Researching User Needs
Treehouse
Course Summary
Many products are developed based on a hunch, a judgement call, and incomplete information. Needless to say, most of them fail miserably. Startup founders and business owners then ask themselves why. This course takes a different, risk-mitigating, more scientific approach to the art of starting a business. You’ll learn how to develop a product people really need by uncovering these needs well in advance. Before you write one line of code, before you hire a large team, before you take a big risk. You’ll learn the ins and outs of learning if people need your product by implementing three activities to learn from your future customers - Experience Sampling, Field Observation, and Interviewing. After making sense of it all, you’ll be able to kick-start your business with confidence in your knowledge and wisdom.
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Course Description
About this Course Many products are developed based on a hunch, a judgement call, and incomplete information. Needless to say, most of them fail miserably. Startup founders and business owners then ask themselves why. This course takes a different, risk-mitigating, more scientific approach to the art of starting a business. You’ll learn how to develop a product people really need by uncovering these needs well in advance. Before you write one line of code, before you hire a large team, before you take a big risk. You’ll learn the ins and outs of learning if people need your product by implementing three activities to learn from your future customers - Experience Sampling, Field Observation, and Interviewing. After making sense of it all, you’ll be able to kick-start your business with confidence in your knowledge and wisdom. What you'll learn
- What's a problem worth solving?
- How to find participants for research
- How to run an Experience Sampling study
- How to conduct a field observation
- How to interview users
- Techniques for analyzing & synthesizing research data
About the Teacher
He founded and led The Israeli Chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association and is a mentor at Google’s LaunchPad program, a bootcamp for early-stage startups around the world. Tomer preaches and teaches user research at Treehouse and General Assembly and holds a master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. He is @tsharon on twitter.
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Course Syllabus
Solving an Important Problem
Before you start developing your idea, you need to make sure it solves a real problem or meets a need people care about. Explore the idea of obsessing about a problem to solve. 8 steps- What is a Problem? 3:41
- What is a Need 1:25
- The Difference Between a Need and a Want 2:43
- Needs and Wants Quiz 3 questions
- Requirements and hypotheses 2:45
- Developing Empathy 1:55
- Assignment: Empathize! 2:11
- Solving an Important Problem Quiz 3 questions
Finding Participants for Your Learning Activity
Recruiting unbiased, representative participants for your learning activities ensures the validity and reliability of the data and feedback you gather. Get to know hands-on techniques for finding learning activity participants. 12 stepsLearning activity: Experience Sampling
In Experience Sampling, representative customers are interrupted several times a day to note their experience in real time. Understand the method, and go through a short, practical how-to guide. 8 stepsLearning activity: Field Observation
Observing people in their natural context of using products or services can take you a long way into uncovering their needs. Learn what to look for when observing people and how to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. 8 stepsLearning activity: Interviewing
Interviewing is a craft you must master when learning from customers. Learn how to conduct an interview and what are the key questions you should ask your customers. 11 stepsMaking Sense of it All
You collected a lot of rich data during these learning activities. Not all of them make sense right away. Get the tools and techniques for synthesizing your data from information into knowledge you can use to make product decisions. 10 steps
