakeholders along to the interview sessions (e.g. lead dev, mktg, sales, CEO, etc.
Share and contrast: Don’t be precious about your own viewpoints
@boonych • #leandiary http://www.flickr.com/photos/qkgirl/4837119913/

Map diary to session tracking @boonych • #leandiary Validate diary data against your metrics. Customers sometimes behave differently than what they say. Make the data richer.

Integrate with business metrics
Use diary studies to test business assumptions
Test against segments
Useful for generative or evaluative research
Scale up or down
Test with prototypes
Etc.
@boonych • #leandiary Taken from “Enterprise guide to customer development” by Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits

‘ Hidden’ insights from qualitative data
Useful for new ideas
Generates more questions
Hidden facts about customers
Stuff you never knew to look
Store them for later

Take-aways
Diary studies are flexible, tweak to your requirements
Use it to address gaps in your research data
Integrate it with your existing measurement machinery
Refine and iterate your approach

Thanks
More on diary studies
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/diary-study-guide.shtml
http://www.system-concepts.com/articles/usability-articles/2011/a-quick-start-guide-to-online-diary-studies.html
Analyzing using affinity maps
http://www.usabilitybok.org/methods/affinity-diagram?section=how- to
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_86.htm
Gamestorming book by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo
Get in touch: @boonych on Twitter, or gluethink.com

Customer validation with Diary Studies

by Boon Chew

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