For those who may not know, I started my career as a researcher and in that field, I got pretty good at designing studies using a variety of well established methods to extract insights from people on their emotional reactions to Hallmark ads, brand preferences for pickup trucks and optimal feature sets for their next PC.  I like to think my clients benefited greatly from our consultancy and that they became more customer attuned marketers or crafted more useful products as a result.  In fact, there are some cases where I'm certain it did.

That said, as I've come to deeply know what it's like to create great products/experiences and attempt to demonstrate to people the value these products provide, my understanding of the role of research in achieving this has shifted.  When it comes to innovation and "blank slate" thinking, people simply cannot tell you what they want or what they want you to create for them with any reliability. 

In a recent post, Karen Holtzblatt at InContext (supported by illustrations from David Rondeau, a couple of which I've included here) summarized my experiences and feelings on the topic much more eloquently than I could.  To summarize, she asserts that certain techniques (surveys, "typical" qualitative techniques such as focus groups, use of customer advisory boards, etc.) simply fail to uncover the universal truths about one's experiences that is necessary for innovation. 

While I strongly feel that research methods like surveys, traditional qual, etc. continue to offer us great value in areas such as satisfaction, feature/price trade-offs, message testing, etc. etc., I have to agree with Karen that they are insufficient in uncovering our deepest needs.  I can point to products, launched under my watch, that were developed using a large dose of direct customer feedback in their definition that simply did not deliver the way we'd hoped.  In these cases, I can identify specific features and key marketing messages that were core to these products that directly addressed needs expressed to me by customers...and failed to compel once the product debuted.  Of course, I'd be foolish to ignore the possibility that we simply failed to read those tea leaves properly, but even if some signals were crossed there's no question in my mind that these users/customers simply weren't able to state their needs clearly when asked pointedly.

Karen further posits that observational research methods, like ethnography, can achieve what these other techniques can't.  I agree with this, to a point.  I'm a big fan of observational research and have had past success in using those methods to uncover insights that must be seen, not spoken.  That said, I feel that this approach is easy to misuse.  When relying on your observations of others, it's fairly easy to fall into subjective judgments that serve specific agendas and preferences even for the purest of heart.  Understand these biases in your analysis or better yet, hire someone with training to do so without the baggage of your pet feature (or your boss's).

For my apartment industry friends reading this, think about this when determining the next amenity you plan to invest in or when your strategizing for what your unique brand position should be.  There is lots of data out there from industry surveys to search behavior on ILS's (even from us at Apartments.com) that are only going to tell you part of the story.  Surveys will tell you want people say they want when asked and search data from Apartments.com will tell you what people tend to search for from the list we provide.  Valuable, to be sure, but I believe the winning companies will seek to understand the unmet needs of renters in the communities they serve in a way yet untapped. 

TG

Thank God for Posterous.  For someone who teeters between love for both 140 character and wonderfully long-winded prose, I'm immediately drawn to the promise of this format bridging the gap between quick hitter tweets and blog posts.  Frankly, my hesitancy to initiate my own blogging pursuits is that I hold blogging to a fairly high standard - I expect blog posts to be cogent, well-structured and to assert a thoughtful position.  If I grant that I'm capable of delivering that sort of quality content, I know that I'm not going to be able meet that standard with the frequency I'd like.  My mind feeds me bite-sized insights and musings most of the time and these are not well suited to the blog platform as I see it.

So, that leads me to Posterous.  I'm diving into the platform now because it seems perfectly aligned with how I think and how I want to share these thoughts with whatever microscopic audience is interested in such drivel ;)  If I want to deep-dive a topic, I can, but I could also throw up a two minute video post (hat tip to Mark Juleen, the Apartment Nerd, for embracing that technique) or a quick response to another content piece without violating the expectations of my readers.

As my readers, please feel free to let me know how successful this approach is.  The value I offer you will be the only ROI I look at in the content shared here.

Cheers,

TG