Product Research Rules

Chapter 6. Sometimes a Conversation Is Not Enough

Interview conversations are invaluable when seeking insights into your users’ behaviors, experiences, and attitudes. But—however perfectly executed—they won’t show you the whole picture. A client engagement project that Michael participated in at Fresh Tilled Soil, a Boston-based design company, is a great example of how interviews alone just don’t make good product research.

Michael’s team was engaged to help a client improve its app, used for dispatching trucks to construction sites. They interviewed the dispatchers, drivers, and construction project managers, but one of the strategists felt like something was missing. She worked with the client to arrange for some team members to ride along with drivers in their construction vehicles for a few days. They got a firsthand view of how the drivers responded to the dispatch, how they used their mobile phones while in the trucks, and what struggles they truly had. The ride-along highlighted some of the app’s issues with communication timing and with what happened when the mobile signal wasn’t strong. The researchers knew about the problems from the interviews, but riding along helped them better understand why those things happened.

When users report their experiences, their accounts sometimes include elaboration, inaccuracy, or (as we learned in Chapter 2) bias. It’s important to employ other research methods to see their underlying motivations and aspirations. By working alongside ...