Product Research
Why do product research?
People talk about The Lean Startup, but I think that companies don't go nearly lean enough. You may remember that I had a startup for a while. In my naiveté I thought we were building something lean. I was wrong. We built a data science service, but it wasn’t geared towards an industry or specific enough use case. Since then I have used the principles and ideas developed during that time at Qualtrics, Genomic Life and numerous consulting engagements with Mentor Creative Group.
Learn from my mistakes!
Setting up your idea funnel.
| Step | How we do it | Viable Features |
|---|---|---|
| Generate a lot of ideas | Ten Types of Innovation This is an amazing framework. It doesn’t just come with random ideas, it comes with ideas that fit your business and involve pricing, service and more. | 100+ |
| Priority ranking | Not all of these will be applicable to problem at hand. We work with you to prioritize and decide on the best | ~20 |
| Quantitative Testing | I like MaxDiff (Best Worst Scaling) Analysis & Design. It gives you a solid ranking of what people would choose. Example: An Italian restaurant wants to serve Risotto, Lasagna and Gnocchi. If you have customers rank, you might learn that Risotta is 3rd place. With MaxDiff you learn that customers would never choose the Risotto over the Gnocchi and Lasagna. | ~15 (ranked) |
| Qualitative Testing | Now we have some idea of what our customers want. We do 1:1 interviews, group sessions and design work to show people what they might get. | ~10 |
| Pricing | Now we have ranked features, we know the features look like, we know what customers want from these features… what’s left? We need to determine what they will actually pay for. We use Conjoint Analysis (my next post will be all about this). | ~3 |
Build it!
…and they will come? Not without more effort. Fortunately I work with a talented crew here at Mentor. We can handle the strategy, design, development and marketing.
Summary
Building something is often easier than deciding what to build. This funnel process helps you have confidence in your approach and your ideas.