In 1993, Apple Computer released the Newton MessagePad to great fanfare. This personal digital assistant (PDA) offered all the functionality of a desktop computer in a device that was only slightly bigger than the palm of one’s hand. Although the product featured cutting-edge technical innovations, the MessagePad sold poorly, and Apple canceled the line in February 1997. Apple had toiled to create a device that solved all the problems of portable computing but produced a product that was too slow and too big. Moreover, at least initially, it was unable to fulfill its promise of quick and accurate handwriting recognition.

Apple’s vision for digital assistants remained unrealized for the better part of a decade, until Palm Computing introduced the Pilot. Like Apple, Palm Computing had previously attempted to create a handheld desktop—the Zoomer—and had met with equally poor results. Palm decided to study Zoomer customers to get a better understanding of how people were using digital assistants. The results were unambiguous: Customers used the calendar and address book features but ignored the spreadsheet and word-processor functions. On the other hand, virtually all of them bought Zoomer’s optional link to a desktop PC. Conclusion: Users weren’t looking for a replacement for desktop computers; they wanted a replacement for their personal organizers.

Armed with this understanding, developers limited the Pilot’s feature set to simple address book and day planner functions. This strategy allowed Palm Computing to make its product small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and simple enough to start instantly at the touch of a button. By understanding the needs of its customers, the company was able to create a PDA that didn’t solve all the needs of portable computing but solved the most important ones rather well. Where Apple executives were seduced by the promise of advanced technology, Palm’s developers instead used their experience with the Zoomer to get an understanding of what their customers needed and did not need. Today, the PalmPilot is the most successful general-use PDA on the market.

The PDA story is an example of an industry struggling to characterize the needs of customers who don’t yet exist. How does a company expose these unspoken needs? Traditionally, firms have used market research methods, such as surveys and focus groups, to get information about people. These methods work well in quantifying customers’ preferences among existing solution options, but they do little to identify the needs people can’t readily articulate.

To acquire more qualitative information on customers, some companies have begun using research methods drawn from sociology and anthropology. These social research methods result in a rich description of people’s behavior, interactions, and environmental conditions. However, they tend to be more descriptive than prescriptive. In other words, they rarely focus on the needs and consequent business opportunities that customers present. For the full potential of qualitative research to be harnessed, it must be better integrated into the process of design and development. It has to link the activities of marketing with those of design professionals. And it has to focus on needs.

Needfinding

Thirty years ago, a designer named Robert McKim, who was then head of Stanford University’s product design program, was searching for a way to help designers get closer to end users. McKim noticed that the leaders in any organization were people who found important new problems to work on; they were not necessarily the ones who ultimately solved the problems. From this, he hypothesized that designers who wanted to have the greatest impact on product development needed to be involved at the earliest stages of product definition. As a response, McKim began synthesizing a qualitative research approach to studying people to identify their unmet needs. He termed this approach Needfinding.

Needfinding has developed considerably over the last three decades. At Jump Associates, we have articulated and extended the Needfinding approach in response to the growing understanding of qualitative research methods. As part of our ongoing work with internal design departments, we have helped train client organizations in the basics of Needfinding. This involved drawing on related source material from the social sciences, as well as creating new methods that complement the product design process. This article draws on much of that work, and is intended to provide an overview of Needfinding’s core methodology.

Why Focus on Needs?

Most designers intuitively understand that needs are important. They know that they do their best work solving people’s problems when they clearly understand what those problems are. However, an understanding of people’s needs can be leveraged across an entire business activity, providing value beyond the development of any single product. The points below examine how a research effort focused on needs helps companies to plan short and long-term product development and allows design managers to determine which problems they should solve first.

NEEDS LAST LONGER THAN ANY SPECIFIC SOLUTION.

Solutions come in and out of favor faster than the needs they serve. Punch cards, magnetic tape, and 5 1/4″ floppy disks have successively moved from introduction to obsolescence. However, the underlying need to store computer data has existed throughout the lives of each of those products and continues to exist today. Because people’s needs endure longer than solutions, companies should focus on satisfying those needs rather than on producing a particular product. Thinking of the company as a provider of a solution may encourage the company to continue improving that solution, but it rules out creating entirely new offerings that satisfy the need in different ways. Conversely, focusing on needs encourages companies to continue innovating better ways to serve those needs, independent of current solutions.

NEEDS ARE OPPORTUNITIES WAITING TO BE EXPLOITED, NOT GUESSES AT THE FUTURE.

Strategy and product development need not depend solely on predicting the future. A crucial part of that future already exists today. While solutions that eliminate needs do occasionally appear, the problems that currently trouble people are likely to continue into the future. Working to solve them is less risky than creating a plan around a prophecy of what tomorrow holds. By understanding people’s needs, companies can better gauge whether consumers will be interested in a new product.

NEEDS PROVIDE A ROADMAP FOR DEVELOPMENT.

Consumer needs give companies a method for determining what corporate skills and new offerings should be developed to grow their businesses. A company may not currently have the capabilities necessary to satisfy all those needs, but by identifying the ones that cannot yet be satisfied and working toward meeting them, the company can chart a future development path. Ten years ago, Eastman Kodak customer studies helped the company realize that people didn’t just want film and photo processing; their underlying need was to capture and enjoy images of daily life. Kodak developed a road map to better satisfy that need, gradually advancing into areas such as photo CDs and image manipulation software. Kodak originally knew relatively little about creating imaging software for home computers, but because such knowledge was crucial to serving its customers’ long-term needs, it developed the necessary capabilities over time.

NEEDS SPUR ACTION.

Unless it emphasizes needs, qualitative social research can only create a picture of the customer’s experience; it will not uncover ways to improve that experience. Even the most detailed description of customers’ behavior and environments won’t help product developers if it doesn’t expose opportunities for action. Once a need has been identified, designers can visualize a problem to be solved.

NEEDS ARE OBVIOUS AFTER THE FACT, NOT BEFORE.

People become acclimated to their problems, often developing work-arounds to circumvent a need. In doing so, they can become oblivious to the need’s existence.1 Again, research that relies on the customer’s description of a situation may never uncover this need. Because many needs are apparent only after they’ve been solved, research focused on needs suggests opportunities that competitors may not recognize. For example, consider India-based Bajaj Auto, the world’s largest motor-scooter manufacturer. Until recently, most Bajaj scooter owners insisted that they were happy with the way the product operated. Yet before starting a Bajaj scooter, the rider would have to tilt it to fill the eccentrically mounted engine with fuel. Bajaj owners recognized this problem only after Honda introduced a model in India with a center-mounted engine that didn’t require tilting. Honda went on to make significant inroads into the market Bajaj had previously dominated.