Needfinding Innovation: Disrupting The Market To Succeed
There's a method to disruption startups need to really succeed in the market.
To succeed as a startup, one must be committed to creating a product that disrupts the market. Simply improving upon what already exists will lead to failure. As John Guernville notes in Eager Seller, Stony Buyers, the product must be nine times better than what is currently available to motivate users to switch.
To achieve this level of innovation, we must understand our market better than anyone else. This requires two key activities: conducting thorough research and synthesizing that research into actionable insights.
Steve Portigal has written an excellent book on effective interviewing techniques, called Interviewing Users. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to improve their customer research skills.
Once you have conducted your research, it's time to synthesize the findings. My process involves breaking the research down into smaller modules and rearranging them until the secrets of the data are revealed.
To avoid analysis paralysis, it's important to timebox each activity and maintain focus. By following these steps, we can create a truly disruptive product that will capture the market's attention.
Fragmenting
To effectively process complex data, we must first fragment it into modular insights. This term comes from Karl Fast, who advocates for distributed cognition, or using our bodies and surroundings to enhance our thinking.
Fragmenting involves breaking down our research notes into standalone insights that can be rearranged to reveal new insights. While this process may seem tedious, it is highly valuable in retaining a deeper understanding of the data and the users.
I have personally used this method by manually highlighting important notes and copying them onto post-it notes. This copying process has a unique effect on the brain, ingraining the knowledge of the users in a more complete and effective way.
By taking the time to fragment our research, we are better equipped to make fast decisions about our product, ultimately saving time and avoiding costly mistakes.
To implement this technique, gather your notes from user research and highlight the most exciting bits. Copy each insight onto a separate post-it note. This can be done before the synthesis session and typically takes about 30 minutes or more, but the mindless work is worth the effort. The goal is to create modular insights that can be easily rearranged to uncover new insights.
Chunking (Affinity Grouping)
If you're a designer, chances are you've tried affinity grouping exercises as part of a card sort. It's a straightforward process, really: you stick post-its with similar notes together based on your gut feeling. No need to overthink it.
I like to call this Post-it note twister. It's all about moving quickly and avoiding analysis paralysis. If you find yourself reading each post-it aloud to the group before placing it meticulously, you're going too slowly. Get those post-its up on the wall and take a moment to adjust.
The goal here is to organize data by similarity to see insights that you wouldn't notice with chronological organization.
So the activity goes like this: group post-its with similar post-its, no need to overthink why they belong together in the first pass. If two post-its say the same thing, put one on top of the other as a second vote.
Spend only 5 minutes for the first pass, putting like with like. Keep the time limit to prevent analysis paralysis.
Once done, run a second pass on the data chunks and name the groups. Examine the groups: are any of them oddly unspecific and big? Should some be broken down into smaller subgroups? Avoid creating a miscellaneous group, and instead, set aside oddballs for further examination.
Now ask yourself, is it truly an outlier, or does it suggest a need for more research? For instance, a post-it saying "worried about taxi drivers ripping me off" in a travel research might indicate a concern about safety worth exploring further. Alternatively, the group may conclude that the person is just paranoid or that the topic is irrelevant to the product space.
Sometimes, participants might not participate as actively as others. In such cases, encourage them to keep an eye out for one-item outliers and check whether the affinity groups are becoming too large.
Frequency Chunking
Let's visualize the data! With this exercise, we'll turn those post-it notes into a chart that reveals what's top of mind.
Goal: Uncover the most common themes by sorting post-it note groups based on their size.
Activity: Order the groups by the number of post-its in each group, from largest to smallest. It may seem tedious, but you'll be surprised at how much easier it is to spot patterns as you rearrange.
Time: Only five minutes needed for this task.
Don't forget to capture the results! Take photos each time you rearrange the post-its.
Hang those pictures up on the wall. By creating a war room with a visual record of your work, you're building a shared memory that will support your future efforts.
Timeline chunking
No one wants to face the dreaded task of rearranging all those post-its. But let me tell you, it's usually the first "a-ha" moment that unlocks hidden insights. When you organize the post-its by when they happen in the customer journey, you may uncover moments that your customers never talk about.
For instance, in the travel industry, customers often mention the planning and experience, but seldom talk about returning home and reminiscing about their trip.
Your team can then deliberate whether this indicates disinterest or an unexplored Blue Ocean opportunity.
Goal: By reorganizing insights based on time, we can uncover untapped potential in the data.
Activity: Create a timeline using painter's tape. Then, arrange the post-its along the tape based on the customer journey. If an insight occurs multiple times, duplicate the post-it (cloning).
Time: 10 minutes (or slightly longer)
Mapping
When we're in the business of generating insights, sometimes it helps to use a pre-existing map as a guide. This is where mapping comes in handy, utilizing established knowledge maps like the Business Model Canvas to steer our collection and creation of insights.
The Frequency/Passion Canvas
Have you ever struggled to figure out which opportunity to pursue next? Steve Blank once offered a helpful insight: rank your opportunities based on how often they occur in your customer's life and how strongly they feel about it. Later, publisher Ray Bard added his own analogy of the ocean/well/swamp/desert to further refine the approach. And thus, the Frequency/Passion Matrix was born.
Every quadrant has potential, but some are easier to navigate than others.
Ocean: a lot of people care deeply about this need, but it's also where you'll find fierce competition (aka the red ocean).
Well: it may not come up often, but when it does, people are willing to spend money to get it right. Think weddings, divorces, family vacations, and big-ticket items like cars.
Swamp: many people don't care much about this need, so you'll need to invest in marketing or distribution strategies to get their attention. Examples include socks, luggage, and gum.
Desert: well, let's just say it's not a fruitful place to focus your efforts.
The goal of this canvas is to narrow down your list of potential needs and focus on the one with the highest potential value. To do this, create a Frequency/Passion Matrix using painter's tape. Then, map your pain and gain insights from your research onto the matrix.
Timing: aim for 8 minutes to complete this activity.
Filtering
In order to filter down to the most desirable ideas, we need to run the frequency-passion matrix multiple times. The aim is to eliminate the less valuable ideas and focus on the ones that have the highest potential. This process involves taking out everything in the left and lower right quadrants and redistributing the top right post-its.
If there are any ideas in the lower right or upper left that participants are particularly passionate about, they can set them aside in a "parking lot" to explore later. The key is to focus on the ideas that have both a high frequency of occurrence in our user's lives and a strong emotional attachment, which can lead to a higher potential for success.
Remember, don't be afraid to run this exercise multiple times to refine your ideas and get to the best ones. With each iteration, you'll get closer to identifying the most valuable opportunities for your team to pursue.
Empathy Map
In Dave Gray's brilliant creation, the Empathy Mapping canvas, we can delve deep into the mind of our customers during their crucial decision-making moments. By capturing their thoughts, emotions, motivators, and environment, we can build a mousetrap that truly resonates with them.
The goal is crystal clear: Empathize with our customers to create a product that delights and solves their needs.
The activity is straightforward. Take the pains and gains from our previous research models and add them to the bottom of the Empathy canvas. Next, name the person we are mapping (a real name, not just a generic label), and choose a specific moment that holds importance for them (from the timeline). Then, use our research data to fill in the canvas, capturing every detail of their mindset, surroundings, and behaviors.
Timing: ~10–15 minutes
To succeed as a startup, one must be committed to creating a product that disrupts the market. Simply improving upon what already exists will lead to failure. As John Guernville notes in Eager Seller, Stony Buyers, the product must be nine times better than what is currently available to motivate users to switch.
To achieve this level of innovation, we must understand our market better than anyone else. This requires two key activities: conducting thorough research and synthesizing that research into actionable insights.
Steve Portigal has written an excellent book on effective interviewing techniques, called Interviewing Users. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to improve their customer research skills.
Once you have conducted your research, it's time to synthesize the findings. My process involves breaking the research down into smaller modules and rearranging them until the secrets of the data are revealed.
To avoid analysis paralysis, it's important to timebox each activity and maintain focus. By following these steps, we can create a truly disruptive product that will capture the market's attention.
Fragmenting
To effectively process complex data, we must first fragment it into modular insights. This term comes from Karl Fast, who advocates for distributed cognition, or using our bodies and surroundings to enhance our thinking.
Fragmenting involves breaking down our research notes into standalone insights that can be rearranged to reveal new insights. While this process may seem tedious, it is highly valuable in retaining a deeper understanding of the data and the users.
I have personally used this method by manually highlighting important notes and copying them onto post-it notes. This copying process has a unique effect on the brain, ingraining the knowledge of the users in a more complete and effective way.
By taking the time to fragment our research, we are better equipped to make fast decisions about our product, ultimately saving time and avoiding costly mistakes.
To implement this technique, gather your notes from user research and highlight the most exciting bits. Copy each insight onto a separate post-it note. This can be done before the synthesis session and typically takes about 30 minutes or more, but the mindless work is worth the effort. The goal is to create modular insights that can be easily rearranged to uncover new insights.
Chunking (Affinity Grouping)
If you're a designer, chances are you've tried affinity grouping exercises as part of a card sort. It's a straightforward process, really: you stick post-its with similar notes together based on your gut feeling. No need to overthink it.
I like to call this Post-it note twister. It's all about moving quickly and avoiding analysis paralysis. If you find yourself reading each post-it aloud to the group before placing it meticulously, you're going too slowly. Get those post-its up on the wall and take a moment to adjust.
The goal here is to organize data by similarity to see insights that you wouldn't notice with chronological organization.
So the activity goes like this: group post-its with similar post-its, no need to overthink why they belong together in the first pass. If two post-its say the same thing, put one on top of the other as a second vote.
Spend only 5 minutes for the first pass, putting like with like. Keep the time limit to prevent analysis paralysis.
Once done, run a second pass on the data chunks and name the groups. Examine the groups: are any of them oddly unspecific and big? Should some be broken down into smaller subgroups? Avoid creating a miscellaneous group, and instead, set aside oddballs for further examination.
Now ask yourself, is it truly an outlier, or does it suggest a need for more research? For instance, a post-it saying "worried about taxi drivers ripping me off" in a travel research might indicate a concern about safety worth exploring further. Alternatively, the group may conclude that the person is just paranoid or that the topic is irrelevant to the product space.
Sometimes, participants might not participate as actively as others. In such cases, encourage them to keep an eye out for one-item outliers and check whether the affinity groups are becoming too large.
Frequency Chunking
Let's visualize the data! With this exercise, we'll turn those post-it notes into a chart that reveals what's top of mind.
Goal: Uncover the most common themes by sorting post-it note groups based on their size.
Activity: Order the groups by the number of post-its in each group, from largest to smallest. It may seem tedious, but you'll be surprised at how much easier it is to spot patterns as you rearrange.
Time: Only five minutes needed for this task.
Don't forget to capture the results! Take photos each time you rearrange the post-its.
Hang those pictures up on the wall. By creating a war room with a visual record of your work, you're building a shared memory that will support your future efforts.
Timeline chunking
No one wants to face the dreaded task of rearranging all those post-its. But let me tell you, it's usually the first "a-ha" moment that unlocks hidden insights. When you organize the post-its by when they happen in the customer journey, you may uncover moments that your customers never talk about.
For instance, in the travel industry, customers often mention the planning and experience, but seldom talk about returning home and reminiscing about their trip.
Your team can then deliberate whether this indicates disinterest or an unexplored Blue Ocean opportunity.
Goal: By reorganizing insights based on time, we can uncover untapped potential in the data.
Activity: Create a timeline using painter's tape. Then, arrange the post-its along the tape based on the customer journey. If an insight occurs multiple times, duplicate the post-it (cloning).
Time: 10 minutes (or slightly longer)
Mapping
When we're in the business of generating insights, sometimes it helps to use a pre-existing map as a guide. This is where mapping comes in handy, utilizing established knowledge maps like the Business Model Canvas to steer our collection and creation of insights.
The Frequency/Passion Canvas
Have you ever struggled to figure out which opportunity to pursue next? Steve Blank once offered a helpful insight: rank your opportunities based on how often they occur in your customer's life and how strongly they feel about it. Later, publisher Ray Bard added his own analogy of the ocean/well/swamp/desert to further refine the approach. And thus, the Frequency/Passion Matrix was born.
Every quadrant has potential, but some are easier to navigate than others.
Ocean: a lot of people care deeply about this need, but it's also where you'll find fierce competition (aka the red ocean).
Well: it may not come up often, but when it does, people are willing to spend money to get it right. Think weddings, divorces, family vacations, and big-ticket items like cars.
Swamp: many people don't care much about this need, so you'll need to invest in marketing or distribution strategies to get their attention. Examples include socks, luggage, and gum.
Desert: well, let's just say it's not a fruitful place to focus your efforts.
The goal of this canvas is to narrow down your list of potential needs and focus on the one with the highest potential value. To do this, create a Frequency/Passion Matrix using painter's tape. Then, map your pain and gain insights from your research onto the matrix.
Timing: aim for 8 minutes to complete this activity.
Filtering
In order to filter down to the most desirable ideas, we need to run the frequency-passion matrix multiple times. The aim is to eliminate the less valuable ideas and focus on the ones that have the highest potential. This process involves taking out everything in the left and lower right quadrants and redistributing the top right post-its.
If there are any ideas in the lower right or upper left that participants are particularly passionate about, they can set them aside in a "parking lot" to explore later. The key is to focus on the ideas that have both a high frequency of occurrence in our user's lives and a strong emotional attachment, which can lead to a higher potential for success.
Remember, don't be afraid to run this exercise multiple times to refine your ideas and get to the best ones. With each iteration, you'll get closer to identifying the most valuable opportunities for your team to pursue.
Empathy Map
In Dave Gray's brilliant creation, the Empathy Mapping canvas, we can delve deep into the mind of our customers during their crucial decision-making moments. By capturing their thoughts, emotions, motivators, and environment, we can build a mousetrap that truly resonates with them.
The goal is crystal clear: Empathize with our customers to create a product that delights and solves their needs.
The activity is straightforward. Take the pains and gains from our previous research models and add them to the bottom of the Empathy canvas. Next, name the person we are mapping (a real name, not just a generic label), and choose a specific moment that holds importance for them (from the timeline). Then, use our research data to fill in the canvas, capturing every detail of their mindset, surroundings, and behaviors.
Timing: ~10–15 minutes
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