post

Footer About

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

General

Product Unplugged Episode 3 with Pierce Healy

Product Unplugged Episode 2 with Lorilyn McCue

Product Strategy

Building Product Teams

Diversity and Inclusion

Digital Transformation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Ethics

Minimum Viable Product

Enterprise Product Management

OKRs

Customer Research

Hypothesis and Testing

Business Strategy

User Research

👩‍🚀🚀   Live now for MTP members: <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/membership/#events" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Driving Innovation AMA with Tendayi Viki</a>

Roadmaps: Break the rules without breaking the principles

Got questions about your product career?

Product roadmaps vs data – Jeremy Levy on The Product Experience

From engineering to product management at Google

Mind the Product joins Pendo

Eira is an editor for Mind the Product. She's been a business journalist, editor, and copywriter for longer than she cares to think about.

Eira Hayward

<p>As C Todd Lombardo, VP of Product and Experience at Openly, explained in his Prioritised AMA, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/performing-effective-user-research-advice/">Performing Effective User Research</a></span>, product research done well can help you to avoid making a whole load of bad product decisions. But what are the practical steps you need to take to perform research well?</p>
<p>In this 2-part, quick read series, we&#8217;ll cover the types of research product teams should be doing and the steps to take to get started.</p>
<h1>What is product research?</h1>
<p>First things first, product research is a mix of user research, market research and analytics. It means looking into the problems customers have, understanding them in a market context, and then bringing them with analytics to show you how people are using your product.</p>
<h3>What types of product research can you do?</h3>
<p>According to Nadia Elinbabi, C Todd’s colleague and Senior User Experience Designer at Openly, at a practical level, it’s useful to split your product research into three types:</p>
<ol>
<li>Generative</li>
<li>Tactical</li>
<li>Evaluative</li>
</ol>
<p>Openly is doing all three types of research at the moment.</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Generative </span>research feeds into the business’ long term strategic plans.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tactical </span>or descriptive research feeds into items that they’re currently building or designing.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Evaluative</span> research tests what has been designed to make sure that they’re meeting goals and needs.</li>
</ul>
<p>”Between the three of these, you not only get to influence the product and strategy, but you also influence it at every piece of the process, which is awesome,” she says.</p>
<h2>How often should you do product research?</h2>
<p>As a general guide, generative research should be ongoing, tactical research is tied to specific projects, and evaluative research is most useful towards the end of a project.</p>
<h2>How do you start product research?</h2>
<p>Nadia jokes that no one ever asks her to do three months of deep research, rather they’ll usually say something like ‘we didn’t get this customer but we don’t know why’ or ‘this didn’t work and we don’t know why’.</p>
<p>To get started on research, it&#8217;s therefore wise to identify the question to be answered. It&#8217;s only then you can analyse the best way to get the answer.</p>
<p>Here are some simple steps to follow:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 1: </span>When you hear a question no one has a ready answer for, make moves to find out about it — just ask the person to tell you more. Your company’s subject matter experts should be a rich source of initial questions for research.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 2:</span> Find out what the information would be used for, and the impact it might have on business decisions.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 3: </span>If you&#8217;re not sure which path the research should take, ask “if you had the answer to this question what would you do or change?”. This can help you decide where your focus should be so you can start finding answers.</li>
</ul>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h3>DIY research always wins</h3>
<p>Using a research agency may expedite your product research and solve any bandwidth problems, but product managers won’t get a primary understanding of the issues. They also don’t get to sit in or have the opportunity to change the direction of the research. C Todd says he always prefers product teams to conduct research themselves, if possible, for this reason.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2></h2>
<h2>What are the golden rules of product research?</h2>
<p>Finally, there are a few golden rules of research to keep in mind:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Beware of biases</span>. Everyone has them. For that reason, another perspective is always useful, so consider bringing third parties in to help you combat bias.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Let people talk.</span> Don’t fill in their answers. Even if you think you know what someone will say, wait and let them speak, they may add something unexpected or go in a different direction.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Match the research method to the question you want to answer.</span> And tempting though it may be, don’t get focused on the solution too early.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Share your knowledge</span> and find different ways to do this. Do put your research in a centralised place but also find ways to share it in a more snackable format because it should inform everyone’s decision making.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Break it down.</span> If you find your research isn’t being read or integrated into the work, then break it down more.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Figure out how to make it a habit.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">In part 2, out tomorrow (5 October 2021) we&#8217;ll explore why research typically goes wrong and share tips on how to effectively analyse your results.</span></p>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-77"><a class="gofollow" data-track="NzcsMjEsMSw2MA==" href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/product-management-training/public-workshops/"><img decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/General-Training-Next-Level-FOOTER-scaled.jpg" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Product Unplugged Episode 1 with Thor Mitchell

It’s all about the outcome by Georgie Smallwood

Self-care and stress management for product leaders by Dominique Jost

Empowered Teams and Decision Agility

Hacking Confidence by Janice Fraser

Scaling Product Teams: In Defense of Process by Spectra (Adaora) Asala

Great User Research (for Non-Researchers) by Steve Portigal

You Don’t Own the Voice of the Customer by Tricia Wang

Simple steps to effective product research – Part 1: Getting started

ProductTank Columbus

ProductTank Tauranga

ProductTank Edinburgh

Prioritised Member AMA - Perfecting product roadmaps

ProductTank San Diego

Navigating difficult relationships panel

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank NoVa

Remote Training Workshops

ProductTank London

ProductTank Birmingham

ProductTank Oslo

ProductTank Astana

ProductTank NoVA

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Belgrade

ProductTank Madrid

ProductTank Leeds

ProductTank Zürich

ProductTank Perth

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Richmond

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Washington

ProductTank Sofia

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Ljubljana

ProductTank Kraków

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Dublin

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Bogotá

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Madison

ProductTank Singapore

ProductTank Portland

ProductTank Budapest

ProductTank Porto

ProductTank Austin

ProductTank Los Angeles

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Des Moines

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Helsinki

ProductTank Reading

ProductTank Brighton

ProductTank Valencia

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Malmö

ProductTank Canberra

ProductTank Paris

ProductTank Manchester

#mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 Conference

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Leadership Forum

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Workshops

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Conference

#mtpcon London+EMEA 2022 Conference

Simple steps to effective product research – Part 1: Getting started

Eira Hayward

Read more

Comments