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Do you download the mobile applications of all companies that you are a customer of? Do you regularly use a chatbot? Have you ever seen Google Glass?

You can produce the most amazing solutions with the latest technologies, but the underlying needs are what determine the benefit potential of your solution. At the basis of human-oriented design lies the needs of the users and the issues that are experienced when trying to meet these needs. Moreover, the needs can last longer than the solution alternatives. For example, SalesForce meets the same need as wall paintings from ancient times: Data storage.

However, we cannot say that all the needs of today’s people have continued throughout the history of humanity and that we need to go back to the Cenozoic age to be able to determine our needs because as we well know by now, that new technologies create new needs. The need to track the time minute by minute did not exist until the invention of the steam engine, and also there was no need for portable power supply until a few years ago except for batteries of various sizes and capacities. The needs are variable, and each need may not be seen as a problem for all users, or the issues declared by users may categorically correspond to different needs. For example, the main reason why your users complain about the service cost may not be the pricing scheme of your product, but the lack of notification for that price in the relevant sections.

Therefore, need assessment, beyond listening to the complaints of your users, is to work actively to understand users, and it is a process that requires an accurate understanding of unspoken insights. In return for this effort to better understand your users, you can empathize with your users which enables you to uncover needs that were not exposed and identify your users who are pushing the limits of your product/service so that their practices can be implemented within the product/service.

Why do this anyway?

First of all, it is helpful to underline that answering user requests is not the same as producing need-based solutions. Your users aren’t product professionals and do not take into account the technological infrastructure or roadmap of your product when communicating their demands. They only convey their demands based on their needs (often without explaining their need level).

If there are enough users both in number and variety to represent the entire pool, you may have the opportunity to sit down with your team and identify the underlying needs of these demands by reverse engineering, but it would be too optimistic to think that this would be possible at any stage of your product/service. Therefore, to identify your users’ additional needs on top of the problems they have solved with your product, you should come together with them to get their views on your product as a critical component of your product development flow. You can do this by allocating a few hours a week to plan intensive research processes every few months, which should take 1-2 weeks. Moreover, you will not only get feedback about your product/service but also gain valuable information about your users.

How is it done?

Two main research methods are used for needs assessment: observation and interview. Regardless of the chosen research method, some subjects should be considered during the planning and implementation phase. To conduct a proper research process, a detailed (but stretch-resistant) research plan should be prepared, and appropriate methods and participants should be identified.

For example, in your research to improve a specific feature, you should include people who are users of your product or service as well as those who are not users. This way, you can prevent your findings from being limited to only the relevant feature or function, and on top of that, you can get a better idea of ​​the user needs that you have resolved as well as those you might not have.

After deciding the research method to be followed, a safe environment with no out of context, stimuli should be selected for this method. A healthy conversation cannot be made in a noisy or very hot atmosphere, and also objects such as an aquarium or a construction work nearby might distract the participant and may make it difficult for the participant to focus on the interview.

Similarly, special attention should be paid to the fact that the observation or interview does not influence or guide the behavior of the participant. For example, if the participants fix their hair in the mirror which conceals the hidden camera that you placed for the purpose of natural observation, we can no longer talk about an observation in a natural environment. Or if the person who is carrying out an interview on physical barriers is in a wheelchair, this will distort the answers of the participants. Finally, observations and interviews should be recorded with appropriate tools so that the insights gained are not limited to the memory.

Of course, not everyone has to be a professional researcher, but a research process that does not meet the above requirements cannot produce healthy results. Again, since not everyone has research experience, it is useful to share a few tips on how to conduct an observation and interview processes in addition to the above general principles.

How to conduct an interview?

The flow that should be followed to produce as many findings as possible is clear:

The interview starts with the interviewer introducing themselves to the participant and giving information about the subject and purpose of the interview. For the participant to stay within the context of the conversation, it is more appropriate if a bureaucratic agreement such as a confidentiality agreement or the sharing of personal information which might be seen as valuable, should be signed ahead of time and not right before the interview.

After the participant is informed about the context of the interview, the interview can move on with the initial questions. For the sake of giving sample questions, let’s assume that our product or service is a solution to the urban public transport challenge. Simple and general questions such as “Do you use public transport?” and “Do you like traveling?” should be asked.

After the start-up phase, the interviewer asks more personal questions to connect with the participant. Again, in the same context, the interviewer will ask questions such as “How did you get here? How was your journey? What is your preferred mode of urban transportation?”, while deepening the communication with a few consecutive questions which will be formed based on the participant’s responses so you will have more information about the participant’s profile.

After the participant warms up to the interviewer, and the context of the interview, answers that will enable the possible needs to come to light are sought. At this stage:

• “Could you tell us about the best (worst) travel experience you’ve ever had? What made that experience so good (bad)?”
• “How did this experience affect your transportation preferences?”
• “In your opinion, what would be the ideal transportation service?
• “What would you pay attention to if you were providing a transportation service?”

and similar questions should be asked to answer the needs of the participant.

To obtain as much valuable insight as possible from the interview, the interviewer should also observe the participant. The personal values ​​of the participant and the mood during the interview are the inputs that can play a role in the evaluation phase.

How to do an observation?

The most crucial point which should be considered during an observation reporting and evaluation process is that the researcher should put aside their personal opinions and evaluations throughout the process and focus on the participants’ statements and actions. However, in cases where there is a conflict between the statements and actions of the participants, the comments of the research team will be more valuable. The elimination of conditions that cause these contradictions will be possible through innovative perspectives and ideas.

In observations, detecting solutions developed by the participants by their own means gains importance. Assuming you have a customer database product, if your users get the Excel output to update the data they store on your application, then restore the file to your system, this indicates that your product’s data update feature has not been noticed or has been found inadequate or useless. Because, unlike the solutions you offer, there is a need behind the solutions invented by your users.

As I emphasized at the beginning of the article, the underlying needs determine the potential benefits. The basis of the product or service design that focuses on human beings is the needs of the users and the likely problems that arise while solving them. It is possible to shed light on these needs with user observations and interviews. Regardless of which method you choose, you do not have to be a professional researcher to carry out a successful research process. Just set aside everything you know about your product/service, and just spend some time and effort to focus on what your users do or say. The investment in the satisfaction rate your product or service creates for your current users will be reflected in both the reduction in customer loss and positive reflections on your acquisition indicators, making it easier to scale your product or service efficiently and adequately.

You left another year behind in the blink of an eye, and you entered 2019 with fresh ideas. Do you want to get to the physique you dream of with a gym membership and a planned regular training program? Or, quitting your job to which you feel increasingly estranged, and bring that business idea to life?

The characteristic feature of these two scenarios is the need to make certain investments or sacrifices to achieve the goal. Most simply, you have to pay six months or 1 year of a gym membership on the first day. 

To pursue your dream of entrepreneurship, the free time left over from your work hours most likely will not be enough, and you will have to resign from your work. Before you take these steps, wouldn’t it be nice to know if you can actually go to the gym regularly or whether your business idea has considerable potential?

Let’s look at the subject in the context of brands and products/services they offer to their customers. Suppose that an innovation competition was held in the company, and creative ideas emerged. Is the decision of the jury enough to determine which idea is worth investing? Alternatively, is it possible to proceed with a test and data-driven approach and determine the best idea for investment?

Yes, it is possible!

It all started with an innocent vote

In 1999, three youngsters put two large trash cans with the words Yes and No next to their smoothie booth at a UK music festival and asked the participants: Should we leave our job to make these smoothies? At the end of two days, the bucket that said yes was filled to the brim. This is how the story of Innocent, which has become the most successful smoothie brand of England and perhaps the world today, begun.

The test which was conducted by the trio of graduates of the University of Cambridge, Richard, Adam, and Jon can be described as “guerilla” testing. The guerrilla test method is a relatively low-cost method that allows you to get quick feedback on your product or prototype. The most classic example is to grab people who you think are involved in your target audience and get feedback from them.

If you are reasonably assertive or skeptical, the test result in the Innocent sample may not be enough for you to make the final decision. Rather than blindly embarking on the adventure, checking the pulse of your potential customers can benefit you in your decision making.

First verify the problem

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved”

Charles Kettering

Most of the monologues that start with the phrase ‘I have an excellent idea,’ directly address the solution without mentioning the problem. On the other hand, solutions are created and exist to solve a problem. Therefore, before verifying your opinion, it is necessary to test the problem that your solution aims to solve. 

What if the problem you wholeheartedly believe exists isn’t received well by your target audience?

Let’s look at an example. A bank whose motto is to make life easier has a new product idea. This product brings convenience to payment processes for real estate and car sales. This is done through a system integration, which triggers the transfer of money and the transfer of deed-license simultaneously. In this way, risks such as cash transport of large amounts and the possibility of deed transfer without the payment transfer no longer exist.

That sounds good, doesn’t it? However, what if we told you that a significant number of people who sell a house choose to do it in cash and declare a lower house value to receive a tax advantage? Or that when the bank loan is used, the loan amount is transferred to the seller automatically with the transfer of the deed? 

When you think that your target audience does not have a significant problem in this regard, doesn’t the solution begin to lose its appeal?

How to verify a solution

Let’s move on to a parallel universe and assume that the research results confirm the problem. The target audience really feels the risks we are talking about and is in search of a solution.

In this case, it is time to test how much demand there is by the target audience to the bank’s solution. The most significant benefit for running this test is that it offers a chance to verify (or kill) the solution without substantial investment.

How to test a product that doesn’t exist yet? By doing “as if”

This method, which is referred to as fake doors in English, is frequently used in idea verification processes. Imagine advertising on real estate sites as if the product is ready. The users who click on this advertisement will read this message: ‘Our product will be implemented very soon. Thank you very much for your attention and patience!’ Thus the first step of the test is completed. By analyzing the ad’s clickthrough rates, you get the chance to gain insight on current demand.

Finally, let’s emphasize that the following 3 points should be taken into consideration in the problem and idea verification studies:

1. Correct identification of target audience.
2. The correct design and implementation of the research.
3. The confidence interval of the research result is sufficient to make a decision.

Developing and testing a hypothesis

The concept of testing is a critical part of ‘design thinking,’ which is to consider the logic of the design, and it has gained much popularity recently. The cycle that constitutes this methodology consists of researching and defining the needs of the user, producing the solution corresponding to this need, testing the prototypes if possible, and bringing it to life after applying the changes from the feedback. Based on this cycle, we can say that the testing phase is the starting point of improvement.

In particular, brands operating in the digital environment use this methodology to improve the experience which they offer and increase the transformation of their digital assets.

Let’s say the product team of an e-commerce website that sells organic food products thinks that sharing positive customer comments on the home page will increase the rate of users viewing product category pages.

To test this hypothesis, first, determine the metric to be measured and check the current value for comparison. For the test result to be considered successful, the target percentage increase is determined. Then the test phase begins, and the alternative design with user comments starts to be shown to 50% of the traffic. 

After reaching a sufficient number of visits which can grant confidence, the results are compared, and it is decided whether to proceed with the current design or the new one. This setup is called the A / B test. It is also possible to test more than two variants at the same time, or even run multiple tests at the same time.

When the domain name Amazon.com is pronounced today, a single entity is revived in everyone’s mind. However, Amazon has simultaneously done so many tests that it is not possible to talk about a single Amazon.com.

To sum it all up

The test-driven approach allows you to make decisions based on data and reduce the risk you take instead of basing on your intuition, which is more than likely to mislead you.

Nowadays, especially with the decreasing cost of digital test methods and tools, the applicability of this approach has increased.

Internalizing the test logic and making this approach part of your thought processes, whether in business or your private life, will benefit you to the extent that you cannot imagine. Of course, do not quickly accept my hypothesis, test it first!

Further reading

• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/
• https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-run-experiments-for-idea-validation-1fb71d99ea06
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/no-validate-in-ux/
• https://www.viima.com/blog/idea-validation

The cover image is actually a screenshot from our playbook in which we try to explain what it is like working with us, SHERPA. But before coming to “no meeting days”, we’d first like to focus on the base idea here: the culture that cultivates such rigid standards.

In SHERPA, we believe in productivity as if we believe in anything else – that’s why we build systems of effective working and challenge our frameworks every other day to make them even more optimized.

We build and document standards for each step of any process even if we think that we already know how to run it very well. That’s because of three reasons mainly:

1. When we start to write down a standards doc (simply explaining what we propose to do, why & when we do it, and what the side effects are, etc), we may notice some open issues that need to be addressed to set the standard right.
2. Some other SHERPA (a newcomer for instance) might not know the process as we do and a structured document could turn out be a guide to her when she needs it.
3. The palest ink is stronger than the sharpest memory. When we write things down, it instantly becomes official and we feel a strong will to apply that standard in the right place & time.

Now, you know why we set these kinds of standards and mention them everywhere.

So, you may still have this question on your mind: Why Monday & Friday are our no meeting days? In a world of meetings that run businesses, does this sound a little bit bold to you?

Think again. 

• How many times did you tell yourself or your colleagues that you cannot do business (produce anything) because of running from meeting to meeting?

• How many times did you survive a meeting that should have been an email?

• How many times did you find yourself in a meeting that you have nothing to say and question your existence in it (and in life as a whole)?

Let’s be honest.

Don’t you also think that you can get rid of some of the meetings in your calendar? What is the harm if you participate in fewer meetings in a week? 

In fact, we are not against meetings. We just think we can optimize them.

To us, meetings should have a well-defined purpose (agenda & objective), should be conducted with a sufficient number of people (participants) and shouldn’t last more than 40-60 minutes.

And another standard to add these rules is that we do not organize any meetings on Mondays and Fridays just to focus on production & internal sprint planning, just to make sure the meetings we run on the other days to be well-prepared and worth to spend time for every participant. 

Since we work with the “Design as a Service (DaaS)” principles, we allocate every project a certain amount of person/hours and at the end of each month, we provide highly detailed timesheets (based on person/task/minute spent). We respect the time of our project owners as much as we take responsibility for the efficiency of a project. This is also another reason why we want to optimize meetings.

After all of these, needless to say, “no meeting days” rule is not an arbitrary one but a SHERPA way of working to serve better, to let our project owners get the most of it with the expected quality. 

Do you still think that you should definitely run your next meeting today? If you say no, just drop us a line to work with a partner who takes the utmost care of your resources.

The first step in providing a better customer experience for your brand is undoubtedly listening to the voice of your customers. However, when it comes to digital platforms, it’s much more than having a (wish/complaint) suggestion box at your store in a traditional context. Waiting for customer feedback from the “contact us” button you’ve placed on your website or app — within the scope of digital transformation — is even out of date nowadays.

Today, where all interactions take place in micro-moments, we are able to receive all of your customers’ positive and negative feedback instantly, right on the place and on time. And it is critical to delivering a better customer experience and, consequently, to achieving higher conversion rates for your product or service. Therefore, it should be one of your strategic priorities to handle the feedback from your customers with a professional perspective and to develop your experience design based on this data.

Usabilla was founded in 2009 to provide data-oriented, professional solutions in the field of VoC (Voice of Customer) and has been serving leading global brands such as Vodafone, BMW, Samsung and IBM for ten years. With their offices located in New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Sydney; Usabilla strengthens many major global and local companies with customer-oriented strategies and thus improves digital experiences.

As SHERPA, we are proud and happy to start working together with Usabilla, which we have been following and appreciating their works for a long time. To learn more about this significant collaboration that we focus on designing better customer experiences together and the benefits of the integration of Usabilla VoC (Voice of Customer) services into your digital platforms, feel free to contact us!

The world’s leading and Turkey’s largest sports clothing and equipment retailer Decathlon and SHERPA started to work together to improve the current customer experience in the online store to develop new customer experiences.

Founded in 1976 in France, Decathlon has become a favorite of Turkish sports enthusiasts of all ages and levels for nearly 10 years. In Turkey, being one of the leading brands, Decathlon aims to introduce people of all ages to sports and to provide sports equipment to athletes with the motto:

“Sports for everyone, everything for sports.”

As SHERPA, the successful optimization projects that we recently completed with e-commerce companies have greatly contributed to our proficiency in user behavior in the sports field too. Taking our know-how and experience to the next level by working with Decathlon, the brand which we love and shop frequently, is a pleasure and pride for us.

What we do? 

After our project kick-off meetings with Decathlon Team, we started running our optimization process, which began with a tight schedule of user research. We focused on improvements based on the hypotheses we have developed on the existing customer experience and associated A/B tests.

By observing the users’ behaviour in the online store, we identify the pain points that obstruct their journey to purchase, analyze the data obtained from the user interviews and the direct contributions of the Decathlon Team, and plan our production process by determining improvements that may be beneficial for all customers. 

After creating the content and interface sketches, we go into the design process and then integrate the variant interface modules into the existing pages and run A/B tests over different versions for certain periods of time.

We have already started to get the positive results of the A/B tests we have conducted so far. We will continue to boost Decathlon’s power with improved conversion rates as the result of better customer experience.

Do not miss a visit to our case studies to learn about our optimization oriented services and to review the similar work we do!

We underline it every opportunity we get: Design is problem-solving. However, designing is no longer sufficient to solve the problems we face in this world. Our growing needs, complex systems that are attempting to meet these needs, and the limited resources these systems need, requires the design to produce not instantaneous, but long-term and continuous solutions. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on sustainable design to create new values.

Almost everything in the golden age of mass production and consumption has an alternative: You can put on a clean shirt when yours gets dirty, get a new cup of coffee when you spill yours, and you can get another computer if yours breaks; however, we have absolutely no consideration for the one thing that we have no other replacement: our home, the world. And indeed, we will not, and cannot be going anywhere, anytime soon.

As children of the technology age, we can identify almost all of the problems we face and offer solutions to many of them. Thanks to science, technology, and design, we can eliminate constraints, create unexpected shortcuts, and make the unknown known.

Although scientific discoveries in recent years give us good news about new habitable planets, the bad news is that the idea of ​​reaching these new worlds seems unrealistic. Especially if you think that our motivation to go to other planets is the probability of the destruction of our world earlier than we expected.

Yeah, we’re here right now, and we’re going to be here for a while. Therefore, there is no point in making more efforts to bring the end of the world earlier. With fewer resources, to live a better life, we need design and what makes design long-lasting is the concept of sustainable design.

What is sustainable design?

In its simplest definition, sustainable design is the philosophy of designing social, economic, and ecological sustainable objects, spaces, and services. In this context, focusing on sustainability in design means targeting long-term continuity, absolute self-sufficiency, and not producing waste. So, why is it so hard for many of us to achieve this goal? (Although it is not that hard.)

To put forward sustainable solutions with design means creating value not only for today but also for tomorrow, and a great future is worth spending a little more time thinking. Dieter Rams, the master of modern design, clearly states the sustainable design principles’ basic rules which are considered to be sacred by designers today.

“Good design is environmentally friendly: Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.”

From this point of view, it is possible to talk about certain principles of sustainable design, even if they are not yet standardized:

• Design standards should be set by considering sustainability, and project design guidelines should be prepared and implemented sustainably.
• The products and their production processes should be designed in such a way that they require less energy, usage of high energy should be avoided at every stage of production.
• In design and production phases materials, which are not harmful and are produced in a sustainable manner or ones that require little energy to be processed, should be preferred.
• Materials to be used in production should be supplied from renewable and local sources and should be able to be recycled at the end of product life.
• Products and processes should be designed and manufactured, taking into account long-term benefits, reuse, and recycling.
• Products should be designed to establish strong emotional connections with their users, thus reducing the need for consumption and waste of resources.
• Design impact measurements should be made on the carbon footprint and the life cycle evaluations of all sources used in production.

• 

• The new production systems should be designed to mimic nature (biomimetic) based on continuous use of closed circuit, and the existing systems should be redesigned in the same way.
• The use of existing products and services from single-use to multi-use; it should evolve, for example, from the use of individual means of transport to vehicle sharing.

How to defend the rights of our Planet?

To understand the reasoning behind these principles and to determine new design principles for sustainable design in our particular fields, it is beneficial to become familiar with The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability commonly referred to as The Bill of Rights for the Planet. William McDonough Architects and Dr. Michael Braungart announced these principles of design at the Expo 2000 World Fair in Hannover, Germany in 1992:

1. Insist on the rights of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse, and sustainable condition.
2. Recognize interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend upon the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations for recognizing even indirect effects.
3. Respect relationships between spirit and matter. Consider all aspects of human settlement, including community, dwelling, industry, and trade in terms of existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness.
4. Accept responsibility for the consequences of design decisions upon human well-being, the viability of natural systems, and their right to co-exist.
5. Create safe objects of long-term value. Do not burden future generations with requirements for maintenance or vigilant administration of potential danger due to the careless creation of products, processes, or standards.
6. Eliminate the concept of waste. Evaluate and optimize the full lifecycle of products and processes, to approach the state of natural systems, in which there is no waste.
7. Rely on natural energy flows. Human designs should, like the living world, derive their creative forces from perpetual solar income. Incorporate this energy efficiently and safely for responsible use.
8. Understand the limitations of design. No human creation lasts forever, and designing does not solve all problems. Those who create and plan should practice humility in the face of nature. Treat nature as a model and mentor, not as an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.
9. Seek constant improvement through the sharing of knowledge. Encourage direct and open communication between colleagues, patrons, manufacturers, and users to link long term sustainable considerations with ethical responsibility, and re-establish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity.

Choose the side of the good

At the focal point of all these ideas, you must have realized that man and nature have the will and the obligation to live together in harmony. No, especially in today’s conditions, designing won’t save the world, but it is a great thought that sustainable design can give us the chance to spend many enjoyable days on our old Planet.

Evaluating your design and production processes from a sustainable point of view adds value to our work, our civilization, and our Planet. Being on the right side is enough to give you three times the happiness. What do you think?

User research is the basis of the design process. Hitting the road with mere assumptions only gives rise to biased decisions which do not reflect the user’s actual needs and desires. Ultimately, it leads to negative consequences, including low profit.  

Briefly stated, skipping the user research process costs way more than conducting actual research.

This principle is not only applicable to the field of design. Management consultant, Peter Drucker, famously stated:

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Peter Drucker

User research is the most foundational element of the whole design process. It is also one of the first subjects that companies tend to skip without considering the return of investment and benefits.

Without research, each step of the design process turns into a blind man’s buff games; a series of estimations. When we do not engage the real beneficiary of a product or a service, the end product cannot be user-centered, customer-centered, or human-centered.  

Regarding the cases I have encountered so far, I can state three reasons that companies use as an excuse to abandon research:

• To avoid boring the customer
• To avoid negative feedback
• To avoid spending money

(A simple exercise to emphasize the message of the story: replace “To avoid” with “Fear of.”)

To avoid boring the customer

The first, and probably the most common reason why companies avoid doing research is their fear that asking the users questions might cause problems.

As you can see in many studies on corporate / brand culture perception of companies, executives might be anxious about asking questions to employees. For executives, asking questions to employees about their thoughts, worries, and hopes might remind them how bad the existing corporate culture is and increase the risk of demoralization.

Let’s suppose you were working in a company with an unpleasant culture. Would you be ignorant of it until someone complains?

I assume your response to both of these questions is, “No.” You would be aware of the problems and take the questions as a sign of future betterment.

Additionally, let me ask you another question: If you found an old annoying software that your corporation forced you to use, would it surprise you? The answer is probably ‘No’ again. You would already know it’s annoying and you would keep working while your fists are clenched. If there’s any chance of betterment, it will make you happy. It would even make you more tolerant.

This proves you cannot annoy customers by asking questions that aim to make their life better and easier. This process gives you vital information, earns the trust of the customer by showing them your effort, and gives them a sense of transition into a better experience.

To avoid negative feedback

Humans are masters at avoiding bad news. We skip our annual physical examination because we know our doctor would warn us about our eating habits and lack of exercise. We refuse to watch documentaries because we know that they might shake our political and philosophical beliefs. Secretly, we feel happy and relieved when our boss postpones our annual performance review because we do not want our weaknesses revealed.

Similarly, companies hire us to show them how far away they are from the ideal case; however, they are not prepared to receive the bad news. They worry about personal influences and consequences to their career. So the developers do not want to see how website speed ruins conversion rate. Marketing directors do not want to know that they have been sending a wrong message the whole time. CEOs do not want to know that the company has created a false public image under their direction.

Nobody wants to be the bad guy.

Nobody wants to risk losing their reputation and be embarrassed. We choose to ignore the results even though we know it’s the wrong move. In this situation, denial feels more attractive.

“We already knew this problem, why should we focus on it?” or “Couldn’t you fix it without making a big deal out of it?” These are quite simple demands stated by companies very often.  

As a matter of fact, they’ve already dragged themselves into this unfortunate situation by bypassing essential questions and avoiding unpleasant answers.

Another version of this problem can be found in entrepreneurs who are about to present a new business idea. Adrenaline, passion, determination, and enthusiasm make them blind in such a way that they do not even consider that there might be a problem. They rely on their ideas so much that they don’t want to consider another possibility. They might also feel insulted when we ask their users if the product meets their needs. It is not hard to find examples of startups that failed as a result of starting design and engineering processes without consulting a single potential user.

A good design (solution) arises when it is based on facts (even though these facts are painful); not when it is based on readily accepted assumptions. If you are climbing a mountain, you only put your feet on solid rocks, not on the spots you are thinking or hoping to be stable.

To avoid spending money

Of course, this is the most popular excuse. Sometimes, companies do not want to fund research because they see research as a waste of time and want to spend their precious time and effort on the “real” work. If research is excluded, both money and time would be saved, right?  

We tend to focus only on the facts in sight. This is why the money we own seems more precious than the money we haven’t earned yet. This phenomenon is one of the cognitive biases of the human mind, and it is called the “endowment effect.” Its effect on our cognitive mechanism is such that we hesitate to spend $10 to earn $100.

As the solution makers, we continuously observe the contributions of the insights from valuable user research to the success of companies, products, or services. This is obvious and proven and a case that we take for granted. However, the people who are not aware of the benefits of research as a design step might see it as a waste of time. It is surprisingly hard to break the spell of the “endowment effect.” The case studies showing the practical results of research, endless numbers of experiment reports, and evidence proving that user research increases acquisition… none of these work. Even though the contribution of user research leads to greater success, refusing to spend money on it is a problem of our times.

Behind any well-designed and useful product, there are insights from user research. The companies that understand the essence of design approach research as an intrinsic part of the design process and spend their resources on research gladly.

It is possible for a company to give its customers a truly exceptional user experience if it only overcomes the fear of investing in research. Yes, it has a cost. And yes, it is time-consuming. However, we do not do it for fun. We do it because it creates measurable improvements in almost every project.

The trap of insight addiction

After all these explanations, there are indeed exceptional situations where over-research might be a waste of time.

Wasting too much time on research that does not have a significant impact on the project results is over-research. Diving into neverending user research, including the user in the research process excessively, wasting too much time on analysis of the details of user interaction. These are all possible risks.  

Every data point coming from the user research brings us a little more happiness. However, it is also vitally important to know when to stop. Great user research should be brief, compact, and practical. It should be approached like a rescue operation; we should get in, complete the mission, and leave without a mess.  

There are many creative, cost-efficient, and quick user research options. Finding the right composition of research methods and yielding information in a fast and logical way is the part of the magic that produces properly functioning user research.

However, there is no legitimate reason to get rid of research altogether. It is a fundamental part of the design process.

You will thank yourself

“If only we hadn’t wasted time on working on the problem and relied on our assumptions instead”? Have you ever heard anyone complaining like this?

No, I haven’t heard it either. However, I know too many people confessing their regret because they started production before spending enough time on research. There are far too many stories of failed products and unsuccessful companies.

User research is a make-or-break step of the design process. Even if a service or a product is good enough that it can succeed by itself, user research can make it even better. Research carries it to a superior level.

It’s completely natural to have doubts mentioned earlier. However, success in business requires courage, and courage is what makes you act despite your fears.

Brands are like people; each has its own unique story. Whether these stories are creative or ordinary, exciting or boring, inspiring or meaningless, often depends on how they are told. There are many ways to tell the story of your brand, but inviting your customers to experience this story makes it stand out from the crowd.

Think about how many people and how many brands you interacted with since this morning. You got a cup of coffee, quickly checked your social media accounts,  glanced at items that were on display as you walked by shops and passed by cars waiting at the lights. You liked your coffee, you deleted one of the apps on your phone, the black pair of shoes in the store drew your attention, and you were amazed by the convertible car. In just half an hour, those brands continued their stories and intersected with yours.

Brands, like people, have their own stories that define them. What makes brands valuable is the connection that people feel toward their stories. Brand stories last throughout the lifetime of brands and brands that share the same values as their customers continue to write more success stories.

In today’s marketing strategies where emotional ties with customers are becoming more valuable, and where customer feedback can be taken instantaneously through social media, the course of a brand story can rapidly change. Therefore, in the era of digital marketing, brand story and brand experience have evolved into an inseparable whole.

Today, the brand story is not a story told in the distant past; it is broadcasted live as a single episode show. Presenting this show in a consistently engaging way for the current audience and all of the potential customers should be considered a priority for the brand marketing strategy. Otherwise, your loss of viewers can be irreversible.

What story to tell?

Mission and vision statements, which are written just for the sake of formality, don’t matter to your customers. Your customers should share your story, internalize it and voluntarily represent your brand everywhere. To make that happen, your audience should be able to experience your story. But how?

Your story should be realistic: No one expects you to write a saga. If a brand which has close ties to what people experience in real life shares their concerns and makes their customer happy, that proves that the brand is telling a genuine story. Unicorns or dragons can make your brand interesting, but an angry customer looking for your call center won’t be satisfied with the stardust in your story.

Your story should be unique: Your brand is, and so is your story. Although not strictly dependent on real life; the stories of brands that can transfer everyday events from a different perspective through a creative, fun or emotional framework are unique. What makes your brand one step ahead is to make your users a part of this original experience.

Your story should be continuous: Your brand may have been around for many years and may have many micro-stories that make up the macro, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add more. Nintendo was once producing cards, Shell was a seashells merchant, Peugeot was designing salt and pepper shakers… Stories grow and change with brands – and of course users – over time. Capturing change and keeping your story up to date is an important marketing goal.

Your story should be valuable: Dreams and realities must come together in your brand; your brand values ​​should be ones that can be embraced and defended by your customers. For example, if one of your values is being user-friendly, and while on your website, customers are overwhelmed by system errors, then the customer will begin to doubt your story. Similarly, a thermal power plant that claims to be eco-friendly most likely will not have many people who will embrace and defend their story.

Who’s the real hero?

The hero of your brand story is not the founder, company or product. The main hero is the user who experiences the story in their own way. The user experience is not only a digital interface but the combination of brand and customer behavior. Anyone who comes in contact with your brand, whether or not a customer, should be able to find something about themselves in your story, adopt your values ​​and turn into brand ambassadors, not just customers. This is a transformation that money cannot buy and it becomes a success story in itself.

What you do, what you sell or what you tell, are as valuable as the users can benefit from them. This benefit can be either material or intangible: the brand that offers the most innovative designs, the brand that sells at the most affordable prices and the brand that carries out the best social aid campaigns can have its name written in golden letters. There is not a single winner of the brand experience race for users, so you should focus on telling your brand story in the best way possible, not trying to be number 1.

What kind of experience should be designed?

There is always a story between brands and customers. It is the choice of brands to be a spectator as their stories are written or to become a good storyteller. The user experience will take place spontaneously, and the success of the brand in storytelling is to analyze these experiences thoroughly, to manage them, and to improve them as best they can. The user experience design does precisely that.

While marketing focuses on improving the marketability of products or services, experience design gives precedence to how better products and services can be used. Therefore, products and services with good user experience do their own marketing. When it comes to experience design, the user, product, brand and their interactions should be analyzed in depth.

Get to know the users: Meet with people who enjoy listening to your brand story; talk with real people who can make a connection with your brand, benefit from your products and services, do research on demographic characteristics and behaviors of your customers, create personas, identify contact points with your brand and focus on how you can mitigate the pain points by drawing customer experience journey maps. Do not separate the true heroes of the story from your focus.

Improve the experience: Carefully review your customers’ relationships with your brand. Keep in mind that customers who are unsatisfied with your product or services are more likely to raise their voices than the satisfied ones. First, try to lower these voices with reasonable solutions, then try to eliminate customer dissatisfaction before they occur and then make attempts to improve your existing customers’ experience even further. The methods you use to overcome these challenges and the solutions you produce will increase the value of your story.

Be innovative: In the beginning, we mentioned the importance of your story not being meaningless, ordinary, and boring. To this end, re-examine existing processes from an innovative and original perspective. Evaluate data from user surveys when developing new processes. Being creative does not mean you need to ‘rediscover America’ every time. Examine similar methods and best examples; get inspired by the most liked and most useful features of different products and services by users. Don’t forget to test your designs with real users who match your contacts.

Keep improving: The most important rule of being a good storyteller is to keep the listener’s attention alive. Make sure that your experience is able to do that and continues to that. Make sure that your updates on your product and service are based on feedback from your users. This does not mean that you have to implement every request of your users unconditionally. But it definitely doesn’t sound like a good idea to make a change that is not approved by the majority of your audience. Keep up to date with trends, content and visual design. Remember, there is no happy ending for your brand story; the most important thing is to keep the story going as long as possible.

Where should I begin?

Your brand’s story has already started with your brand. Maybe the brand was writing the first chapter of your story before you even gave it a name. You may not have customers yet, but you can analyze user research for your products and services.

One of the characteristics of marketing professionals and experience designers is their strong empathy. Put yourself in the place of your future users and try to anticipate their experiences as a customer. Optimize and consolidate potential processes while preparing your business plan.

Every detail in your story may not be written as you expect, but the more risks you can foresee, the more you can take measures. In that way instead of dealing with crisis management, you will be able to devote this time to improve your processes. You may encounter unexpected obstacles when you build your brand experience. Do not panic; there are surprises in every story, and it actually makes the story exciting. Don’t give up on your progress, your story will follow you.

The answer to this question depends mostly on your perspective. If you are a traditional salesperson, it might be useful to think that your customer is always right and to do everything to make them happy. However, if you are working on improving the products of your customer; you should get yourself – and your client – used to the idea that the customer might not be right, most of the time.

Since the late 19th century, when industrial production accelerated, and masses gained the ability to purchase more than their basic necessities, the need of manufacturers to create demand for their high supply brought about the concept, that is still popular: “The customer is always right.”.

Although the source is not known precisely, the idea that the customer is always right, which was made famous by the great pioneer store owners Marshall Field in Chicago and Harry Gordon Selfridge in London, and it has reached the present day. Moreover, it is localized and settled in French as “The customer is never wrong.”, in German as “The customer is king.”, in Japanese as “The customer is god.” and in Turkish as “The customer is the source of blessings.”.

Over the past century, the advancement in science and technology alongside the changing social and economic structures have made this principle rightly questionable. It became apparent in the business world’s complex dynamics that the customer was not always right. Yes, the customer was important, perhaps the essential part of the business, but to think that the customer demands are not questionable has brought many disasters for brands and service providers as well as the customers.

What does the customer want?

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Henry Ford

The saying of the industrialist Henry Ford, who brought revolutionizing innovations to the production processes, describes the limitations of the customer vision successfully. As well as innovation and change can come from apparent needs, offering customers more than their expectations is also a successful and profitable option.

If we think the issue from the perspective of the development and improvement of service providers, it is very reasonable and logical to care for the customers’ demands; and so you should do. . However, taking into account the demands of your customers without heuristic analysis and also reliable data analyzed by scientific methods might cause similar disasters for you and your clients.

In short, the customer always wants the best they know, not the best. Therefore, producing the better can also mean radically changing the values that the customer is strictly dependent on. If Ford had chosen to create what customers wanted instead of taking the risk of change, the Mustang name would not be a myth but referred to as a wild horse species unique to North America.

The rules of the team game

In a project which the customer expects your support, they also might expect being always right. It might be thought that they mostly are right because of knowing their potential, product, and the team better than you. Nevertheless, the professional management of the project by experts and the production of the analytical solutions based on data is undoubtedly more important than who is the right one.

Perhaps the smartest move that could be done when kicking off a project would be to reduce the number of the “sides”  to one.. To indigenize a common user-based mindset by integrating project owner, who is in charge of the project, with your team in all of the analysis, design and production stages will be the best and most efficient approach to the project.

Why is the customer not right?

If your customer does not think that you are on the same team, it means that you will spend most of your time to convince them of the work you have done, instead of doing your job. It is predictable how it might turn your project into long-term disaster.

Your customer is not the expert; on the contrary, they work with you because they need your expertise, experience, and perspective. Make sure a knowledgeable customer does not ask you for support, or more explicitly, they don’t pay for it.

Your customer does not give up easily what they are accustomed to; so they need to be convinced. It is not easy; at times, it is impossible. Basing innovative ideas on existing data, relevant research, and similar examples will significantly shorten your time to persuade your customer. Otherwise, you will inevitably suffer from financial loss as well as a loss of motivation in a short time. Therefore, you should express your data in a way that is as easy to understand as possible.

We all work to earn money, but the planned financial return of a project does not always mean that the project is profitable. Due to high expectations, the extended working hours, arbitrary decisions, and “one step forward, two steps back” processes, the unscheduled and unpredictable project-end becomes extremely destructive for all team members, and unfortunately, there is no compensation for this damage.

Let’s go back to our original question: When is the customer right? The answer to this question is related to the core values that should be a part of relationships both in our life and at work.

Firstly, the customer is right when they can integrate with the team as well as communicate with their team. Then they should be able to define the scope of the project as accurately as possible by analyzing the needs of their customers extensively. Moreover, they should participate in the process instead of continually interfering with it, and finally, they should aim to provide solutions by sharing the needs arise during the process with the team without delay.

It can be added more to the description paragraph above, and each improves the quality of your customer, and thus your project team. Of course, it is not difficult to conclude that a qualified team will produce good quality.

With scientific methods, professional principles, and reliable communication, it is possible to manage not only the idea that the customer is always right but also the processes that ensure the success of the project. There should also be experiences that will shape future business models.

Nature constructs circular systems while humans set up linear ones. For this reason, there is no “waste” in nature. The radical premise of a circular economy is this: a transition from the traditional “take, make, dispose” extractive industrial model to a model with a closed cycle in which material and data are continually reassigned.

As a model that minimizes energy and resource waste in industrial processes, the principles of a circular economy can be summarized as follows:

1. Protect and reinforce natural heritage by managing limited stocks and balancing renewable resources.
2. Optimize resource efficiency by circulating products, components and materials in technical and biological cycles.
3. Cultivate system efficiency by revealing and designing negative externalities.

This video made by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation summarizes the circular economy quite well:

A circular economy for a circular design

“Design is integral in the shift to the circular economy. There’s only so much we can do with products, services and systems based on the ‘take, make, dispose’ model. By re-thinking and re-designing, we can accelerate the transition to a new model that doesn’t just ‘eke out resources a bit longer,’ but is restorative and regenerative by design.”

Ellen MacArthur, founder of Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Chris Grantham, portfolio manager of IDEO London, points out that design is central to this transition to the circular economy. “As a result, any designer working in the modern commercial setting must understand the key principles and be able to apply them in their work,” he said.

“Designers and entrepreneurs tend to be familiar with designing for an end user. Effective circular design looks beyond a single-product lifecycle for a single user, to designing a bigger system – one that creates more value by enabling multiple usages and users of that material.”

Design has a tremendous impact on the production and usage of commodities, and is therefore a critical component in the transition to a resource efficient economy. Studies show that 75 percent of the final decisions on production processes and materials are made during the design stage.

In his article, Ruud Bakenende, professor of circular product design at Delft University of Technology, compares circular design with design for sustainability and design for recycling approaches. For him, what makes the circular design unusual is its interest in extending the life cycle of products, systems and components, and redefining the economic potential of resources through new business models. We can observe these competencies and potentials in the conducted research.

IDEO CEO Tim Brown emphasizes that one of the main problems that can be encountered while working on complex structures like circularity is too much thinking and failure to take action. This is where the Circular Design Guide comes in.

Circular Design Guide

By collaborating with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, IDEO developed a Circular Design Guide to create interest and facilitate the transition to this new-generation economic model. As a guide designed for innovators, entrepreneurs and designers, it cultivates system-oriented thinking and shares practical innovation methods.  The guide offers a series of content including 24 different methods, design-oriented thinking techniques specific to the circular economy and video interviews.

“Transition to a circular economy is one of the most important design challenges of our time. For designers, it means rethinking traditional approaches and retraining in circular principles. This guide was created to provide the tools needed to move from ideas to action, creating solutions for the circular economy that give businesses a competitive edge and are regenerative for our world.”

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

In this video prepared for the guide, Brown summarizes his design approach.