We identified four types of engagements to gather product feedback. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase. The types of engagements are
Let's look at the structured engagement type in this post.
Duration: One session lasting from 30 minutes to two hours
When to use this: This feedback gathering method is ideal when trying to test a big module of the prototype and not just a simple feature or mental model.
This session is conducted in a very structured way and requires planning. It will help to do a dry run of the session with your colleagues before you conduct this session with a customer. Because the time of your interviewees is limited and you want to get the most out of every session, you have to plan and structure the session so that you cover all mental models of the prototype you need feedback on. You do not need to have a list of questions. But you do need to have a list of concepts that you want to present for discussion. Organize those concepts in the form of a story you can tell by going through the prototype.
While telling the story at the work session, make specific pauses after each concept is outlined and ask the interviewees to share their thoughts. Once participants share their thoughts, acknowledge their feedback by repeating what you heard and move on to the next concept within the story. This style of discussion will help you keep the conversation at a concept level and avoid getting into a feature function discussion.
Interviewees: Find people who are familiar with the activities affected by your prototype and expert in the problem space.
Reward: If you don’t have a professional relationship with this person, consider gifting a kindle e-Book or a gift card as a token of your appreciation.
- Asynchronous Engagement
- Unstructured Engagement
- Structured Engagement
- Cumulative Engagement
Let's look at the structured engagement type in this post.
When to use this: This feedback gathering method is ideal when trying to test a big module of the prototype and not just a simple feature or mental model.
This session is conducted in a very structured way and requires planning. It will help to do a dry run of the session with your colleagues before you conduct this session with a customer. Because the time of your interviewees is limited and you want to get the most out of every session, you have to plan and structure the session so that you cover all mental models of the prototype you need feedback on. You do not need to have a list of questions. But you do need to have a list of concepts that you want to present for discussion. Organize those concepts in the form of a story you can tell by going through the prototype.
While telling the story at the work session, make specific pauses after each concept is outlined and ask the interviewees to share their thoughts. Once participants share their thoughts, acknowledge their feedback by repeating what you heard and move on to the next concept within the story. This style of discussion will help you keep the conversation at a concept level and avoid getting into a feature function discussion.
Interviewees: Find people who are familiar with the activities affected by your prototype and expert in the problem space.
Reward: If you don’t have a professional relationship with this person, consider gifting a kindle e-Book or a gift card as a token of your appreciation.
Prashanth,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting to hear your detailed explanation of this ‘structured engagement’ method. Feedback is becoming easier and easier to get thanks to the rise of individuals sharing their opinions on social media- as you implied, the key to taking advantage of this is to have clear processes in place in order to structure that feedback back into the project lifecycle development.
Luke Winter
Community Manager
www.onedesk.com
Luke, I appreciate you sharing your thought. During our projects we realized that showing a prototype and telling a story is the best way to gather feedback in these structured sessions. We got many inquiries from colleagues and friends in the industry on how we did it. Hence the book, "Look and Flow".
ReplyDelete