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Researching User Needs

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What is a Problem?

3:41 with Tomer Sharon

A problem, is defined by two components: 1. The gap between the current and desired state. 2. How much the problem owner wants to do something about it.

Whitney Hess, "What’s Your Problem?"
Stephen Corey, "Professed attitudes and actual behavior"
Ron Cutler, "Why are the British so bad at washing their hands?"
Josh Seiden, "Replacing Requirements with Hypotheses"
Eric Ries, "The Lean Startup"
Brad Feld, "Problem Solving Versus Empathy"
Indi Young, "Practical Empathy"

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    [MUSIC] 0:00
    Hello, my name is Tomer Sharon and I'm a user experience researcher at Google, and 0:04
    I wanna tell you about my garage door. 0:09
    I live in north New Jersey, and we have a garage outside our house. 0:11
    We never park our cars there. 0:15
    We mostly use it to store outdoorsy toys for our kids. 0:17
    Every winter when the weather becomes very cold, the keypad for 0:21
    the garage door opener freezes. 0:24
    Definitely a problem. 0:27
    To open the door, once a year I crawl into the garage through a small window and 0:28
    turn the garage door opener from automatic to manual. 0:33
    When spring arrives, I switch the door opener back to automatic. 0:37
    What I just described to you is a problem and a bypass for solving it. 0:42
    The problem is that my garage door opener keypad freezes over wintertime. 0:46
    The solution is that I pick up the phone, 0:51
    talk with my landlord, have him send a technician to fix it and so on. 0:54
    Yet I'm not doing that for some reason. 0:58
    I don't care enough about this problem to properly solve it. 1:01
    A problem, therefore, is defined by two components. 1:04
    One, the gap between current and desired state. 1:08
    And two, how much the problem owner wants to do something about it. 1:11
    During this course, you'll learn ways to answer one of 1:17
    the most important questions you ask yourself when you have an idea. 1:20
    Do people need my product? 1:23
    The first step, and probably the most critical one, 1:26
    is figuring out the problem your product idea solves. 1:29
    Life is too short for you to work on a product that doesn't matter. 1:33
    You don't have time to work on the wrong product. 1:36
    If your product doesn't solve a problem people care about, 1:39
    it is most likely that your business fails. 1:42
    You'll waste your money, you'll spend time you can never get back and 1:45
    you'll be taking a huge risk. 1:49
    While you might agree with everything I just said, 1:52
    many business entrepreneurs intuitively think of, invest time and 1:55
    put most of their effort in developing a solution, a product, while neglecting 1:59
    the critical part of what I like to call, falling in love with a problem. 2:04
    What these entrepreneurs do sounds very reasonable. 2:08
    They approach as many people as they know, usually friends and 2:12
    family, describe their product idea, and ask them if they use it, 2:15
    if they think it's useful, if they'll pay for it, and how much they'll pay for it. 2:19
    If they're a little bit insecure they onLaunch a survey asking 2:24
    the same questions. 2:28
    The feedback they collect usually encourages them to 2:29
    think they have validated their product idea, and they quickly move on in 2:32
    full speed to establishing their business and nailing down product development. 2:36
    The vast majority of entrepreneurs later wonder why product sales are not 2:42
    taking off, why people sign up then not use the product, 2:46
    why their beautiful so-called validated creation is crashing to the ground. 2:50
    This course will introduce you to three simple user research activities of 2:56
    learning from users that can help you do a better job, 3:00
    that can help your product solve a real problem people care about. 3:03
    Before we move on, let me just quickly define what user research is. 3:09
    User research is a discipline focused on providing insights into product users, 3:14
    their perspectives and their abilities to the right people at the right time. 3:19
    User research technique can help answer three types of questions. 3:24
    What do people need? 3:28
    What do people want? 3:30
    And can people use the thing we're working on? 3:32
    This course will focus on the first question. 3:36
    Now let's talk about needs. 3:39

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