User Experience, Not User Needs Drives Real Value

Many people understand the value of identifying user needs, but this is really not the core value of what a customer research team (like mine) provides. In this entry, I'd like to explain the difference between user needs and the user experience design work we undertake at Ricoh Innovations.

The advanced customer research team that conducts in-situ customer research and prototype development/iteration at Ricoh Innovations was founded in 2003 with the goal of identifying the hidden customer needs that users cannot themselves articulate. Via this definition, user needs are split into two distinct groups:

1) needs of which the user is aware and communicates via suggestions, complaints or a service call and,

2) needs of which the user is unaware and therefore unable to communicate. Let's call this latter type of need "hidden needs". Ricoh's vast network of direct and indirect sales/support channels respond to suggestions, complaints and service calls (type 1 needs). ABC focuses on the second category of needs - hidden needs, some prominent types being:

• Needs that exist among a workgroup of users- with no one user having enough knowledge of the entire workflow to articulate or suggest possible solutions to the issues

• Needs that occur due to a lack of a simple, approachable technological solution within the customer's budget- a good example being the drudgery of re-typing information into a computer system (even though expensive systems are available to solve this issue)

• Needs that remain unsolved (even though approachable solutions exist) because the current solution is simply too difficult to discover, learn and apply for the average user (without dedicated IT help). Anyone who has tried to print when they do not have access to a network or the correct printing driver knows this type of need well.

Counter Intuitive: Identifying Hidden Unmet User Needs is Not Enough

You might ask: If one can identify these broad categories of hidden unmet needs, and provide explicit examples, isn't the job done? One might think so, but the truth is counter intuitive. Simply knowing about a problem is very different than knowing how to solve it. Our efforts have shown that reporting hidden needs to product planners is not very helpful to them. Product planners need to understand the hidden needs, but they also need to know what type of solutions the customer finds most valuable. Experience design research is the official term for this type of research.

Wikipedia defines "Experience Design as the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experiencefunctionality of the design.^[1] An emerging discipline, experience design attempts to draw from many sources including cognitive psychology and perceptual psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, architecture and environmental design, haptics, product design, information design, information architecture, ethnography, brand management, interaction design, service design, storytelling, heuristics, and design thinking. ABC is on the forefront of this growing field and continues to improve effective transfer techniques so that valuable user experiences are available to product planners to encapsulate in the software, hardware and services that make them real. and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving

The Key Value is Experience Design

My team pioneered a rapid research process that quickly finds hidden user needs through on-site ethnographic research at customer sites. By presenting users, managers and other stakeholders (IT, etc.) with the specifics of how their work is currently done, our clients are able to imagine better ways to: work together, brainstorm things that would add tremendous value to their work, and ultimately, add value to their end customers. Our role in this process is to facilitate discussion, capture ideas and infuse promising ideas with our extensive knowledge of current technology breakthroughs, market trends and work best practice.

With our client's ideas in hand, you might think we'd end our research and report what we've learned, but we don't. We've learned through experience that what people think and say is not usually what they do or ultimately need. If we stopped here, the rest of Ricoh may very well spend millions of dollars building the wrong products and solutions. So, we push on, and quickly cobble together a very rough prototype of the concept they think they need and ask them to test it for a few weeks. Even though what we deploy is usually bulky and slow and certainly nowhere near how a commercial version would be architected, these things do not matter. The customer is enthusiastic to test "their" idea, and so they give it a try, and together we learn what they really need.

Put simply, our customers are smart people and can be considered "domain experts" at their work. They are not, however, skilled technologist, designers or engineers and thus usually do not know the scope or depth of what solutions are possible. They start with a limited understanding of their issue, and a limited understanding of the solution possibilities. Our job is to expand both their knowledge of the need and the possible solution directions. Together, we find the best overall user experience and , more importantly, identify why and how to quantify its value. Once we understand the user's needs, have a tested and accepted design, as well as data on its qualitative and quantitative value to the customer, do we pass on what we've learned. For this reason, we stay on a research theme for a few years, learning how a successful design is valuable to our customers in different industries and work group sizes.

Our past clients report that this eye-opening process is where they find real value from our work. The understanding and new ideas that come out of our conversations provide them with insight required to improve their business. We believe this is why they many want to work with us again, and recommend other potential candidates.