How do you know whether what you're designing for customers is something they want, moreso than their other options? Something they'll use, moreso than their other distractions? Something they recommend to others based on their experience? My friend Laurel Bowman over at The Conversion Group answers the question with a deceptively simple yet prophetic line at the end of her email signature:
It's as simple as that really. Yet surprisingly many companies prohibit meaningful conversations with customers. Instead they insist on innovate-in-a-vacuum.
Mark Jacobs recently wrote an article, Branded, in the New York Times Magazine with a great illustration of the benefit that can be gained by interacting with customers. In it he talks to Phil McAdams, president of Wrangler’s Western Wear division, about what they've learned from customers to make Wranglers the 60-year category killer:
The pockets are positioned high in the back so that riders don’t sit on their wallets, and the belt loops are set a little wider in front to accommodate a championship buckle. They are made with flat rivets that do not scratch saddles and large zippers that riders can handle with gloves. The tapered legs fit tightly over boots so that they don’t drag like the flared “boot cut” jeans, which have little to do with practicing cowboys; and the inseam is four to six inches longer than the norm so that when a rider is in the saddle, the bottom of the jeans sits just so on the top of the foot.
It's possible "Rodeo Ben" Lichenstein, who designed the "boot cut", knew everything he needed to know while working in his Philadelphia office, but I'd wager he was a practitioner of Laurel's tip throughout the 40's: at rodeos, with cowboys, asking questions.
Lower the noise
As any infant can attest, watching others can be really insightful. People's behavior is on display. Unless you're observing rocks though, there's a good chance you can unnecessarily influence what you're looking to measure. When you watch from afar, observations can be gained without disrupting the scene as its unfolding. Anthropologists and field biologists are black belts in observation. Ninja's too I hear. When the noise is low, the true unmet needs show themselves. Watch specifically for what people are _not doing_. You can ask the customer questions with your silent observations. For a quick primer, pick up Jane Fulton Suri's "thoughtless acts?" (hat tip to Diego).
Of course you can ask the customer questions directly. Conversations, too, are constrained by the signal to noise ratio. In any conversation stream, some of the information will be valuable (signal) and some of it will not be (noise). Further, the questions you ask will influence how the other person responds, so it's very easy to introduce more noise unless you create conditions for people to give their un-directed opinion. Open-ended questions are a start, but even better, try to recreate the anthropologists' observation -- give the customer a context and enough breathing room to become enveloped by their own doing, almost to the point where they forget you're involved. The art of the customer conversation lies in when to drift back in with a follow up question and when to let the scene unfold untouched. This type of "anthropological conversation" is at the heart of the Listening Labs (one-on-one website testing) we ran at Creative Good.
So lets say your team is responsible for designing a new new device to compete with the iPhone, or you're responsible for creating the tv, online and print ads for the marketing rollout of the alternative to the Wii. Don't wait to preview a "finished" product with a small focus group. What could you do today to involve customers throughout the entire design process?