Mapping User Needs

#30. Navigating the Evolving Landscape of User Experience to Safeguard Product Value

The value of our products, much like a scoop of ice cream exposed to the sun, is fragile and fleeting. User Experience (UX) is a battleground where time is both a harsh critic and a catalyst for change, constantly molding and melting the value of our creations. It sets the stage for an ongoing challenge—a relentless race against time itself to capture the essence of user needs and launch lovable and differentiated products amidst rapid change and disruptions.

This race demands swiftness and precision, a blend of speed and accuracy to shield product value. Every UX researcher and product manager recognizes this intricate struggle intimately. Decoding customer needs is a nuanced art that requires experience, creativity, and the right tools. It's about navigating uncertainty to discover subtle nuances. But it also requires forging connections between functional and emotional design to satisfy demanding users.

User demand changes fast, driven by the transient nature of the digital economy. What once was “the next best thing” turns ordinary quickly, and what used to delight customers becomes basic, expected, and needed. Technological advancements have a shorter shelf life in such a dynamic landscape. Take, for instance, the evolution since the release of ChatGPT: in its 1st anniversary, more than 100 million users embraced the tool across diverse domains, and competing products were launched (Microsoft Bing, Google Bard, and Jasper Chat, to name a few). A few forerunners might have seen their MVP (minimum viable product) provoke a shift in user behavior.

This is to say that with rapid change, product pivots are much more frequent. While many in product development view pivoting as progress, it's a stance valid only to a degree. Misidentifying critical customer needs and an inability to adapt to evolving customer requirements will erode brand equity. Each pivot demands extra time and resources to rebuild trust, eventually encountering resistance.

To succeed in this race, consider two key aspects to improve your product maturity and protect your product value:

• Proactively eliminating potential points of tension with users

• Addressing their critical needs really well

Let’s dive into both.

#1. Start with empathy and go beyond

Empathy is a proactive tool to understand, anticipate, and address the emotional and cognitive responses of users. It significantly contributes to building lovable products and delivering meaningful user experience. Yet, empathy is an enigmatic force - subjective, resource-intense activity, and time-sensitive. It requires more than just understanding; it demands connection and shared ground between designers and users.

Suppose you are to assign empathy a shape. Can it exist in a three-dimensional space? The answer is no because putting yourself in the customer's shoes means no distinct "inside" or "outside" and no boundary between designers and users. The fourth dimension is required to give the "extra ability" to pass through without intersection and expand beyond. The power of empathy resides in the flow and the co-dependence between designers and users to close the gap. But still, empathy is like a four-dimensional bottle that holds no water. You need something else to capture the insights.

When products are in the hands of users, another force at play influences user experience and emotions. Cognitive dissonance, or tension, often arises when users encounter experiences that conflict with their expectations. Empathizing with customers is only as good as the ability to grasp the tension that shapes user identity.

Human nature varies significantly in how people view the world, what they want to believe about themselves, how they want to be perceived by others, and what they desire, fear, and hope. When faced with conflicting information, people have feelings of unease when they hold contradictory beliefs or values and what they do is not aligned with what they believe. Tension arises and causes discomfort.

Here is an example. I care about sustainability and support eliminating single-use plastic bottled water. So, I use a refillable water bottle to stay hydrated. But I often forget my reusable bottle at home when I'm in a rush. Should I buy bottled water just once because refillable bottles are expensive, and I already have more than five at home? Or, do I not drink water all day, not to fuel the demand in the plastic water bottle industry? The choice is hard to make because there is a lot of tension. What I will do is very unpredictable.

The true power of a product resides in the ability to help users solidify their mental model with reality and, if they want to change, help them on the journey. By empathizing with users, product managers can proactively identify and reduce potential points of dissonance and, by doing so, protect product value.

#2. Rethink customer needs prioritization

Companies prioritize product features based on different methods to capture market demand and optimize their product roadmap. Conventional tools like the Kano model, developed in 1984, are limited in today's swiftly evolving landscape. The current context makes feature prioritization with the common five categories (must-have, performance, attractive, indifferent, and reverse) ineffective in keeping up with evolving user needs.

Consider an alternative approach: introducing a new category - Critical Need - between the basic and performance needs. The critical need resides in the intersection of urgency, necessity, and impact that matters to the user. The difference is that starting from this point allows you to bring the impact realization early.

Identifying and responding to critical needs brings velocity to the intricate dance of product development against time. You are more likely to satisfy the highly demanding users when you don't limit yourself to addressing their basic needs. Your product teams can run fast while getting it right the first time, prioritizing and delivering impact ahead of the competition.

If you are into cycling, you probably followed the saga around VanMoof. Despite having a healthy market demand and attracting large investments, VanMoof went bankrupt this summer. As a digital-first, vertically integrated company, VanMoof reimagined the bike as a truly integrated product, more accessible and fun, with many smart features and updates. The product was well-positioned to meet the attractive need for eco-friendly transport, but it was suboptimal in fulfilling the critical need: reliable + affordable commute. Customers complained about serious product quality issues, but the issue remained overlooked. The bankruptcy was just a matter of time.  

In contrast, Tikkie, a payment app in the Netherlands, thrives by addressing critical user needs—simplifying bill splitting with an intuitive user journey. The Tikkie team realized that instant payment is a basic user need, which requires reducing moments of friction but is not enough to fulfill well for the product to gain user adoption and lasting differentiation. The app needed a super simple and platform-agnostic user journey with zero friction. Tikkie did it so well that it became an umbrella term in the market. The result was processing over 5.5 billion EUR via the platform in 2022. 

Conclusion

The cognitive tension people experience remains an evolving challenge in the realm of UX and product development. In the fast-paced world, capturing user needs will remain a race against time. But if your UX and product teams have the right skills and tools rooted in empathy and critical needs, they can build more meaningful products and experiences, safeguarding product value. Even if summer is coming.