Originally presented in an IT Entrepreneurship Ideation class in the Ateneo de Manila University, February 2015. Bare-bones advice on how to get minimum, but necessary, validation about the class's digital product ideas.

1. You aren’t always your
target market.
Basic Points about Getting Feedback on
Your Business Idea

2. What can I teach in
2 hours?

3. A working session

4. What
Why
How
Then what?

5. What
is the difference?

6. VALIDATION vs RESEARCH
What do you think is the difference?
They aren’t exclusive.
From the class: “Validation as an objective / end-goal, and research as a means or a process.”
You validate through research. But, not all research is validation.

7. 1 2 3
Discovery Planning Verification
Strategy Design Development
The kind of research objectives you have depend on where you are in the process.
Validation — of course, happens when you already have an idea or product and are just testing it.
There are also research types geared more towards discovery (finding needs to solve or build on).

8. Why
do it?

9. We do no market research.
- Steve Jobs, in Fortune Magazine

10. 1. “Apple’s goal isn’t to make money.”
2. Apple designs for themselves.
From the class: “We can’t all be Steve Jobs.”
Apple designs its products for developers, designers and engineers, just like the people working on them.
More often than not, businesses and organizations cater to a market that isn’t similar to its creators/leaders.

11. The deeper into the development, the higher the cost to change the idea/ product / features.

12. How
do we go about it?

13. Learning about
the context of
people whom
we’d want to use
our products
Interpreting it
Applying it to our
business or
design problem
Many types of research, that you can look into on your own.
These are three main steps. Similarly stated in Steve Portigal’s “Interviewing Users: Spinning Data into Gold” on Slideshare.

14. Figuring out what
we need to solve
Learning about
the context of
people whom
we’d want to use
our products
Interpreting it
Applying it to our
business or
design problem
The pre-work step then becomes crucial.
Figuring out what you need to solve (so you know what to do after your consumer feedback is analyzed).

15. LISTEN
Figuring out what
we want to solve
Learning about
the context of
people whom
we’d want to use
our products
Interpreting it
Applying it to our
business or
design problem
PLAN ANALYZE APPLY

16. USEFUL vs USABLE
What do I need to know?
Ask yourselves what kind of decision you’re making:
1) Are you so confident in the idea (i.e. you never know, you could have the next iPod or Angry Birds in your hands), that you’re really only testing the
usability (task success, comprehension) and design (layout, look and interactions) of it
2) Or are you seeking direction about whether they’ll even want to use it, in the first place?

17. Will something that is popular
automatically make money?
I liked this question, that I saw in a product design and development forum called Tavern: Does a popular product = money?
If something is viral or popular, does it mean that it’s viable and profitable?
The best answer (you can look it up) was that: not all popular entities become profitable, but all profitable businesses need to have a popular product
(popular, even on a niche level - enough to have a loyal following).

18. POPULARITY vs USABILITY
Relevance, Viability Ease, Learnability
A build on the previous question would then be — are you asking for feedback to gauge:
- usability (Can people successfully perform tasks I want them to do with my product?) or
- popularity (Will there be enough people who will want to use what we’re making?)

19. What will the
insight be used for?
!
!
Test Objectives
!
how will it
be measured?
!
!
Criteria/Data
!
what is the product
supposed to do?
!
!
Product Objectives
!
who are the
ideal users?
!
!
Participant Specs
!
what is the best
way to test it?
!
!
Research Method
!
what resources
do i need?
!
!
Scoping
!
This is an outline of the flow researchers ask themselves when planning to talk to consumers.
This cleans up the kinds of things you ask, and helps you prioritize what need to get out of talking to people.

20. • Whether or not accomplish!
• Speed!
• Mistakes and self-correction!
• Work-arounds!
• Body language
Behavioral
To check whether your product is usable, check:
- Are they able to perform the priority tasks (that I would want my users to do)?
- How quickly or slowly is he/she able to do it?
- Do they make mistakes during a task? And if they do, are they able to correct themselves?
- Did they find their own ways to achieve certain tasks? What did they do instead?
- How did their facial expression, posture and gestures change as they used the site? Does it signal a positive experience (satisfaction, ease) or negative
(confusion, annoyance, fatigue)?

21. • Introduction!
• Participant Background (possible
explanations for answers)!
• Process / Routine related to task!
• Preferences and dislikes: Related to idea!
• Probes: How choose certain things to do
Attitudinal
To check whether your product could be popular, probe into:
- How they describe themselves
- How they go about the tasks or processes surrounding the needs your product wants to answer (routine, people they contact, context or setting, what devices /
websites / apps they currently use)
- Their reasons for their current routine (how they ended up doing what they do now)
- What they like about their current process? And what they don’t like (pain points)
- Reasons for liking / disliking (What made them like that element?)

22. Ethnographic,Field,
Studies,
Usability,Lab,Studies,
Data,mining,
Live,tes;ng,(wide,base),
Focus,Groups,
InAdepth,Interviews,
Surveys,
Qualita;ve, Quan;ta;ve,
Behavioral,
AEtudinal,
Diary,
CardAsor;ng,
Desirability+studies+
Eye/tracking+
Benchmarking,
A simple framework that organizes different research types used for design and product development. You can search the web, or contact me
(@yellowicepick) for clarifications about when to use each. The framework is:
Organized by whether the study is Qualitative (characteristics, verbal, best for in-depth why’s and how’s) or Quantitative (numerical, quantifiable, better
for having a stable base of data),
and Attitudinal (Preferences, Feelings - more subjective and opinion-driven) versus Behavioral (More observation-based, tracks movement and habits,
more than opinion and verbal responses)

23. no absolute objectivity.
When talking to consumers, keep in mind: No one is 100% objective. This includes you.
!
To be honest, difficult to orient about the entire range of research types in one class.
Instead, will leave with a few rules of thumb when talking to consumers.
(We don’t want to waste each other’s time by asking
a) questions that don’t help you solve your business needs or
b) asking or listening in a way that won’t help solve your business needs)

24. AWARENESS.
I recommend a critical step before you step out into the wild and talk to consumers:
Be aware of your own answers (i.e. biases and expectations) to your own questions.
!
Meaning: before you start, sit a teammate down, and ask each other the questions you plan on asking your target participants.
This way, you get to flesh out and listen to the kinds of answers you’re predisposed to. Having them out in the open allows you to better compare the spontaneous
responses of your participants.

25. DEFENSE MECHANISMScoping
There isn’t anything wrong with this, its just how were hard-wired. Our minds are programmed to cope.

26. Denial Acting as if something painful doesn’t exist
Repression Forgetting that something painful happened
Regression
Refusing to accept a current experience by reverting to
behavior from an earlier development stage
Displacement
Taking thoughts and feelings out on another person, object,
etc.
Acting Out
Releasing pressure through behavior that doesn’t consider
personal or social consequences
Projection
Attributing thoughts, feelings you don’t like about yourself to
another person
Reaction
Formation
Converting unwanted thoughts into their opposite;
expressing behavior opposite to your feelings
Intellectualization
Thinking away distressing or unacceptable situations,
experiences or thoughts without emotion or considering
emotional consequences
Rationalization
Putting behavior or experiences in a different light or offering
a different explanation
Sublimation
Refocusing or transforming conflicted or unacceptable
emotions into productive outlets
To illustrate, this is just a classic psychology class list of different defense / coping mechanisms we have that we may need to unpack, so that we get to sincerely listen to
consumers.
What design agency Ideo calls “beginner’s mind” — facing a situation as if it were your first time, as if you had no idea about it and are learning about it yourself.

27. Then what
do I do with it?
For analysis, I will point to another full

28. PROCESSING
QUALITATIVE
DATA
Screen capture, Sherlock - BBC
This is just a basic, bare-bones flow for analyzing qualitative data: or tracking the words and reactions your consumers might say.
A more fun version is having a story-sharing session (as outlined in Ideo’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit, which is downloadable online. For free.)
It’s the typical scene (shown in portfolios) where design teams take turns talking about what they heard and found in their research, and everyone writes
down things that stood out to them, on Post-its.
The next step is then, clustering the Post-its, until the team sees themes that emerge, and can then draw insight from them.

29. “Codebook”
List - Sort - Cluster - Track

30. “Codebook”
List of a good mix of responses.
Cluster common answers.
Screen capture, Sherlock - BBC

31. Sample data: Raw responses

32. Sample data: Clustered

33. What
Why
How
Then what?
Hopefully, the talk answered the basic questions. For more, will be sending links to helpful articles and presentations online.