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What people say they need is not what they actually need
Why surveys and focus groups don’t work and why people lie about their desires.
Preface
Have you ever had a case where you interview customers, ask them a lot of questions about how they feel using your product, where they get stuck or what improvements they would like to see in the next product update?
You conducted interviews with users, now you have a solid customer feedback and can’t wait to implement it. You go and work your tail off to integrate those features and functions, spend countless work hours and a lot of money to develop everything you planned so far and here we go, you are ready to ship the update. Life is good!
But at the end, the results are not quite what you expected them to be. Customers are still not satisfied with your product, you pull your hair out trying to figure out the “What?” and “Why?”. Have you already calculated how much potential revenue has been lost? You’re better not to tell this number to other stakeholders :) They will be angry and will be pointing fingers at person who is responsible for all of it. Guess who is that lucky guy?
The truth is there’s a very big difference between what people say they need and what they actually need or do. When people tell you their reasons for deciding to take a certain action, you have to be skeptical about what they say. Because decision making is unconscious, they may be unaware of the true reasons for their decisions.
This important difference between what people want and what they need is key to understand when you work on your product.
Walmart UX mistake
Back in 2009, Walmart conducted a survey, asking customers: “Would you like Walmart aisles to be less cluttered?” And they say, “Yes, now that you ask, yes, that would be nice.” And you check the box by “customer input” and report back, hey everyone, good news, yes, customers like the idea.
So, Walmart cleared space and reduced inventory by 15%. Customer satisfaction — via survey — shot up.
‘Hey, we did what you asked, what do you think?” They said “Yeah it’s great, fantastic!”
At the same time sales plummeted by $1.85 billion.
It was a costly UX mistake Walmart ever did. We will get back to the details later but now let’s do this…
A thought exercise
On a scale of 1 to 10 rate how happy you are right now. Write that number down. Now imagine that you win the lottery today. You now have more money than you ever thought you would. You have millions and millions of dollars. What do you think your happiness rating would be at the end of today? Write that number down. What do you think your happiness rating will be two years from now?
The truth is you won’t be any happier than you are today.
Doctor Susan Weinschenk in her book ‘100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People’ did a great job summarizing and explaining it. Here are some psychological facts:
- People are poor predictors.
- The brain has a buil-in regulator. Whether negative events happen, or positive events happen, you stay at about the same level of happiness most of the time. Some people are generally happier or less happy than others, and this level of happiness stays constant no matter what happens to them. This means that people are not very accurate in their predictions of future happiness.
- Preference doesn’t equal reality. What we say and do are very different things. It’s like when people say they’re going to go on a diet tomorrow — and the next day they’re eating a double-bacon burger for lunch.
Because of this:
Surveys and Focus groups don’t work.
- Most participants lie. When people tell you their reasons for deciding to take a certain action, you have to be skeptical about what they say. Because decision making is unconscious, they may be unaware of the true reasons for their decisions.
- Person’s ego distorts reality. We have a tendency to enhance our image to get peer approval. You want people to think highly of you.
- The focus group setting is unnatural. A bunch of strangers led in a discussion by another stranger. In this situation it’s very hard to instill trust that is necessary for people to give honest answers. Some things that influence behavior can’t be uncovered in the space of 10–15 minutes.
- People are asked to judge things they haven’t used. Imagining using something isn’t the same as actually using it.
- Our preferences are subject to our emotions. If we have a lousy day, it’s going to influence everything we do, it’s gonna influence our responses. I will color the degree people say — “It’s the most amazing product I’ve ever used” or “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I hate it.”
Solution
Conduct user observation as opposed to surveys or focus groups. I want to watch people do something, I don’t want hear them describe how they would do it and take that to the bank. I may wanna hear but I don’t trust it. I want to see behavior .
Don’t try to figure out WHAT the user wants — figure out WHY they want it. The right question will be:
“Walk me through how you would complete Task X”
Throughout the process, remain focused on the why, the motivation. You cannot design or build anything that is a value without addressing context, without addressing the situation which people will use it, without addressing the things that influence the use.
People care a lot less about the tool. What they really care about is satisfaction!
It also worth mentioning the words of Peter Druker, Management Consultant:
“The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him…nobody pays for a ‘product’. What is paid for is satisfaction”.
Why? Because we are human beings and we are focused mostly on desired outcomes:
- Are we happy at the end of experience?
- Do we feel that we got what we paid for?
Here is an example from a real life. On weekend, I like to play video games to take my mind off and just to have fun. I have around 30 games in my ”Steam” account, they are the latest state of the art creations of the best game design studios. Curious how many of those games are played every weekend?
Just one. Why?
Because most of them don’t bring any satisfaction or fun. Surely each of them has amazing graphics, interactions, sound effects etc. But if I’m unhappy at the end of my experience, if I’m not sure I got what I was promised and paid for, who cares how beautiful your game/product is?
Your software is only good as the people who use it. If nobody cares about the feature, it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t matter to anyone, it’s not worth doing.
Takeaway
Focus groups and surveys fulfill the psychological needs of SELLERS, instead of psychological needs of USERS. Leaning on those tools to figure out what people want is a dangerous and expensive proposition.
Remember Walmart?
Walmart essentially came up with the answer first, then asked customers to agree to it. The way they asked the question was a leading question. It was phrased in a way:
“Hey, woulnd’t this be better? Would you like this more?’
And psychologically we inclined to agree, because we automatically assume it’s a good thing.
While people enjoyed the increase in negative space inside the stores, what mattered more was a vast selection of cheap items. And when that vast selection was taken away, they got mad. So did they like the less clutter? Sure! But there is a bigger need and that bigger need wasn’t addressed.
This illustrated the peril of listening to what customers say instead of what they actually do.
Exclusively published for Medium.
Written by Alex Gilev, a user experience (UX) consultant with a focus on creating innovative software for SaaS companies who want big results.
Alex has developed and delivered strategies & design Fortune 500 companies (Johnson&Johnson, Compeed, PayPal), Bay Area companies, top US digital design agencies, and helped startups on the early stages of seeding.
He also studied ‘Disruptive strategy’ at Harvard Business School, ‘Business models’ and ‘Value proposition design’ at Strategyzer academy.
Thank you for reading!