Mining the user motivation behind the product

[Core Tip] in the designer to user-centric product design, product owners need to through a simple demand phenomenon, to find out what the user's behavior motivation for this demand, and only to dig out the user's behavioral motives to truly achieve the purpose of service users.

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User demand and user motivation

UCD (user-centric design) method can be said to be the current product construction, the most popular design idea. The core idea of this approach is that users know what they want. Users know why they use a product, are very clear what they want the function, they have a preference for the use of habits, in the development of products, users should be involved in the development of each stage. Design the product around the user's needs, rather than forcing users to change their usage habits to suit the ideas of software developers.

For designers, this not only requires them to analyze and predict how users might use the product, but also to validate their assumptions in real-life environments and using the feedback of actual users. This is certainly necessary because it is very difficult for product designers to find out how new users feel about using their products.

But the question is, do users really know what they want? How well do they understand their needs?

Ford Auto founder-Henry Ford's famous quote is often cited as a negative case: "If we listen to the user, we can not build a car, users just need a horse." Steve Jobs, the late Apple CEO, has similar comments. In their view, only listen to the needs of user feedback, can never make excellent products, the fall of Digg is a blindly follow the user feedback the best counter example. This view is also easy to understand, after all, the user is not an expert, he may have their own requirements and expectations of a product's features, but out of the details of the product design, their feedback may not be the best way to implement the function, and is not sufficient as a product next to the direct basis for how to go.

What is the most fundamental problem of product planning? Axure, a leading user experience designer at the Chinese community, Yingung Lei that we can't talk about demand, and we should talk about the relationship between product solutions and user needs. User motivation is the most effective way to establish a link between user needs and solutions, which is the most important task for product designers. Like a police case, sometimes seemingly got reasonable witnesses, physical evidence, but also to explain the criminal motives of the suspect, if the motive of the crime can not explain, the cases may not be hastily finalized.

Users need a fast horse, can we train them faster? That may be true for racing-related industries, but what are their motivations behind this demand? In this simple example, the most fundamental motivation for most users of the need for a fast horse is simply to get to the destination faster, It doesn't matter what kind of tool you implement. In the broader area of product design, this means that we should not simply accept the user's various functional needs, feedback, but really from the user's point of view, to analyze its declared "demand" behind the end of what kind of motivation. This is the real "user-centric design." Looking back, does Apple really care about user feedback? Seemingly so, but its reputation as an industry innovator's image, not only from the genius of the design inspiration, but also from the user's motives, rather than from the user direct feedback of the product ideas.

How to exploit user motivation

How can product developers handle their feedback if they can't directly reflect their motivations? MIUI Product Manager Huffei that while the motivations of users are often not directly displayed, we can still infer and validate their behavior and feedback.

For MIUI, the user has once reflected the question of whether it is possible to automatically use the following application icon to fill an empty space when an application is deleted. What to do with this feedback? The simplest way to do this is to introduce this feature directly, but is this really what the user wants?

But for more detailed product people, the first thing to do is to analyze why users have this problem. The user makes this demand, mainly from its use of iOS system (on iOS, when users delete an application, the subsequent application icon will automatically fill the previous position to keep the desktop neat, and this is the user mentioned scene), but Android does not have this feature. For the user, the problem that they actually want to solve is to apply the icon to arrange the problem, he does not want to leave the gap in the original position.

For the actual resolution of user feedback, should be informed of the user feedback behind the hidden motives. For a more convenient way to tidy up your mobile desktop, is the iOS-like approach that users require to be a direct introduction to Android based MIUI? This needs to take into account the characteristics of the system, because of the presence of desktop plug-in widget, Android Desktop is not only like iOS is a Use of the list, but a rich display of information space, the user has a lot of flexibility from the arrangement of their own application icons and plug-ins, such as a 2x2 clock plug-in next to not fill the icon, choose to leave blank, and in the plugin below the eight application icon placed. In this case, if you copy the automatic completion of IOS, the configuration of the plug-in system will undoubtedly cause problems.

MIUI The final analysis that users do not always want the icon will automatically fill, but do occasionally have such a usage scenario. So MIUI provides a special mode, when the desktop into the editing mode, the user shakes three mobile phones, the vacancy between the icon will automatically fill up, but in the normal desktop state, maintain the Android desktop features. This can be said to be a more reasonable solution than simply adopting or rejecting user feedback.

What we have to realize is that while users may lack expertise, many people are fully capable of making rational decisions when making choices, driven by motivation. Although its external behavior and verbal feedback can not directly provide product people with direct creative clues, but users do not have unreasonable to do something, the deep motivation is a product can be an important factor in success. The concept of "user-centric design" is not a problem, but in the user-centric product design, product owners need to look through the surface of the user needs, to find the user the motives behind this demand, only in order to truly achieve the purpose of service users.