How to Define User Value with User Research
If you’re like me, you want to make things that people want and use. Not only does this make me feel good to have meaningful work and help people, but it also means that the company I work for will sell more products, and I’ll stay employed.
But if you’re also like me, you’ve seen where providing value is not always our primary mission of product teams. I remember when I worked at a consumer packaged goods company, and the president of our division shared his vision for the year — a new candy bar with WAFERs! He continued, without irony, that the company was investing millions of dollars into this effort, not because people wanted a light crispy crunch in their candy bars, but because we had the manufacturing capability to make WAFERS. I found it challenging to go to work that year.
I think we all can, very, unfortunately, relate to stories when we worked on a product or feature that no one wanted. And the lack of value eventually became apparent in a downward slope of sales or engagement post-launch.
So how do you know what’s valuable to your users? Especially long-term, so that you know you’ve achieved it beyond a spike in sales caused by a big marketing push or engagement by addiction?
1. What is value, and how do we determine it?
A study by the incubator CB Insights 2016 showed that 42% of surveyed startups failed because they do not meet a market need. This data point is another way of saying that they failed at providing value. These 42% provided solutions that didn’t solve any problems. Look a little closer, and you’ll also see reasons like a poor product (14%) and ignore customers (14%) — that’s 28% more startups that failed for not solving user problems and not providing value.
I love this definition of value in the Harvard Business Review:
“The amount and nature of value in a particular product or service always lie in the eye of the beholder, of course. Yet universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in current markets or break into new ones.”
This value definition demonstrates that value is entirely intrinsic to our users. We have no say in what’s truly valuable to them and why. Only users know what is valuable to them. Yet companies that deliver user value have bigger and better ROI.
And therein lies the challenge — how do we gather data on what’s valuable to our user community and determine whether or not our product is providing value?
2. Identify Value by Talking to Your Users using an In-Depth Interview Format
It’d be straightforward if we could ask customers or users what they value and get a clear answer that is the foundation of innovation and meaning.
Especially when Steve Jobs, the prophet of Silicon Valley, said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
But, all of us are not Steve Jobs, nor will we ever be, so I love the alternative counter quote by Katie Dill, Lyft’s VP of design.
“I agree with the sentiment that we can’t just ask for what customers want; they don’t always know how to articulate it. But I am a firm believer in the power of understanding our community. I’m a firm believer in the power of user research and qualitative insight gathering.”
To understand what is valuable to your users, we need to ask them questions about three topics:
- Their goals in using your product or service
- How they currently accomplish their goals and how they feel about it.
- The problems they face accomplishing their goal
I believe technology is valuable when it serves people; in other words, it helps them accomplish a goal. I subscribe to these tenets of Goal-Directed Design, User and Task Analysis, and Jobs to Be Done theories along the same lines. In my opinion, technology doesn’t need to exist unless it helps people achieve their goals and feel something — ideally, success and joy — in the process.
The user interview surfaces information that contributes to identifying user value. The list of questions does not include one that asks, “What is valuable to you?” because often what users say they will do and what they do is different. Instead, the questions dig into what their goals and challenges to unearth where and how the product may become a solution to their problems.
I like the in-depth interview format for these three topics because it is a simple, structured research method to speak one on one to users. The interviewer asks open-ended questions from a pre-written list and listens fully and non-judgmentally to the interviewee’s answers. Then, they look for patterns among the responses on what the user said, did, and believes in formulating where the most significant problem lies.
I don’t believe one has to be a research expert to conduct this specific interview because often these conversations are the first time managers, designers, and strategists look up from their product and listen to their users.
A Note: I teach and adore the Design-Thinking methodology, so if you’re familiar with it, this interview technique can also be the Empathy Interview.
Let’s say that I make or want to make a product that helps solo women travelers find accommodations. To get started, I would find about 8–12 women who have traveled alone or are interested in solo travel. I’d write an interview plan and script to make sure I ask the same questions and collect the needed information in each interview. I’m not making any judgments about them or their choices. And I’m here to listen.
In the interview, I’d ask them why they take trips? What’s the goal they are trying to achieve by taking these trips? What is their ideal accommodation on these trips?
They’ll tell me: to relax, to learn about themselves, to explore a different culture, to meet local people and learn about their culture, so their ideal accommodation is one that allows them to stay in neighborhoods, meet other people, and teach them something or introduce them to some aspect of the culture.
I’ll ask them, how do you currently accomplish that goal? What current tools or apps do they use? Who do they rely on to help them?
They’ll tell me: seeing a place they want to go, doing research on blogs and Instagram, Twitter, asking their friends, staying at an Airbnb, and signing up for local activities and tours.
Then, I’ll ask them to walk me through their accommodation booking process using these current methods, asking them to show me their current process and verbalizing their thoughts along the way so I can see where the problems exist.
If they are current users of my product or service, I ask them to walk through the current product on how they did it.
Finally, I’ll ask what problems do they have when attempting their goal with the current methods. The issues are the gold of the interview. I’ll listen very carefully to their problems without thinking of a solution or getting defensive.
Then, I’ll ask them what the biggest problem is in doing so to get a sense of gravity and importance, which will help me understand what is most valuable to them.
They’ll tell me: Staying and feeling safe, knowing how to get the best deal/not ripped off, going off the beaten path means too far from other sights, people they meet don’t have the same interests as they do
After I complete my interviews, I review the data and identify the biggest problems that prevent the user group from accomplishing their goal.
Here’s what I’d learned in these interviews:
When booking accommodations, finding safe places, and feel safe is difficult. The online reviews and community recommendations are unhelpful because what feels safe for one type of traveler, may not feel safe for solo female travelers.
I have now found out how I can provide meaningful value by solving their most prominent problem of safety.
3. Define User Value in Two Steps with a Problem Statement and Value Promise
At this point, I want to put a stake in the ground, a line in the sand or some other idiom to illustrate a guiding principle of user value. It’s time to define the value by creating a problem statement and, from it, a value promise. Both ideas will guide teams in their ideation of solutions.
Here is the format I like to use for the problem statement because it’s simple and focused:
[User group name] who want to [accomplish this goal], but they [list the biggest problem] which means [the impact of not accomplishing goal]
For example, for my accommodations product, the problem statement reads like this:
[For solo women travelers] who want to [book accommodations] but they [cannot because finding places to stay that are and feel safe is difficult,] which means [they cannot feel confident about their lodging choice and may be in unnecessary danger when traveling alone.]
Then, to identify the value, I think about the outcome of solving this problem. How would this user group feel, and what would they be able to do if provided the ideal solution?
To get started with the value promise, write out the inverse of the problem statement, specifically the impact section.
Problem Statement: [User group name] want to [accomplish this goal], but they [list the biggest problem] which means [the impact of not accomplishing goal]
The inverse of the impact of not accomplishing their goal → So they may feel or do…
The 30 elements of value in the HBR article are a helpful way to get started, but the list is only a resource. In your interviews, your users will tell you what success feels like and what they can do once they’ve accomplished that goal. The value promise needs to include what users can do and feel once they achieve their goal and have their biggest problem solved.
Identifying both the feeling and the action gives the team an emotional goal, the solution must eventually achieve and action that it must help the user accomplish.
Value Promise: We will create a solution for [user group name] to [accomplish this goal] so that they may…. [find this value]
For example, thinking about our solo women travelers and their safety…
Problem Statement: For solo women travelers who want to book accommodations but cannot because finding places to stay that are and feel safe is difficult, which means they cannot feel confident about their lodging choice and may be in unnecessary danger when traveling alone.
The Inverse of Impact: So they may feel confident that they have booked a safe place to stay.
Value Promise: We will create a solution for solo women travelers that allows them to book accommodations so that they may feel confident that they have a safe place to stay.
I’ve now defined the value that this product will provide — a feeling of confidence and a safe place to stay while traveling.
I’ll often follow up with an email to the users I interviewed, thanking them again for their time, and sharing the problem and value statements as a summary of what I learned. I’ll ask for their confirmation and use their answers to revise the two statements for a more precise definition of user value.
This value promise is not a value proposition. A value proposition includes the solution and how that solution is different in the market. There are no propositions at this point, only an uncovering of what this user group finds valuable. There is also no mention of solutions or ideas to solve the problem.
The user data you collected from the in-depth interviews, and these resulting statements define the elusive and intrinsic value. And really, help users so that they will pay money for the solution, purchase it again and again, and tell their friends about it.
Go Forth with A Definition of Value!
The problem statement and value promise create succinct boundaries for a team so they can ideate, design, test, and validate solutions that are the manifestation of that value. These statements are the guiding lights for the project based on UX research data, but they are not the solution. They are the signposts for the team to conduct their creative rodeos, user-first. Now the team can begin ideation, clear on their commitment to the product users.
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