How to understand and analyze user needs? Here are three tips!

How to understand and analyze user needs? Here are three tips!
When doing product design and operation , of course we must be user-centric, because products are for users to use, there is nothing to discuss about this. But it does not mean that we should listen to users 100%, and not everything users say is right. Operations staff have the most contact with users, and this is where their responsibilities and value lie. They must not resist or dislike users' complaints. It is very necessary to keep communicating with users, but sometimes there will be some problems. The advantage is that by understanding the user's feelings and needs, you can have direct and effective communication and become a bridge between the entire team and the user. The disadvantage is that due to the excessive frequency and large scale of contact with users, it is possible to be affected by messy and invalid user feedback, thus affecting operational decisions. There is no need to explain the benefits, everyone understands. Let’s focus on the downside and why communicating with users sometimes results in receiving worthless or even wrong information. This problem can be divided into two situations. One is that the person you choose to communicate with is not the target user , or you choose the wrong person, then there is no need to refer to what he says. This situation is relatively easy to avoid. Just give the hard characteristics of the target users, such as city, age, gender, industry, product activity, etc. I won’t go into details here. Another situation is the failure to successfully analyze and transform user needs, leading to biased or even wrong conclusions. Another way to put this is how to understand and analyze user needs. Therefore, the question now is not whether to listen to users, but how to listen. This is a technical job and also one of the important values ​​of operations. Here is my take: 1. Be aware that users may scam you The cheating mentioned here does not mean intentional deception, but rather that when users express their opinions to you, it is very likely that they do not really express their true thoughts. It is important to realize this in advance, as it is a basic requirement for communicating with users. Most of the user feedback you receive is expressed by users through voice or text. This kind of expression has a purpose, such as venting and expressing emotions, or hoping to attract official attention so that the problem can be solved and benefit oneself. Therefore, user feedback is basically subjective and emotional content centered on the user. Different starting points will directly affect the stance. It can only represent the views and interests of individual users and cannot directly cover the group. The conclusion that operations need to draw is objective and rational content with the purpose of product benefits, which should be applicable to the vast majority of people. At this point, the problem becomes very obvious. The contradiction between user feedback and operational expectations is the contradiction between sensibility vs rationality, subjectivity vs objectivity, individual vs group, which is fundamentally different. Such cases are all around us. For example, users often ask us to make a certain function or add a certain category, and we will definitely use it. If you really make them, you will find that no one uses them at all, and no one knows where the people who made the suggestions have gone. Let me give you another complete case. When I first arrived at Maoyan Movies , although it was a purely transactional app, we decided to develop UGC . The first thing that came to my mind was to let film critics publish high-quality content, so I consulted several KOLs to hear their opinions. KOLs all felt that this was unreliable and listed many reasons why this could not be done, such as Maoyan did not have a PC version, so how could one post long articles using only the app; Maoyan was a ticket seller, so who would go here to read movie reviews? It would be weird; how could Maoyan compete with Douban ? There was no reason for it to come here. What they said makes sense, but it is like forcing them to analyze the problem from my perspective, which is actually not necessary and it is not what they are good at. I think the core of the problem is not what they said. As long as I can meet the needs of KOLs, they will naturally publish content. At that time, we invited several KOLs to conduct a trial release on a small scale. In the early stages, we even had to authorize them to help release the content in the background, and then accurately display it to the corresponding user groups. Soon, these film reviews received a lot of comments and likes, satisfying the critics' needs for interaction. In addition, the personal brands of these critics in the industry were also enhanced, and they themselves would have a clear perception of it. For example, people in the industry would tell them that they were very popular recently and that they had seen their works on Maoyan. In this way, these film critics began to contribute content on Maoyan. The reason why I firmly believed that this would work was because I analyzed the needs of film critics, which were interaction from netizens and recognition from the industry. If what I do can meet their two needs, other problems can be ignored. The unfeasible feedback given by film critics before was their subjective feelings and judgment, not the conclusion of the operation. 2. Study user behavior If you want to understand and analyze the real needs of users, it is definitely unreliable to only use the voices of users as a reference. As mentioned in the first point, what users say may be lying to you, or only a small number of dissatisfied people will speak out, and the vast majority of satisfied people don’t need to say anything. So, don't just listen to what the user says, but look at what he does. Specifically, it means analyzing and monitoring your target users and seeing what behaviors they have on competing products or your products. Using actual behavior as a reference is definitely more credible than what the user says themselves. Let’s take the Maoyan Movie mentioned above as an example. At that time, I was subjectively guessing whether there would be such a group: They are simply movie enthusiasts who have no vested interests in the film industry. They are capable of writing high-quality content at a high frequency, and it doesn't matter if they have no fame or fans. They will be motivated by the good atmosphere and interaction brought by users and thus be active on the platform. In order to verify this speculation, we monitored the frequency and quality of KOLs’ posts on Maoyan Movies, selected a few who met the requirements, and met with them to communicate and judge the situation of this person. Outside the site, we research competing products and look for such KOLs among them. Later we found that the old movie website Mtime.com was an ideal research platform. Time.com was founded very early and attracted a group of movie enthusiasts who gathered here purely because they liked the film and would write some film reviews or topics. We invited several active KOLs from Time.com to discuss the issue, and they confirmed my guess. Here are my target users. They are real, not famous but passionate, and will be infected by a good atmosphere and motivated by user interaction and encouragement. This was the ideal KOL target group for Maoyan Movie at the time. From this example, we can see that we find an objectively existing case to verify or draw a conclusion, so as to judge user needs and guide subsequent work. This is something that has already happened, we are just exploring the reasons why it happened and getting reliable conclusions from it. 3. Go deep into the user group Why is it difficult to understand users? Because it requires putting yourself in their shoes. You are the official, not the user, and you are on opposing sides. Users want you to serve them with all your strength, and you want users to help you achieve your goals. Therefore, if you want to truly understand users, you must put yourself in their shoes and break this opposing stance. Try to become a user, throw yourself into the user group, feel it with your heart, and see what the users around you are paying attention to, what they are communicating about, and what their attitudes are towards many things. If you can do this, I believe you will definitely be the operator who understands users the best. There are two issues to note here: First of all, you may say that the field that users are in is not what you are good at or like, and you feel some resistance and reluctance to really integrate into it. My point is that this is your job, it is your choice, it is what you should do, and you have to devote yourself to it. If you really can't do it, you can change your job instead of just sitting there doing nothing. Secondly, to get to know the user groups, you must do it yourself and cannot rely solely on the expertise of your colleagues. Even if other colleagues are responsible for user research, you should participate in your own way and not just listen to your colleagues' feedback. Listening to other people's feedback is equivalent to equating their perspective and analytical ability with your own, and transplanting their conclusions onto yourself. It is not my own analysis conclusion, so my understanding is limited. My approach is to rely mainly on a lot of face-to-face communication, supplemented by research. Face-to-face communication is the process of integrating into the group, making friends with users, participating in activities together, and playing together. When we are working in the film field, we watch movies, talk about movies, and participate in film salons with users; when we are working in the sports field, we talk about skiing and skateboarding with users. Research is used as a supplement because the work in this field is so professional that it requires sufficiently professional talent and a large amount of accurate data to draw valuable conclusions. During the research process, there are too many pitfalls that mislead users. You will find that the conclusions of the survey are always consistent with your previous expectations. This is not because your expectations are accurate, but because you designed an unreasonable research process and gave incorrect guidance in the problem description; and the analysis method may also be problematic, as you only choose to see the conclusions you want to see, which leads to such a result.

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