We just started a new season of mentorship program organized by IxDA Hong Kong. My mentees are a team of 4 who will enter a Design Challenge aimed to help local NGOs to address their needs through digital solution. They were asked to review the NGOs high-level problem statement before preparing a video pitch for the participating organizations.
My mentees did a great job by swiftly putting together a WhatsApp group and scheduled the first video call meeting. Their vibes and enthusiasm marked an excellent start of our UX journey together. At one point, I noticed how some team members use the word “insight” — to communicate “an observation” or “a point of view”. I risked coming across as fussy, but couldn’t help sharing with my team that “Insight” is a special word in my world of UX. Because insight is the precious fuel that lights up the path towards solving a high-value opportunity. In fact, too many digital projects fell into the trap of solving the wrong problem and building an irrelevant solution. It explains why UX and product discovery are so valuable to any digital project.
An Insight Story
When I was serving as VP of UX in a mobile innovation agency, a multinational healthcare brand came to us and expressed their wish to leverage digital to engage a specific customer segment — families with young children.
“We want an app…” they said. The idea was to build an app with a complete library of quiz questions for parents to better prepare their children for kindergarten interview. On a side note: If you’re not from Hong Kong or Asia, you probably could not understand why a toddler needs to be trained for kindergarten interview. Unfortunately, this was the case in the Hong Kong and it still is.
Instead of taking the simple route to dive in and start building the app ‘as told’, we believed it is in our client’s best interest to solve the right problem for their customers. Within a tight project schedule, we designed and conducted discovery sessions among families with young children. Armed with a few hypotheses, we conducted interviews and learned from our interactive prototypes. From which we uncovered a key insight — that many of the toddlers who struggled in kindergarten interviews, did poorly not because they didn’t know the answers, but because they were too scared of the strangers. Based on this insight, we crafted an FaceTime-like app experience that simulated school interviews with ‘strangers’. We took it a step further and turned it into an opportunity for parents and kids’ bonding. The app enjoyed a tremendous success. On top of taking the top ranking in appstore, it achieved a 90-day retention rate of over 85%. We didn’t just deliver an app, we made the most out of this digital engagement opportunity for our client and their customers.
Why the best team invests in discovery
Insight is the difference between a mediocre solution and an impactful customer experience. But one needs to take the effort to uncover and examine insights. The best product teams know the discovery process is the 20/80 rules in effective solution creation.
How would we tell whether what we have got is an insight, or a mere observation? It depends on the quality of the insight. Use the following pointers to examine the quality of ‘insight’ collected:
- Is it powerful enough to sort out priorities in the problem space you’re working on?
- Are you able to craft a “How Might We” statement with it and define the core opportunity?
- Does it bring the team together and give them the excitement to design, to build and to serve?
This is what I shared with my mentees: “Resist the urge to jump into solution, especially before if you haven’t started learning about the problem”. Invest first in uncovering a powerful insight, then through prototyping, validating and iterating the solution with your customers & stakeholders, you will find success coming your way.
