• How much time do they spend meeting this need?
Style app: 2 hours/day
SaaS tool: 2 days/week
• How much money have they spent meeting this need?
Style app: 30% of their income spent on clothes
SaaS tool: $20k/year for their SF license plus est. $200k for custom system
• Are they currently looking for a solution to meet this need?
Style app: Always looking at new things
SaaS tool: Yes, but only at the beginning of their fiscal year
• Do they have special requirements or needs for adopting the product?
Style app: Only uses mobile
SaaS tool: Needs to be certified and rolled out by IT department
Determine User/Product Fit
As you learned with personas, it’s important to be able to identify the exact behaviors and needs that determine whether a particular person will become a user of a product. Not all moms will become users of every product aimed at moms. Not all stylish teens will want to use your new style app. Not all marketing managers will buy one particular productivity product. What is it that creates the fit between the user and the product? These questions are meant to help you predict those things.
• What behaviors/needs/goals predict usage?
Style app: Shopped at a sample sale in the last 6 months and follows at least 3 fashion blogs closely
SaaS tool: Attempted to measure ROI on email marketing and content marketing investment, but felt frustrated and couldn’t get actionable information
• How does this product meet the need?
Style app: Helps them find sample sales of upcoming designers in their area
SaaS tool: Tracks email and content marketing all the way through the sales pipeline to measure actual ROI
• How does this product make the user better?
Style app: They’re the first in their group of friends to discover a trend while saving money
SaaS tool: Makes their marketing employees more efficient by generating more sales leads
Determine Context of Use
Where and with whom a person interacts with a product has a huge impact on your product and design choices. We’ll talk more about this in Chapter 7, “Design Better,” but for now, try to answer these questions about the context in which your product is being used or will be used by your customers.
• With whom will they use the product? Virtually/in-person/combo?
Style app: Alone
SaaS tool: Marketing managers; content marketers; copywriters; virtually
• Where will they use the product?
Style app: On public transit; at home
SaaS tool: In meetings; at their desks at the office; while traveling
• When and how often will they use the product?
Style app: Multiple times a day for a few minutes at a time
SaaS tool: Once a week for this user (other users will use multiple times a day)
Determine Future Use
Finally, it’s not enough that people try your product. Great products are things that people develop a relationship with over time. The products change along with the needs of the users to keep people happy over the course of years. You need to understand how your product will stay relevant to your users.
• Why will they keep using it over the course of the next few years?
Style app: Constantly updated with the newest designers
SaaS tool: Will be able to show 20% improvement in ROI on marketing campaigns within the first 6 months
• How will their usage change over the next few months? The next few years?
Style app: Should use more frequently as they find more designers, but may drop off if they age out of the styles
SaaS tool: Will begin to use more comparative reports and require more historical data as it accumulates
• What will be different about the user in the next few months? The next few years?
Style app: Will spend less money at retail stores while feeling happier about wardrobe
SaaS tool: Marketing department will become more efficient while user will spend 50% less time on reporting and managing
How Do You Know You’re Right?
Once you and your team have taken a shot at answering these questions, you’ll probably find that you’ve had to make some guesses. Very few product teams immediately know the answer to all of these questions with any level of confidence.
If you do feel like you know the answers to all of these questions, how do you know that you’re right? Are the answers based on solid qualitative and quantitative feedback? Do you have any evidence that everything you believe is true?
Of course, if you don’t yet have a product, you’re just making up the answers to all of these questions. That’s fine for now, but your next step should be to try to figure out whether the person you’ve just described exists. If you already have a product with users, make sure that your answers are based on current evidence—not research that may have been done years ago or a vague “feeling” that you have from talking to some users occasionally.
And don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” If you don’t know the answers to some of the questions, that’s fine. Just make sure that you’ve got a plan for learning what you don’t know yet.
When you have some evidence that the things you believe to be true really are, you can check the Validated box for that section of the map. This will help you keep track of what you think you know and what you’ve tested.
Map It!
I can’t legally call this a User Map without providing you with some sort of visual representation of your answers. The great thing about this map shown in Figure 2.8 is that it will show you, very clearly, what information you have about your users and what you’re still missing.
FIGURE 2.8 The User Map shows the most important questions you should answer.
I strongly recommend you make a large version of this on a poster of some sort and start covering it with sticky notes with your answers on them. When you have validated something, feel free to write it directly on the map and check the Validated box, but don’t forget to date it (see Figure 2.9). Information about your users has a way of going stale over time.
Also, you’ll want to label the