The document discusses how to design products that customers love by understanding what customers want. It states that customers want to achieve their goals, and products should facilitate this by being both useful and usable. The document advocates spending more time understanding the problem from the customer's perspective before designing solutions. It provides tips for product design such as identifying customer needs through ethnography, generating hypotheses about solutions, and validating hypotheses by testing prototypes with customers.

1. What Customers Want
How to turn insights about your customers into products they love
Kent Rahman | Product Design and Strategy

5. Customers want to achieve their goals

6. Products and services are the interface
between a customer and their goals

7. They facilitate a customer’s ability to
achieve their goals

8. Great products are both useful and usable
helping to do or achieve something
The extent to which a product can be used by specified
users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness,
efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

9. If I had an hour to solve a problem
I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about
solutions and 5 minutes thinking
about the problem...

10. If I had an hour to solve a problem
I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about
the problem and 5 minutes thinking
about solutions
- Einstein

13. Usability
Usefulness

15. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Form a hypothesis
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6

16. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6
Form a hypothesis
BUILD

17. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6
Form a hypothesis
MEASURE

18. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6
Form a hypothesis
LEARN

19. Who are our customers?
What problems are they trying to solve?
What factors influence their behavior?
How might we help our customers solve their
problems?
Can our
customers solve
their problems
effectively?
EXPLORING A PROBLEM
VALIDATING SOLUTIONS
USABILITY

20. Ex - Large financial institution - lots of tools - all the feedback was that their sales people hated the
tools, it was difficult to use, etc. Their users (Sales) gave them feedback by recommending
improvements within the context of existing solutions. Improvements to existing systems still did little to
increase adoption. So what to do?
The challenge
● Large Wall Street firm
● Sales team frustrated with software
● Antagonistic relationship with Marketing
● Internal attempts to improve technology
were going nowhere

21. Ex - Large financial institution - lots of tools - all the feedback was that their sales people hated the
tools, it was difficult to use, etc. Their users (Sales) gave them feedback by recommending
improvements within the context of existing solutions. Improvements to existing systems still did little to
increase adoption. So what to do?
What we did
● Small cross functional team
● 5 prototypes in 6 weeks
● Re-imagined the way their Sales teams use
technology
● Radically changed the way Marketing thinks about
internal product development

22. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6
Form a hypothesis

23. Who are our customers?
What problems are they trying to solve?
What factors influence their behavior?
How might we help our customers solve their
problems?
Can our
customers solve
their problems
effectively?
EXPLORING A PROBLEM
VALIDATING SOLUTIONS
USABILITY

24. Tactics
• Ethnography
• Ride-alongs
• Diary studies
• Interviews
• Market research
• Demographic research
Outcomes
• Opportunities
• Patterns of behavior
• Goals
• Motivations
• Frustrations
• Process maps

25. Goal #1 - Ensure the team has all the necessary
information regarding this client
Weeks before a meeting
Create and curate a detailed, comprehensive view of the Client
and the information needed for the meeting with that client.

26. Goal # 2 - Ensure that all the client information
is accurate and up to date before client meeting
Days before a meeting
Do an in-depth review of a Client the day before before a meeting.

27. Goal #3 - Ensure key information is top of mind
during the client meeting
Minutes before a meeting
Quickly refresh Sales person’s memory by reviewing critical
details about the Client they are about to meet.

28. System 1 System 2 System 3
Preparing for a client meeting

29. Opportunity #1
Time consuming and difficult to see the full client context
Opportunity #2
Information on funds is out of date, stored in various sources
Opportunity #3
Information requirements are time and context sensitive

30. Opportunities

31. 1
Identify the problem
Collect information
Experiment
Analyze the data
Draw a conclusion 2
3
4
5
6
Form a hypothesis

32. Who are our customers?
What problems are they trying to solve?
What factors influence their behavior?
How might we help our customers solve their
problems?
Can our
customers solve
their problems
effectively?
EXPLORING A PROBLEM
VALIDATING SOLUTIONS
USABILITY

33. Tactics
• Hypothesis generation
• Lo-fi prototyping
• Iterative
experimentation
• Collaborative sketching
Outcomes
● Validated value propositions
● Hi - fi prototypes
● User stories (sometimes)

35. Hypothesis
We believe that by providing a holistic, context specific client view,
the sales team will be better able to prepare and conduct client
meetings. We will know this is true when we see an increase in
usage of these tools by the sales team.

36. Opportunities Hypotheses

38. Who are our customers?
What problems are they trying to solve?
What factors influence their behavior?
How might we help our customers solve their
problems?
Can our
customers solve
their problems
effectively?
EXPLORING A PROBLEM
VALIDATING SOLUTIONS
USABILITY

39. Tactics
• Hi-fi prototyping
• A/B testing
Outcomes
● User stories

40. Ex - Large financial institution - lots of tools - all the feedback was that their sales people hated the
tools, it was difficult to use, etc. Their users (Sales) gave them feedback by recommending
improvements within the context of existing solutions. Improvements to existing systems still did little to
increase adoption. So what to do?
“This is definitely helpful. . . . Succinct and tight.”
“This is cool – I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“You really helped us think outside the box”
“Your team brought a totally unique
perspective”
“This is exactly what I need - you guys are way ahead of me”

41. Opportunities Hypotheses Stories

42. You can take it from here :)