How can APP accurately discover users’ real needs?

Regarding user needs, there is a very famous case.

“Customers don’t buy a drill; they buy a hole in the wall.”

This sentence is so classic that people will probably think of this case whenever they mention user needs.

However, this case seems difficult to replicate.

Because this requires good insight, which not everyone has.

How can we gain insight?

I don’t know how others do it, talent, experience, vision, or deliberate practice?

But I have a method of my own, which I think is pretty good, and I’d like to share it with you.

I call this method:

Black box method.

1.

I wonder if you agree with the following statement:

“Most behaviors are inputs, and their purpose is output.”

How to understand this sentence? Let me give you a simple example.

• Input: loosening the soil, sowing, irrigation, fertilizing, weeding, pest control, fruit picking, and fruit selling.
• Output: An income. (What the user ultimately gains)

If you understand input and output, then we can look at what the black box method is.

Black box method: put all input behaviors into a black box, ignore it, and just find the output.

The reason why many people feel that they have no insight is that they are easily confused by input and only pay attention to the performance, appearance, portability, etc. of the electric drill.

Once we focus on finding output, insights will naturally form.

Let’s try it together:

What do you think users need when it comes to salads?

• Input: Never mind.
• Output: The body became a little healthier.

Therefore, your packaging, copywriting , event planning , etc. are all designed around this demand.

Doesn’t this seem much simpler?

But do you agree with this output conclusion?

Do you feel like you have a different perspective?

That's great, because you've discovered another important point: the output is not unique.

2.

"There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people."

This sentence is also very suitable for business insights.

What do you think users need when it comes to salads?

• A Output: The body has become a little healthier.
• B output: I had a different experience with Chinese food.
• C Output: My colleagues have discovered that I am a healthy food lover.
• D output: Another small step forward on the road to weight loss.
• …

The output results are different in everyone's eyes.

So, is there a right or wrong answer? Of course not.

"Children distinguish between right and wrong, while adults only talk about pros and cons."

Maybe 50% of users eat salad for A, and only 5% for B.

So, can we maximize our benefits by choosing A?

Not really.

You need to make choices and judgments based on factors such as your own resources and competitive situation. Maybe B can maximize your interests.

Therefore, the more amazing insight is not to see the hole through the electric drill, but to see multiple different output results and analyze the one that suits you best.

Maybe the real need of electric drill users is not a hole, but to hang photos on the wall, so you launched a photo frame with built-in glue.

If someone tells you:

“Users don’t buy cars, they buy status.”

You can use the above paragraph to refute him:

“Too young and too simple.”

3.

Next, let’s look at a real case and learn how others use it.

What do you think users need when it comes to Coke?

The answers may include:

Good taste (flavor), the same taste as friends (brand), convenient access everywhere ( channel )...

PepsiCo must have come up with many more answers than we did, but that doesn’t matter. The key point is that after screening, they found that the only thing they had a chance of beating Coca-Cola was taste.

Oh, I forgot to mention that at that time Pepsi was still the younger brother, and was even synonymous with the eternal runner-up, and could never compete with Coca-Cola.

In some areas, Pepsi's sales volume is only 1/8 of Coca-Cola's.

How can Pepsi use taste to change users' choices?

An advertising man named Bob Stanford came up with an idea: blind taste testing.

In public places, invite passers-by to taste Pepsi and Coca-Cola without knowing the brands and choose their favorite flavor.

Then the whole process was filmed and broadcast as an advertisement. And in order to make it more realistic, they deliberately made the footage look raw and rough.

The blind test results are: even consumers who have drunk Coca-Cola all their lives prefer the taste of Pepsi.

After the advertisement was broadcast, it immediately caused a sensation in the beverage industry and Pepsi's sales began to soar.

This challenge was not just about shooting a video, but about launching blind test activities in various places, which set off a national craze.

This is the famous "Pepsi Challenge".

There was even a book called "Pepsi Challenge".

But something more well-known happened next.

Coca-Cola made one of the biggest mistakes in history - changing the formula and launching "New Coke".

The reason behind this incident is that the popularity of the "Pepsi Challenge" forced Coca-Cola to fight back. Moreover, PepsiCo’s experiments have also proved that consumers actually prefer to drink cola with a sweeter taste. So Coca-Cola made a seemingly logical decision and designed a new Coke with a sweeter taste.

Then, imitating the "Pepsi Challenge", the new cola was also taken to the market for blind testing, and the results showed that consumers indeed preferred the new formula.

Therefore, they launched New Coke with full confidence.

As you know, this became Coca-Cola's biggest failure.

The reason why consumers love Coca-Cola is because of its familiar taste and brand.

This case tells us two lessons:

• First, it is important to understand user needs.
• Second, it is also important to understand the different needs of users and choose the one that is beneficial to them.

4.

Talent belongs to a few, but routines belong to everyone.

To summarize today’s article:

How to gain insight quickly?

You can try the "black box method".

Put all input behaviors into a black box and ignore them, just find the output.

What the user ultimately gets is the output.

Once we focus on finding output, insights will naturally form.

However, the output is not unique.

A more powerful insight is the ability to see multiple different output results and analyze the one that suits you best.

What good training methods do you have for insight?

What case have you seen that utilized insight?