How do you keep user needs front and centre?

How do you keep user needs front and centre?

I was recently asked this question:

How do you keep user needs at the centre of your product management process?

Read on for my answer:

The straightforward answer is that you and your delivery team (yes, even the developers) need to get out there and observe your users using your product or your competitors’ products. You need to do this as frequently as possible, a minimum of 2 hours every 6 weeks.

Why? This is the only way you and your team are going to experience your users’ joy and frustration first-hand. And it’s that visceral experience that will motivate and inspire your team to improve your products.

Of all the companies and organisations I’ve worked for, precious few make the effort to do this on a regular basis.

Now, before you protest that you do meet with customers often, let me clarify a couple of things.

1. Any meeting with a salesperson in the room doesn’t count.

Why? Because any meeting with a salesperson in the room is automatically a commercial negotiation, and that leaves no room for a discussion about user needs. I cover this in more detail in an article I wrote a little while ago.

2. Meetings with customers only count if they’re also the actual users, actually using your product.

Your customers are the people who buy your product. Outside of consumer software, they tend not to be the people using your product day in, day out. And despite what they claim, they can’t act as a proxy for the needs of the actual users. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to use any corporate procurement system ever, you’ll understand my point.

Wherever possible, you should observe your users in person. You need to be able to see not just what they’re doing with the product, but how they’re reacting. Body language tells you a tremendous amount and you miss all that if all you can see is a screencast.

A passable option is to observe your users remotely with multiple cameras, typically showing their face and hands as well as what’s on their screen. However, unless you have your own usability studio, this can quickly become prohibitively complex and expensive to organise – all of which would discourage you from your bare minimum of 2 user exposure hours every 6 weeks.

It’s cheaper and easier to go and observe your users in their usual environment, so this should always be your first option. If you don’t meet with your users regularly, you have no hope of keeping their needs at the heart of your product – so get out there!


Get articles when they’re published

My articles get published irregularly (erratically, some might say). Never miss an article again by getting them delivered direct to your inbox as soon as they go live.  


Read more from Jock

The Practitioner's Guide to Product Management book cover

The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management

by Jock Busuttil

“This is a great book for Product Managers or those considering a career in Product Management.”

— Lyndsay Denton

Jock Busuttil is a freelance head of product, product management coach and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Agree? Disagree? Share your views: