Читать книгу Validating Product Ideas - Tomer Sharon - Страница 35

Interviewing combined with persona development for answering the critical question “Who are the users?” is a priceless lean user research technique with the following benefits:

• Direct: Nothing beats primary, face-to-face, in-context research where you ask questions, get answers, and observe human behavior. This direct, in-your-face setup is a priceless benefit of interviewing.

• Challenges perceptions: Each person who is involved in product development approaches new ideas for features, products, and services with a set of assumptions and perceptions about users, their needs, and their motivations. An interview is when these assumptions and perceptions are being fundamentally shaken, challenged, and in many cases, changed. All of that is moving toward one goal—uncovering (and caring about) the truth.

• Increases empathy: Just by conducting interviews with existing or potential users, taking notes during someone else’s interview, or observing live (or recorded) interviews, you become significantly more empathetic toward humans, especially those whom you see as your users. There’s probably no better way to attain this empathy.

• Builds credibility: Interview findings support product design and roadmap decisions in a way that adds credibility to your decision-making processes. Backing your product decisions with interview data is showing everyone around (investors, senior executives, paying customers) that your work is based on serious science, not on taking huge risks, intuition, or guesstimates.