Lecture 4 - Needs

Needs
Needs
 Chemical product design begins by
identifying the customer needs.
 Who are these customers and how can
their needs be identified?
 When our product is primarily used by
consumers their needs will be described
in nonscientific terms.
Needs and Specifications
 Needs are often vague, qualitative desires for
solutions to ill-defined problems.
 These needs must be translated into product
specifications.
 These specifications will require continuing
revision and re-evaluation.
 This revision greatly facilitated by using
“benchmarks” which are often competing
products that we hope to replace.
Customer Needs
 Elucidating customer needs involves three
sequential steps:
 Interviewing customers
 Interpreting their expressed needs
 Translating these needs into product specifications
 In each step, we must be careful not to
narrow the product definition prematurely.
 We must not jump directly into identifying
new products or some ways to improving
existing products.
Interviewing Customers
 Our primary source should be the final users
of the product.
 These users may not be those who buy the
product from us (e.g. patients in a hospital)
 The users can be organizations, including
government agencies.
 These users needs to be contacted and a
time arranged to discuss their needs.
Lead Users
 Lead users depend very much on existing and
competing products.
 Lead users will have needs that are well in advance
of the marketplace.
 They benefit most from any product improvements.
 Lead users are important sources in two ways:
 They often invent minor product improvements on their
own.
 They often clearly express what is wrong with existing
products.
 When they can be identified, lead users are an
invaluable source of information.
Interviews
 General consensus: face-to-face interviews
are the best to discuss needs.
 Fewer than ten may miss important
information.
 More than fifty result in little new information.
 Normal target ~ 15.
 Seems silly with only one or two corporate
customers – but, persons within a single
corporate can express differing views that can
shape the final product design.
Alternatives to interviews
 Two alternatives:
 Focus groups and trained test panels
 Focus groups have a leader and perhaps eight panel members.
 Focus groups may show a synergism leading to suggested
innovation.
 Focus groups often show less variance of opinions than
individuals.
 Many unconvinced by this strategy.
 Trained test panels are common in evaluating small differences
in consumer goods.
 These panels may guide consumer product improvements.
Before beginning interviews…
 Each member of the core team must write out:
 The project scope
 The product’s target market
 The key business goals
 The project scope should be one, simple sentence.
 The target market should include both primary and
secondary customers, and estimates from sales from
each.
 The business goals should include:
 The timing of the new products
 The organization’s technical advantage(s)
 Once done, entire team should reach a consensus.
Standard Interview Format
 Core team should develop a standard interview
format to ensure a common starting point.
 E.g. a list as follows:
 What do you do now?
 How do you use the existing product?
 What features work?
 What does not work?
 How do you buy the product?
 The list should preferably be simple and generic
without references to specific product ideas.
Interviewing Tips
 Interviews depend on interviewers’ skill in eliciting
useful responses.
 Core team can often seek assistance from marketing.
 If possible, all core team members should participate
in at least one interview.
 In every interview:
 Encourage tangents
 Stimulate with alternatives
 Remove assumptions
 Be alert for surprises
Interpreting Customer Needs
 The result of interviews will be a potpourri of responses which
need to be organized.
 The customers’ needs recorded will be a random collection,
filled with redundancy and irrelevancy.
 We may often have to drop stated needs which are for
perpetual motion machines or beyond company’s expertise.
 Ranking of needs:
 Essential – the new product must meet all essential needs to be
successful
 Desirable – new product might meet desirable needs especially if
existing competitive products do not meet these needs.
 Useful – we do not plan to design products explicitly to meet them.
Interpreting Customer Needs
 Ways of organizing and ranking needs differs depending on whether
we are inventing a new product or modifying an existing product.
 In seeking an improved product we are familiar with the existing
product.
 We can easily define the essential, desirable and useful product
attributes.
 We can reach a consensus within core team on these needs.
 This may need additional review with customers, especially with lead
users.
 The importance of the additional review will depend on how major the
improvements are.
 In seeking a new product, needs may be grouped by target market or
by common function.
 In seeking a new product, we almost certainly must return to the
customers, perhaps to a somewhat different set, to specify needs
tightly.

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