Sunday, November 14, 2004
Virtual Futures - Market Research from the Inside Out
My feeling (and experience) is that traditional market research does not work. . .well it certainly doesn't give us the entire picture. If it did, everyone would just email a survey to customers or prospects and, abracadabra, we would know what product to build. Or better yet, lets hold a focus group with--nothing to do better paid participants--and they'll tell what they like and don't like.
One of the well-know facts about creating new, innovative products is that typical customers can not tell you what they want or need. So why not create the future in a virtual environment, place people in the center of that environment and measure what people do? I'm not talking about an expensive, science fiction, 3-D Holodeck. This can be as simple as a paper prototype of the main screens and functions of your revolutionary idea. Ok, we're the innovators! So we can be as imaginary as we want to be and create it in an hour! We may even mock up a few "hard coded" web pages that simulate the eventual functionality.
Why do so many companies rush to code their great ideas and spend millions in the process (if you're that lucky) when you can render hundreds of paper and html prototypes and run hundreds of people through your ideas in a month or two??
When you code, you have one version of your idea running down the track. Yeah, you can tweak it, change it a bit and even add those nifty v2.5 features you've been dreaming up but couldn't get it in v1.0. But eventually it is a train of people, code, money, momentum and ego that's almost impossible to stop.
Prototyping can take on this same type of energy with a passion to discover what's really important to people and what, hopefully, will make a profit for the company. You can test completely different ideas, different forms of certain features and different features, constantly refining and considering modification until you have a decent representation of what it is you want to begin building. Along the way, you've improved usability, you've created a culture around solving and discovering people's problems and needs, you may have even built a visual representation and product specification to hand to developers and you certainly have a better chance of creating a great product.
But, you haven't even engaged a developer yet and hence saved a lot of money. You will save a ton of money in the development process avoiding all the arguments (except the good ones) about what to build, what features to include, what's important and those inevitable, startled and confused looks on marketer's faces when they see the first representation of the developer's idea of what they were suspose to build, "Is that our vision"?
So if you want a new future, create it for your prospects, put them inside it and go nuts!
One of the well-know facts about creating new, innovative products is that typical customers can not tell you what they want or need. So why not create the future in a virtual environment, place people in the center of that environment and measure what people do? I'm not talking about an expensive, science fiction, 3-D Holodeck. This can be as simple as a paper prototype of the main screens and functions of your revolutionary idea. Ok, we're the innovators! So we can be as imaginary as we want to be and create it in an hour! We may even mock up a few "hard coded" web pages that simulate the eventual functionality.
Why do so many companies rush to code their great ideas and spend millions in the process (if you're that lucky) when you can render hundreds of paper and html prototypes and run hundreds of people through your ideas in a month or two??
When you code, you have one version of your idea running down the track. Yeah, you can tweak it, change it a bit and even add those nifty v2.5 features you've been dreaming up but couldn't get it in v1.0. But eventually it is a train of people, code, money, momentum and ego that's almost impossible to stop.
Prototyping can take on this same type of energy with a passion to discover what's really important to people and what, hopefully, will make a profit for the company. You can test completely different ideas, different forms of certain features and different features, constantly refining and considering modification until you have a decent representation of what it is you want to begin building. Along the way, you've improved usability, you've created a culture around solving and discovering people's problems and needs, you may have even built a visual representation and product specification to hand to developers and you certainly have a better chance of creating a great product.
But, you haven't even engaged a developer yet and hence saved a lot of money. You will save a ton of money in the development process avoiding all the arguments (except the good ones) about what to build, what features to include, what's important and those inevitable, startled and confused looks on marketer's faces when they see the first representation of the developer's idea of what they were suspose to build, "Is that our vision"?
So if you want a new future, create it for your prospects, put them inside it and go nuts!
