This is the first in the series Navigating the Journey from Ideation to Deployment: An Overview of Product Development. If you haven’t already, check out the overview! 

Phase 1: Adding Empathy to Your Idea
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‍The road to product development usually starts with inspiration from a problem that needs to be solved. That’s usually when you start looking for people to work with to bring your project to life. What you don’t realize is you’re just starting the ideation phase. At Smashing Boxes we feel that adding empathy to your product will add that secret sauce to making a product people love. You want to make sure you’re building the right product that actually makes life better for your users, and the only way to do that is by adding empathy to your idea. This blog will highlight three research methods for adding empathy to your product idea.

Observational Research

Observational discovery is what people do and use. Founders can witness users’ experiences when performing common activities. While doing observational discovery, researchers use different techniques like shadowing, service safari, or passive observation. They can be described in the following ways:

• Shadowing: Shadowing gives the research team context into what the user is doing without your product. In shadowing, a team follows one user closely in their own environment, whether it’s at home, work, or somewhere else. During shadowing, founders only observe their users and don’t give them any hints or clues that could influence their behavior.
  
  
• Passive Observation: In an observation setting, users are usually in a structured lab and are given specific tasks to do as part of the study. This method is best when there are predefined things to look for in the research plan.
  
  
• Service Safari: If recruiting users won’t work for you and your team, a service safari might be a better fit. In a service safari, small teams of 2-4 people will act as users for a service. They will write down their thoughts and observations as they experience it, uncovering any frustrations and issues with the current service. While a Service Safari is great for comparing competitor products, it can have bias or come to the wrong conclusion if the team uses the services differently than their users.

An example of observational research is the Swiffer. When the Swiffer was being invented, the team behind the product spent hours watching people wash their floors. Watching people struggle with the mop, bucket, and detergent in their homes gave the product team insights to build what became the Swiffer. While observational research will give entrepreneurs a good idea of how potential users accomplish tasks, attitudinal research reveals what they’re thinking.

Attitudinal Research

Attitudinal research is finding out what people say and think using focus groups, surveys, and interviews. In attitudinal research, founders can facilitate activities that help people express and visualize their past experiences, as well as capture their perceptions and thoughts around current ones. Attitudinal research has the following methods:

• Diary Studies: Diary Studies capture users’ feelings, thoughts, and attitudes about particular activities or experiences. They involve longitudinal data collection, where users write their thoughts in a journal, online form or app for an extended period of time. This type of data will show your team how attitudes and feelings can change over time.

• Empathy Mapping: An empathy map is a visual tool that shows what a user is thinking, seeing, doing, and hearing across activities that you’re measuring. It will highlight the areas that you don’t have a lot of data on a user’s attitudes about activities related to your product.
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• Cultural Probes: Cultural probes, or design probes, are kits that elicit ideas or insights into users’ values, lives, or thoughts. In order to use cultural probes in early stage research, the product team gives physical objects like maps, cameras, or colored pencils with an assignment or task to the user. The user will then use these objects over time and record their thoughts and feelings while using them.

Coca-Cola is an example of how attitudinal research can influence product development. When Coca-Cola did research on the younger generation’s attitude towards products they use, they realized that the younger generation values personalization. This insight led to the “Share a Coke” campaign that had first names written on the soda’s labels. The last way to better understand potential uses’ pain points is through generative research.

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Generative Research

Generative research is an immersive technique where you discover what people feel and imagine. This type of research enables users to tell you their ideal experiences. Be mindful that your intentions here are solely to harness any ideas. You’ll draw inspiration from those ideas later in a dedicated ideation stage of the design process. 

• Body Storming: In body storming, participants physically act out scenarios with props, products, prototypes and environments to gain insights into user experiences and design challenges. It allows researchers to better understand relationships between people and their physical surroundings so they can feel more empathy for end-users.

• Role Play: Another way of immersing yourself in user experiences is through role playing specific scenarios or interactions to gain more insights into the challenges your users will face. Role playing will give you the ability to identify usability issues and think of design improvements through first-hand experience of the user journey.
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• Issue Cards: Issue cards make sure the product team focuses on a specific issue faced by users. By creating a set of physical cards with each containing a single user challenge or pain point, researchers can center the conversation around those needs. Issue cards serve as great jumping off points for brainstorming and let team members explore and prioritize user issues together.

• Ethnographic Research: Ethnographic research involves studying a culture or context while participating in that environment. Founders can interview participants right after they make a decision and even experience the problems the group is facing first-hand. The products that come from ethnographic research are more customer-centric and can relate to the users on a more personal level.

AirBNB used ethnographic research by studying diverse travelers through immersing themselves in those travelers’ cultures. This immersion gave them the inspiration to create a deeply personalized experience for every traveler.

Debriefing & Analyzing Results

After each market research activity or experience, discuss your findings with your team. What surprised you, and what was validated? Once you start seeing trends across how users are solving problems or are describing solutions, you can start creating prototypes to validate your concepts, which we will cover in our next blog.

Why is This Important 

The ideation phase is where your product journey begins. It’s crucial to invest time and effort into this stage to ensure you’re building a product that solves real problems and meets actual market needs. By thoroughly researching, brainstorming, and validating your ideas, you can lay a strong foundation for the subsequent phases of development. Subscribe to our blog for the latest updates and insights on product development.