Product Behavior

Often, it’s suggested by either my client or a colleague that we talk to “leading-edge” consumers instead of just average consumers. Except sometimes the suggestion is “extreme” consumers. Is there a difference between “leading-edge” and “extreme” consumers?

Another simple tool to help calibrate a project team, or elicit interesting information from a consumer: personification.

It couldn’t be more simple. Just ask something like: if this product were a famous actor, who would it be? Pick a product and ask a few people - I guarantee you’ll get interesting responses.

One issue I see with many clients is that it’s not always clear why to do consumer research. It seems like a good idea - if we’re making products for people, we ought to go out and meet some of them. They’ll tell us what they want, or we’ll see what problems they’re having. But the “magic” - the “design thinking” - how do we get that out of consumer research?