Customer perspective validates the hypothesis (generated in Step 1). This forms the second stage of the design thinking process. By successful validation of the hypothesis, we can ensure that our future design is based on facts. Here we encompass all the essential steps that lead to the formation of the design persona. These personas help us with hypothesis validation through a customer experience map. This element of empathy and design brings us a step closer to solve our customer’s problems.
Why is Customer Perspective used?
In the first step of the design thinking process, we were able to define all our business challenges of our stakeholders. Here we check which of the hypothetical needs or processes were correctly accessed. We spend a lot of time doing research and going through the various research scenarios. The research can be qualitative or quantitative. Here we try to quantify the insights we gathered so that we can have tangible problems that we need to tackle in the design challenge (Step 3 of the design thinking process).
Breakdown of the process
Our main aim at this stage is to validate the hypothesis. For this, we need both the design team and the executive team on board. From the executive team, it is a good idea to have a representative from various domains like IT, marketing, sales, finance, HR, etc so that their specialization can help us understand and validate what the real business problems are. For the successful execution of this step, we have various tools that further elaborate on the customer perspective. This involves the following:
- Recruitment process: This step involves selecting the right people to help us with our further understanding of the customer perspective. We can engage an external recruitment agency to help us to reach out to the best people to research.
- Research scenario: We take our business hypothesis and asks the customer their views on that particular step.
- Research methods
- Qualitative: This includes methods such as in-depth interviews.
- Quantitative: This generally includes an online questionnaire where we can apply statistical tools to further validate our hypothesis.
- Research synthesis and creating personas
- Creating a customer experience map based on our observations.
- Creating personas (aggregation of the respondents): This helps us to aggregate our responses to understand what our customer profile and personality is like.
- Business hypothesis mapping: We map our hypothesis map created in step 1 of the design thinking process and compare it with the personas and check if our hypothesis is accepted or rejected.
These steps help us give an overall picture of the validated business problems. It also gives us a direction to proceed to get to the bottom of these challenges.
Take away from Customer Perspective
We are effectively able to validate the business hypothesis in this step of the design thinking process. We have been able to track what particular problems are faced by our customers. Additionally, the user-centricity of this step, helps us get closer to the customer’s mindset so that we can improve their experience and meet our business goals.
In the next phase of the design thinking process, we get to the root of the problems in the design challenge. We will take all the validated business hypotheses and map out and prioritize the problems we are looking to solve.
External links:
- Design tools: http://www.designkit.org/methods
- Design Thinking process