When we talk about customer centricity today, then everything, really everything revolves around the topic of customer needs. “Why?” is often the simple request in well-intentioned customer surveys. I can’t put it nicely, I’m afraid, so I must be frank: The question WHY doesn’t work!
Jobs to Be Done is a powerful concept that allows us to better understand what customers want, and to change our self-image accordingly. It lets us be a service provider who adopts the tasks to be carried out by customers and concentrates all our efforts on doing this job in the best possible way.
When developing new products and services, situations can arise in which the team feels insecure: In which direction should we develop? Shall we take route A or route B? How much potential lies in each different idea? What does the market really need? This uncertainty about the development path in one of our product teams has led to a design sprint.
A usability test, that only takes five seconds? Admittedly, it is almost too good to be true. The reservation against Five Second Tests, a specific form of remote usability testing, is great by and large. Experts traditionally place a lot of value on a clean methodology and clean results. Skepticism toward a new and simpler method is understandable. The attractiveness of Five Second Tests lies undisputedly in its simplicity. Through a link, participants are referred to a page on which they are shown a screenshot of a web site for exactly five seconds. Following, they have to answer questions to this page. Finished.
Numerous internet surfers probably know the following process: you’re surfing a website and you find a link with an e-mail-address. You click on the link, which begins your odyssey-like journey through the depths of your computer. Why? Because the link leads to the whirring of your hard drive, as the mail-client installed on your computer stirs to action (or, possibly, asks to be set up) and all sorts of additional windows begin to pop open on your screen. Even though you had just been comfortably surfing through the web, now you have to master strong currents as you fight off towering waves.
What before was true for the video recorder is unfortunately again true for many current websites: users have difficulties in completing tasks and reaching their goals. How to use those formerly expensive video recorders was just something the user had to learn, for better or for worse; after all, the piece of equipment was paid for. But the next website – and therefore the next provider of comparable services – is only a click away.
