Understanding the Users

The very first step in Product Discovery is to understand the users. Generally there are a variety of tools and techniques that I use to identify problems like keeping a backlog of user reported issues, doing user interviews, concierge test: doing user’s tasks manually to understand their pain points, watching what user recordings, heat maps and apps event data, having discussions with internal team that communicates with users on a regular basis (customer service/sales/operations) and many more.

I believe what all of these techniques achieve is that they provide us with raw information, a lot of it. But to make the right use of it, the most important thing to do is to understand the user and to understand how the user goes about achieving certain goals and what kind of problems they face with that. The process is iterative and agile. More often than not I end up iterating over who exactly the user is, what user goal are we focusing on and what part of the user flow to optimise (in case of existing products.)

User Identification

First thing we want to achieve is to understand who our user is and as much of information we can define about them. While User Persona is a very generic and successful tool for the same, I generally tend to focus on certain practices that allow me to be slightly more flexible in ideation stage while at the same time being close to reality.

• I generally start with defining a scenario or environment the user is operating in where they face the problem.
• I try to focus on user behaviour and background that very specifically affects his goals while trying to achieve a specific goal.
• I try to avoid defining generic parameters about the user like education or profession until they have a very specific relation to the problem.
• When I get to the details of the problems the user might be facing, I try to include their emotional and psychological state leading up to the problem.
• Identify the constraints they operate in. Things they are comfortable with, things they are scared of, things that will affect them the most etc.
• More often than not it happens that not all of the users initially defined would be facing the problems we identify. I prefer iterating over user personas when defining exact problems. Asking a lot of “why would this user be facing this problem?” helps in getting the user persona right.
• Develop a lot of empathy with your user, try to walk in their steps. Try to delve into their emotional and psychological state and think how you would react in different situations.
• Use anecdotes to establish empathy. Real stories of real users helps other team members in empathising with your user. This is the very reason User Personas came into play in the first place. But I still find real stories more compelling.
• Use data to validate. Anecdotes are examples and examples are no proof of anything. It helps a great deal to build trust and to be sure of your definition of your user.

User Flow

Generally User Flows and User Journey Maps are used in UX design when you come up with a solution. When defining problems, we generally tend to identify specific problems and try to solve them.

I find it troublesome to imagine a problem as a standalone problem. A problem always occurs in a context and it has to be imagined in that context. Using this technique has helped me prioritise important problems, extend scope of the problem and at times identify different constraints involved.

• Define a holistic flow of events a user go through when they face that problem.
• Try to be as detailed about their environment, emotional and psychological state and resources they have access to.
• Ask a lot of why the user might be facing the problem and how can they solve the problem without needing any extra help. It helps in weeding out problems that are not really important and to understand the root cause of a problem.
• Try to look out for more related problems that the user might face while going through the flow. Identify what all can go wrong at each step of the process.
• When you are looking for a solution, consider how user flow is affected by your solution and look out for new problems being created by the solution.
• You may at times have to expand the user flow beyond the scope of the problem to understand where the root of problem lies.
• Use data as often as you can. If it is an existing product then you can always use the data for events on app, funnels and flows to validate your assumptions about the flow.