What are the little-known tricks that product managers from Alibaba and Xiaomi use when it comes to exploring user needs?

What users really want may not be expressed directly

Many times, users will not directly say what they really want or what they think. As product managers , we must dig deeper to uncover the core needs of users.

Let’s take a look at an example about Taobao. For example, there is a task on Taobao called purchasing products, and some buyers may have such a demand: they want to filter products by location. There is nothing wrong with this demand itself, and it is not a false demand. Because there are indeed many buyers who have this need, I just want to buy goods from a certain place. Therefore, we will of course design a function to meet the needs of users, which is called location filtering of search results.

However, it would be a waste if we just stop here. Why do you say that? Buyers wanting to filter products by location is just a solution for them; we don’t know the user target behind it. Why did he filter by location? If we dig deeper, we may discover more user needs. We can find that some buyers want to save on shipping costs. At this time, we can provide buyers who want to save on shipping costs with a better choice, which is free shipping. Help users filter out products with free shipping, no matter where they are.

There is another type of buyer who wants to predict how long it will take for the goods to arrive. For example, today is Saturday, and on Monday night he wants to visit a colleague who is currently on maternity leave at home. So he wanted to buy some diapers or other baby products on Taobao for her. Therefore, this user cares a lot about whether he can receive the goods during the day on Monday, so he has a need to predict the arrival time.

His solution at this time was to filter by location. But we can actually do more. For example, we can add a filtering function for 24-hour delivery commitments in the search, or we can add a status tracking function in the transaction status so that it can determine in a timely manner whether the goods have arrived.

What else is possible? Some buyers want to do one thing, that is to search for authentic products from the place of origin. No matter what I want to buy, I have to buy authentic products from that place. For example, for Longjing tea, if a user searches and finds a seller in Chengdu, he may feel a little confused. How can a seller in Chengdu sell Longjing tea? Inspired by this demand, Taobao later created a channel called Special China, which basically includes delicacies from all over the country. This channel became very popular after its launch and received unanimous praise from users.

Obviously, users may not tell you these needs directly, but through in-depth communication with users, we can ask them what the purpose is behind the needs they raise on the surface. Based on their feedback, we can grasp their core needs and ultimately truly meet their needs.

Xiaomi Router | Exploration Lab ( VR ) General Manager Tang Mu:

I saw a lot of smart clothes drying rack products at the Guangzhou Furniture Fair, which made me feel that many traditional manufacturers would be in a panic. The era of smart hardware and "Internet +" has arrived. These companies are coming in with great momentum. What should we (traditional companies) do to make our products smarter or have Internet thinking?

So some demands are created out of thin air. The smart clothes drying rack is a relatively typical case I have seen.

Demand should be based on the scenario, not just a rigid application.

I will divide the friends who read this article into two categories, one is male and the other is female. Of course, through this APP you can see that I can control the clothes rack to rise, fall, and close. We can imagine the user's usage scenario: a housewife in pajamas comes out of the bathroom holding a large basin of clothes, and then goes to the clothes rack. Suddenly I realized that I needed an APP to lower it, so I put down this big basin of clothes and went back to the house, found my phone, opened the APP, clicked the lowering button, and watched it slowly descend. If we describe this scene, we will find it very strange and the user experience is very poor.

Why do you need an APP to control the rise and fall of the clothes drying rack? It even reminds me of some smart products, such as smart toilets. Just imagine that if you need to take out your mobile phone and click to flush after using the toilet, how "interesting" it would be. You can choose whether the flushing volume is high, medium, or low, whether the flushing force is strong, gentle, or medium, how long the flushing lasts, and whether or not to have music accompanying the flushing. You can add any function you can think of. It certainly sounds interesting, but are these features really necessary? For example, do I really need to listen to music when I go to the toilet?

It can be seen that most of the functions we YY are actually useless and meaningless. The functions that we have created with great effort have no practical significance and users do not need them. I think it’s better not to have this kind of smart hardware. Therefore, you must think clearly about what kind of needs really exist when a hardware hopes to evolve into smart hardware. You must think clearly about what the scenario is and whether we want to develop this function. Although many functions look particularly tempting, if they do not meet the user's usage scenario, it is better not to have them.

Hao Zhizhong, former CEO of Xunlei Kankan and founder of Dakashuo:

Not to meet user needs, but to better meet

When we study user needs now, we must pay attention to one thing: there is no gap in demand. What is a demand gap? That is, everything the user wants is met. It's hard to find a market where something has never been done before and no one has ever done it. Users still have needs, but no one is meeting them well. No one has done this before, so I'll do it. This problem basically no longer exists, and all user needs are being met. Of course, there is one very troublesome requirement: I have no money. This cannot satisfy you. As long as you have money, basically everything is possible. This is a question of economic leverage.

We are very clear about user behavior, so what is the focus of our research now? Why do users have this demand? In order to meet this demand, did he choose A, B, or C, or what path did he choose to satisfy it? This reason is the most critical and is also a question of the real needs of deep-seated users. So let’s summarize what the real user needs are. One word can sum it up perfectly: more! There is no gap in demand, so the only thing we can do is to better meet user needs.

How can we better meet user needs? Basically these four aspects:

1. The product is cheaper

2. Better service

3. More fun

4. More convenient

Focus on these aspects to better meet user needs. If we summarize what user needs are, we must be careful not to think that just because I have done aggregation and connection, I have met user needs. We must look at the deeper issues and ask ourselves whether we are better meeting user needs. Can we do better? Better means more efficient. For example, Didi and Uber have greatly improved our travel efficiency, Airbnb has given us more possibilities for renting houses, Meituan and Dianping have allowed us to screen out the most cost-effective group buying plans in a very short time, and so on.

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