Learn how to leverage User Research techniques to validate customer demand for new products and features before writing a line of code. See best UX best practices, different user testing experiences (Moderated & Unmoderated) and how to analyze user flows.

1. User Research to Validate Product Ideas
Workshop
/Productschool @ProductSchool /ProductmanagementSF

2. Mike Burk
- 7+ years of Product Management
experience at companies like:
Scoot
Myspace
Electronic Arts
BigCommerence
MEET OUR SPEAKER
www.productschool.com

3. User Research for
Product Managers
Michael Burk
Product School
March 8, 2017

4. About me
Product Team Leader / Company Builder
Held senior product roles at Scoot Networks, BigCommerce,
Electronic Arts, MySpace
Loves working with startups to build product, design and
engineering teams
Amateur home brewer, BBQer, disc golfer

5. Overview
What is user research?
Types of user research
Research process
Framework for leveraging research in your product
Guiding Question:
How do product managers gather user insights and use them to build
successful products?

6. What is user research & why should you
care?
User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and
motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other
feedback methodologies.
Good research will result in actionable data that leads us to develop testable
hypotheses.
As product managers, user research helps us understand whom the product is
for and why it's valuable.
User research improves the likelihood of a product satisfying user needs in a
way that complements their existing behaviors and motivations.
Source: https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-research.html

7. Types of user feedback
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

8. Where do I start?
Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/09/5-step-process-conducting-user-research/

9. Research Process: Objectives
Research needs a goal
Why are you doing research? What are you trying
to learn?
Do you need lots of data or a few key insights?
Do you have a hypothesis that can guide the
research, or are you trying to understand
unexplained phenomena?
What data do you have already?
You may be able to answer your question without
conducting new research
If you have a hypothesis, how do you validate as quickly
and cheaply as possible?

10. Research Process: Hypotheses
What do we already know about our users?
What assumptions need to be true in order for our
product to be successful?
Developing and testing hypotheses is a key skill for
product managers

11. Research Process: Methods
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

12. Research Process: Methods
Depending on your objectives and hypothesis,
which method is most effective in achieving
your research goals?
Check out usability.gov for a great list of research
methods and their pros/cons
With all necessary caveats...
If you're trying to validate a hypothesis, use
quantitative.
If you need to explore/understand unexplained
user behavior, use qualitative.

13. Research Process: Conduct
Recruit test subjects:
Your users
Your colleagues
Your target customers
Your competitors
Execute your research using the predefined
method

14. Research Process: Synthesis
Did we validate or invalidate our hypothesis?
Did we learn anything unexpected?
Did we collect actionable or testable data that can
be used to inform product planning &
roadmapping?

15. Now what?
Product managers are constantly responding to two key questions:
What do we build?
In what order?
We need a framework for translating user research into product features and
roadmaps.
We can use research to develop user personas and what they need and
value in terms of product features.

16. Product Market Strategy Framework
Step 1: Identify your target user(s)
-- e.g. Aspiring product managers, soccer moms, real estate agents
Step 2: Determine differentiating features
-- Reasons why someone would use your product instead of competitor
-- Things people talk about when asked why they use your product
-- Should exceed expectations
-- NPS 9-10
Step 3: Determine table stakes features
-- Core features that make your product viable
-- No credit for having them, but penalty if you don’t
-- NPS 7-8

17. Product Market Strategy Framework (cont)
Step 4: Use your research to identify feature gaps and quality deficiencies
-- Are your differentiating features very high quality (NPS 9+)?
-- Are your table stakes features good enough (NPS 7+)?
-- How does your product compare to your competitors’?
Step 5: Prioritize based on maximum impact
-- Identify the features that are dragging down your user satisfaction.
-- The features your users interact with most often comprise the bulk of
their opinion & satisfaction. Prioritize them.

18. Sample: Building the framework
● Organize your differentiating & table stakes features using the results of your user research
● Target 3-5 max in each category

19. Sample: Determining user satisfaction
● Assign user satisfaction rating (e.g. NPS) to each of your features
● Use your research as much as possible, but make informed estimates as needed

20. Sample: Identifying product opportunities
● Identify feature gaps & quality deficiencies to inform your roadmap
● Prioritize features that are used most often

21. Recap
User research improves our odds of success for building products that meet
(or exceed) our customers’ expectations.
The form and method of our research is determined by our goals.
Good research results in actionable data or testable hypotheses.
Understanding the features our customers value most should inform our
roadmapping and prioritization processes.

22. Thank you!

23. Salesforce's Director of Product Talks: Communication in the Digital Age
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24. © Divya Ashok
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