Allows you to engage with your intended audience by equipping them with ways to express themselves. It can help you to discover critical and latent needs. Some ways of participation are: discovery surveys, discussion forums, journaling, workshops, etc.
Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype Improvement.
Research and Discovery Plan
Understanding of users and stakeholders
several hours
3/5
2 – 3 (to execute)
Brief Description:
Open-ended questionnaire used in the collection of information from a sample of customers.
Quick Guide:
Sample Survey Questions:
Helpful Tips
Assume a 10-20% survey response rate.
Brief Description:
Use of discussion forums (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.) to find unmet needs in a product from a group of users.
Quick Guide:
For each interaction identify the topic to be discussed. The forum can be guided by an administrator, who can promote the cooperation of all the participants, and encourage the use of short videos and photos to share their experiences.
Helpful Tips
Identify types of workarounds shared.
Brief Description:
An activity that invites people to record personal experiences in words, pictures and videos.
Quick Guide:
In contrast to activities that require face-to-face interaction, journaling is done privately, typically over the course of days or weeks. This allows time for deliberative reflection, that other methods may not. Ask participants to take photographs of their interactions and describe them, narrate a series of short videos, or provide written responses to open-ended help.
Helpful Tips
Perform exit interview with each participant.
Brief Description:
Design a workshop to identify attitudes, motivations, needs and behaviors of the participants, through informal conversations in group, and specific activities or games designed so that participants will actively participate. Allow participants to have an active voice to share their experience.
Quick Guide:
Prep
Execution
Example of session:
Helpful Tips
The purpose must be attractive and meaningful for all parties involved. Involve everybody in the discussions, in drawing, listening and talking.
Examples of Games for Participation Workshops
Steps: Empathize, Ideation
Brief Description:
Helps you refine your value proposition (benefits customer can expect from your product) and narrow in on key features to your solution. The goal is to identify the most exciting product features.
Quick Guide:
Prep
Recruit 5-10 target customers. Set up the room with boxes and supplies for each table.
Execute (Duration: less than 1 hour)
Set the stage by defining the area to explore.
Give each table a cardboard box and ask them to design a box for a product idea they will buy.
The box should feature the key marketing messages, main features, and key benefits that they will expect from your “imaginary product”. They can include anything they find interesting, pictures, price points, phrases, slogans. Give them 30-45 min to create the box.
Each team must imagine selling the imaginary product at a trade show. Have them take turns pitching the product to you, a skeptical costumer, and to the other customers in the room.
Take notes during the pitches on key messaging, features, benefits.
Analyze what aspects did the teams emphasize over others.
Steps:Empathize, Prototype Improvement
Brief Description:
Identify what´s inhibiting progress for your customers and what they don´t like about your product.
Quick Guide:
Prep
Recruit 5-10 customers who use your existing product or prototype for the exercise.
Have a picture of a speed boat and sticky notes. You´d like the boat to really move fast. Unfortunately, the boat has some anchors holding it back. The boat is your product, and the features that your customers do not like are its anchors.
Execute (Duration: 1-2 hours)
Invite customers to identify the problems, what they do not like, obstacles, and risks that are preventing them from successfully performing. Each issue should go on a sticky note. Ask them to place each sticky note as anchors to the boat- the lower the anchor the more extreme the pain.
Compare the outcomes with your previous understanding of what is holding customers back from performing their jobs to be done.
Steps: Empathize, Prototype Improvement
Brief Description:
Get customers to prioritize among a list of predefined (can be not yet existing) features.
Quick Guide:
Prep
Recruit 4-7 customers. Set up the room with supplies (play money, note cards, and paper).
Select the features for which you want to test customer preferences. Create a list of features (15-20) and provide each with a price.
Price each one based on development cost, market price, or other factors that are important to you.
Execute (Duration: less than 1 hour)
Customers get a limited budget of play money to buy their preferred features, which you price based on real-life factors.
Explain that this is a hypothetical setting. Share the list of features and available play money budget.
Each customer allocates their budget to the features they want. Make certain that some features are priced high enough that no one customer can buy them. Encourage customers to pool their money to buy especially important and/or expensive features.
They can collaborate with others to receive more features with their money. It is important not to bias customers by providing feedback as they choose features.
Calculate which feature received the most play money.