Overview
Developing products to improve work conditions is multi-faceted. It's important to know who you're building for, what they're responsible for and what they need to do with your product. When we focus on one area, we sometimes miss the big picture. This leaves us with a limited view of a user's greatest needs, overlaps, and additional processes. Here's how to open that up.
In this article you will learn one way to use generative AI to lead a workshop to holistically understand a user's needs. From here, you can develop an MVP for your product strategy. This method can also be used to find gaps in existing products.
For discussion purposes we have a fictitious scenario. In this scenario we are developing a reservation system for national parks. The goal is to figure out what visitors visiting national parks need from a reservation system to plan our MVP. To start we will answer the following questions:
- Who are the people visiting national parks?
- Why do they use reservation system and what are their ultimate goals for visiting parks?
Personal Thoughts
As a designer working across industries with partners each creating unique and innovative solutions, I have found generative AI to be helpful in gaining a starting point. I use it to validate industry knowledge, users' roles and responsibilities, jobs that need to be done, and goals with actual humans. I find with limited time it’s easier to start with something vs. a blank page. This guidance isn’t meant to leave out humans! It serves as a conversation starter and should always be validated. I can't stress that enough. There are horror stories out there where people rely on generative AI as the source of truth only to be humiliated. Don't be that person.
Outcomes
- Gaining a holistic view of all users that will use this product
- Understanding what users come to this product to do
- Understanding why they use this product to achieve their goals
- Prioritized areas for MVP
- Alignment on vision and roadmap
Materials and environment
- Online white board collaboration tool (Miro or Mural)
- Access for your participants into the white board of your choosing
- Generative AI access such as Open AI’s ChatGPT 3.5 or 4 or Microsoft Edge’s Bing Chat for initial research to be validated
Before the workshop directions
- Create online whiteboard. I used Mural for this example.
- Set up the board like a grid with sections for personas (visitors), goals, jobs to be done and components. Add blank grey squares, for when participants need to add answer that is not listed.
- Add agenda for the workshop:
- Activity 1 Personas |15-30 minutes depending on list
- Activity 2 Goals | 30 minutes
- Activity 3 Jobs to be done | 30 minutes
- Activity 4 Components | Optional
- Ask generative AI questions for personas:
- What park reservation websites exist in the US?
- Who are the personas that use the reservation system?
- Who are the people that make reservations?
- Ask generative AI questions for goals:
- What do they need to be able to accomplish on that site?
- What do they need to know when they are on the ground?
- What are visitors’ goals for visiting parks?
- What are their goals for reserving?
- Ask generative AI questions for jobs to be done:
- What types of reservations can they make?
- Once they make their reservations what other types of information do they need?
- How much in advance do they need to make their reservations?
- What do they need to know before they arrive?
- The questions above are what I used, feel free to ask more. Then add answers to your board in grey boxes. This is what you will start the workshop with and validate with your participants.
- If this is an already existing product, ask your participants to add component types using the blank grey boxes to the component column before the workshop. See attached pdf for full view that includes this column.
Workshop day directions
- Make sure your participants have access to the board and can navigate the board and add items.
- Run an icebreaker to get participants using tool and warmed up.
- Go over agenda for the day.
- Explain task for each activity. Each activity will run for 30 minutes or less. For activities 1-3 they will need to change boxes from grey to green if true, red if false, and modify the text if it is incorrect. There are blank grey boxes provided if they need to add items. Once a new item has been added they must change box color to green. Additionally for activities 2-3 they will add a star shape to highlight the 5 most important goals, and jobs to be done.
- Once done, walk through any items that are in question. Move all the red off the board. Group similar items together.
- This concludes your workshop session with your participants for the day. Thank them for their time and tell them next steps.
Post workshop directions
- Make a duplicate of your board right next to the original one. Lock the original.
- Look at the grouped items for goals. Can you name the theme?
- Use the newly named themes for your goals and arrange them across. If there are more than 5 use the starred ones to only pull the top 5. In this example the goals have been bucketed into 3 main goals; Experience, Plan and Secure and Customize
- Move all the jobs to be done under the goal item it belongs in.
- Take these insights and change the format into a mind map visualization.
- Map in this order: Persona > Goal > Specific Job to be Done that belong in that goal area.
- Rearrange the jobs to be done with the starred (top 5) ones at the top
- If a product already exists, look to see what on this list is already a function. Add the component name next to the specific jobs to be done item it relates to. Once you are through you can visually see where the gaps are. If a product does not exist, ideate on what type of feature could solve this need. Does that item need to be actionable is also another great thing to delineate.
- What you end up with is a holistic overview, validated and collaborated on with customers, subject matter experts that shows what your product needs are for a particular persona. You can use this to do additional research to validate with other customers, and plan your MVP.
If you use this method, I would love your feedback. What went well, what could be improved? Many thanks!
