Identifying Customer Needs

and

Generating Product Specifications

EME 185A Winter 2016

Goals of Identifying Needs

​

• Ensure that the product or solution is focused on stakeholder needs.
• Identify latent or hidden needs as well as explicit needs.
• Provide a fact base for justifying the product specifications.
• Create an archival record of the needs activity of the development process.
• Ensure that no critical stakeholder need is missed or forgotten.
• Develop a common understanding of stakeholder needs among the team.

Stakeholders

?

Mission Statement

• Concisely describe project purpose and goals (scope of effort)
• Should include product users and stakeholders

Mission Statement Example

Steps To Develop Needs

1. Gather raw data from stakeholders.
2. Interpret the raw data in terms of stakeholder needs.
3. Organize the needs into a hierarchy of primary, secondary, and (if necessary) tertiary needs.
4. Establish the relative importance of needs.
5. Reflect on the results and the process.

Step 1: Gather Raw Data

• Interviews with stakeholders
• Focus groups with stakeholders
• Observation of product users
• User story generation

Interviews

Goal: To elicit an honest expression of needs without influencing their response.

• Develop an “interview guide”

Example question prompts:

• When and why do you this type of product?
• Walk us through a typical session using the product.
• What do you like (dislike) about the existing products?
• What improvements would you make to the product?

​

Interview Tips

• Go with the flow
• Use visual stimuli and props.
• Suppress preconceived hypotheses about the product technology.
• Have the customer demonstrate the product and/or typical tasks related to the product.
• Be alert for surprises and the expression of latent needs.
• Watch for non-verbal information.
• Use notes, audio/video recordings, photos.

User Stories

User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. They typically follow a simple template:

As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>.

• Anyone can write user stories about any user.
• User stories can be written and evaluated anytime throughout the design process.

​

​

​

User Story Steps

1. Develop as many user stories as possible (even if you aren’t the user). 100’s!!
2. One user story per piece of paper (index card, sticky note).
3. Arranged on walls or tables to facilitate planning and discussion
4. The discussion that is created is the most important part.

Reference: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories

​

User Story Examples

• As a mother, I can get from the grocery store to the house with my groceries.
• As a user, I can backup my entire hard drive.
• As a designer, I want simple structures so that the stress analysis is easier.
• As a wheelchair user, I want to get through narrow doors so that I can see building spaces that I’ve never seen.
• As a mechanic, I want easy access to parts so I don’t bust my knuckles so often.

Trello Boards

A tool to create lists of stuff. Sorta like Pinterest.

www.trello.com

Activity: User Stories

• Come up with 10 user stories for your project.
• Give your user stories to your teammate for them to read.
• The neighbor then adds to create 10 new user stories.
• Share some of your user stories with the class.

Step 3: Analyze the Needs Data

• Express the need in terms of what the product has to do, not in terms of how it might do it.
• Express the need as specifically as the raw data.
• Use positive, not negative, phrasing.
• Express the need as an attribute of the product.
• Avoid the words “must” and “should”.

Example Interview Processing

Next steps for User Stories

• Split complex stories into sub-stories
• Add “conditions of satisfaction”
• How will you know the need is satisfied?

Step3: Organizing Needs and User Stories

1. Group needs (on cards) into similar needs (3 to 7 needs).
2. Choose a label for each group.
3. Create super groups: two to five groups.
4. Review and edit the needs and user stories, split, combine, remove, etc.
5. Rank the relative importance of supergroups, groups, and needs.

Example Hierarchy

Step 5: Reflect on the Results

• Have we interacted with all of the important types of customers?
• Are we able to see beyond our needs?
• Are there areas of inquiry we should pursue? More interviews?
• Who should we keep talking with?
• What did we learn that we didn’t know before? Surprised?
• Did we involve all the stakeholders?
• How to improve this process for the future?

Transforming Needs into Specifications

Specifications:

Precise description of what the product must do that includes a metric and a value.

Metric: description of the specification, e.g. time to assemble

Value: desired quantity, e.g. 75 seconds

Notes on specs

• Target specifications should be developed once needs are established

• Metrics come directly from needs and can be related through table

• One can set ideal and marginally acceptable target values based on competitors’ performance, etc.

• After Concept Selection – modeling, analysis, etc. lead to Refined Specifications

Notes on metrics

• Metrics should be dependent variables and specify overall product performance.
• Metrics should be practical.
• Metrics should include the popular criteria in the marketplace.
• Some metrics can be binary (i.e., Pass/Fail) for such aspects as safety compliance.

Steps for Specification Generation

1. Prepare the List of Metrics
2. Collect Competitive Benchmarking Information
3. Set Ideal and Marginally Acceptable Target Values
4. Reflect on the Results and the Process

Example Needs: Mountain Bike Suspension

Metrics Example

Needs-Metric Table

Activity

• Get your original needs back (plus neighbors)
• Now write out a list of metrics with units and values.

Competition Comparison Example

Competition Scoring Example

Set Ideal and Marginally Acceptable Target Values

Five ways to express metrics:

• At least X
• At most Y
• Between X and Y
• Exactly X
• A set of discrete values

Target Specs

Iteration!

Generating user needs and specifications is an iterative process. You should be doing this all throughout the project as you learn new information and adjust the resulting specifications accordingly.

Reflect after each iteration.

Specification Refinement Steps

1. Develop technical models of the product.
2. Develop a cost model of the product.
3. Refine the specs, making trade-offs when necessary.
4. Flow down the specs as appropriate.
5. Reflect on the results and the process.