A strategic tool for describing the business model of a new or existing offline business.

The business model logically justifies how the organization creates, provides, and increases value. In other words, it is a description of the logic of actions that lead to profit.

Therefore, it is a template for describing how your company, project, or product creates value and makes money on it.

Modeling is necessary because it solves 3 main tasks: business management, increasing the value of the business, and implementing innovation in the business.

The Business model canvas is designed to test the viability of a business idea. The business model canvas was created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. Basically, the canvas of the business model canvas was developed for offline companies.

Startups also became interested in this method and began to apply it too, but it turned out that the business model canvas had sections in which there was nothing to enter, for example, there were no partners or distribution channels in the project, etc.

For startups, you can use the lean canvas, which is a business model canvas but adapted to startups that are at an early stage of development.

Gestalt is a philosophical concept, which in translation means: a holistic image, form, or figure. In psychology, this is the name given to a structure that is perceived by a person as a whole, and not as different elements. For example, we perceive some image, the face of a loved one, a favorite melody, or an abstract idea of a colleague immediately and completely.

The canvas is the gestalt of the business model because it contains all the main elements of the strategy.

Official business model canvas template by Strategyzer

The purpose of the business model canvas

To describe the product or analyze the business model that is already in use from the standpoint of its efficiency and development potential.

Value for the team

The canvas best demonstrates all the aspects necessary to build the most effective strategy.

Value for business

It will help to check the viability of a business idea.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 4 to 8 hours

Creating process:

Step 1: Customer segments

The most important block. It identifies different groups (types) of people or organizations that the business wants to attract and serve in the future. It can also be explained that the customer segment is those with whom the business works or wants to work. In other words, it is a certain group of people who are united by a common problem or need. Consumers are the basis for the company’s profits, and nothing will work without them. So the better the business describes this segment, the easier it will be to sell a valuable product for this segment or several segments.

There are different types of customer segments:

• Mass. A business model that is focused on the mass market without division into customer segments.
• Niche market. Their goal is to satisfy specific customer segments.
• Segmented. Identify market segments with needs and problems.
• Diversified. Serve 2 related customer segments with different needs and problems.
• Multilateral. Serve 2 or more customer segments.

In this block you need to think about:

• Who are you creating this product or service for?
• Who is your target audience?
• Who will pay for the product or service?
• Who will look for your product or service?

You can create a business model canvas based on a proto-persona. This artifact must be constantly updated. Be sure to review and refine the business model after real interviews with future users.

Step 2: Value propositions

This is a logical extension of the customer segment, and this block describes a specific list of products or services that offer value to a specific customer segment. A value proposition is very reason why customers choose your company over another and buy a product or service only from you. In other words, if the value proposition solves the problems of the customer segment, then you assign the value correctly.

A value proposition creates value for a customer segment by combining certain factors, such as:

• Novelty.
• Productivity.
• Customization.
• Design.
• Brand.
• Status.
• Price.
• Cost reduction.
• Accessibility.
• Utility.
• Convenience for customers.

In this block you need to think about:

• What exactly is the value of your product or service for your customer service?
• What customer service issues or problems are solved by your product or service?
• What are the differences from others?

Step 3: Channels

At this stage, we need to understand how we will communicate (interact) with our customer segments to offer and give them a value proposition.

Communication channels have 5 different phases:

• Awareness or information. How do we convey to them our value proposition?
• Rating. How can we help choose our value proposition and bypass competitors?
• Buying or selling. How our products or services are purchased.
• Delivery. How do we deliver our value proposition and form a positive impression on them?
• After-sales period. How will we provide after-sales support?

In this block you need to think about:

• What communication channels do your customer segments want and use now?
• Which communication channels are the most profitable and effective?

Step 4: Customer relationships

The result of all the previous stages is the fact that there is a certain relationship with our customer segment. This block describes the types of relationships that a company establishes with specific customer segments.

There are several categories of customer relationships:

• Personal support. Based on human interaction.
• Special personal support. The special representative is assigned to the client.
• Self-service. Does not support any direct interaction with the client.
• Automated services. This is self-service using automated processes.
• Communities. Online platforms, where customers can share knowledge and solve each other’s problems.
• Co-creation. This is attracting customers to the business, intending to create value for your product or service with them.

In this block you need to think about:

• What type of relationship does each of your customer segments expect to receive?
• What types of relationships are already established, and what are the costs?
• What types of relationships are embedded in the overall business model scheme?

Step 5: Revenue streams

This is our monetization model, ie the funds (profit) that the company earns from each customer segment.

Business model canvas (BMC) was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is one of the main stages of Design thinking, which will indicate the problems that your users want you to solve with your design.

A problem statement (POV) is a brief description of the problem (or need) that needs to be solved.

How might we (HMW) are short questions that start the process of generating ideas and solutions.

The purpose of the POV

Identify and articulate the problems you will be solving. Problems should be focused solely on the target audience, their needs, and your insights.

The purpose of the HMW questions

It will help you start generating innovative ideas that solve user problems.

Value for the team

Formulating POV and HMW questions will allow the team to understand what the problems are in the user and how to solve these problems with innovative solutions.

Value for business

The team will identify many problems and needs, and generate innovative solutions that can later be prioritized and implemented in the product.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 8 to 16 hours

Creating process:

Step 1. Unlock all artifacts from previous explorations

Refresh your memories and ask the whole team.

If you have not conducted interviews with real users, have not compiled empathy maps (have not identified insights and needs), then this is very bad since all your further work will be the result of the subjective opinion of the team and stakeholders, which may not reflect the real picture and take you into the wrong direction.

Step 2. Go back to your empathy maps that you were doing

We looked for INSIGHTS in them, and based on them we found NEEDS.

[INSIGHT] Users often look for ways to assess their performance in learning a foreign language themselves, since teachers do not always pay attention to this, and sometimes even skip such conversations, and this greatly affects their motivation

>

[NEED] Users should be able to receive reports on the work in a foreign language lesson, as well as on success over a certain period.

Step 3. Write down your POVs according to the formula

[User . . . (descriptive)] needs [Need . . . (verb)] because [Insight . . . (compelling)]

[Marta] [NEEDS] to be able to receive feedback on her work in a foreign language class, as well as a progress report for a certain period [BECAUSE] she often looks for ways to evaluate herself since teachers do not always give her feedback on her progress.

[USER] is our empirical persona (not a proto-persona a.k.a. non-empirical persona) that we create based on previous research.

Step 3. Reformulate the POV problem in the HMW question

In this way, you will prepare HMW questions that will help you find innovative solutions at the Ideation stage, where you can use different techniques with your team: Six thinking hats, Brainstorming, or The Walt Disney Creativity strategy.

Example: How might we help Marta get feedback on her class and progress over some time?

Point of view (POV) - Problem statement & How might we (HMW) questions was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The empathy map allows us to summarize the results of the research after interviews with users, as well as to identify common patterns that allow us to identify insights and determine the needs of our users.

Empathy is a deep empathy for another person, which is based on feelings.

An empathy map is a visual display of everything we know about a particular user.

Recommendation: Use the updated template by Dave Gray (XPLANE) whenever possible. You can read more in the article “Updated Empathy Map Canvas”.

If you are creating a product, service, or customer experience (CX), then a well-designed empathy map will be very helpful in developing your value proposition. You can use the Value Proposition Canvas to do this. This instrument was developed by Alexander Osterwalder.

The purpose of the empathy map

Help you gain a deeper understanding of the environment, behavior, problems, and aspirations of your users to design a user-centric solution.

Value for the team

It is a powerful tool that helps to develop deep empathy in all team members for end-users, discover insights and identify needs.

Value for business

Based on the team’s findings, a wider range of user needs can be identified. Thus, the business will receive not only a user-oriented design but also a serious competitive advantage.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 2 to 4 hours per empathy map and 4 hours to identify all insights and needs

Creating process:

Imagine that you conducted a user interview with three respondents. Now you need to transfer each respondent to the empathy map. In this way, we visualize a large amount of qualitative data.

Step 1. “WHO are we empathizing with?”

“Goal” section. It is necessary to decide WHO we will empathize with. Briefly describe this respondent, but with important details.

Recommendation: Before starting the exercise, let the team rehearse the user interview with the selected respondent.

Step 2. "What do we want them to DO?”

“Goal” section. Think about WHAT you want this user to do with your product or service. It is understood what target tasks the user will perform.

Recommended: I described user goals in the following “User Personas” article. Thanks to Mr. Alan Cooper for the book “About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design”.

Motive > Goal > Tasks

In short, the user needs to complete these specific tasks to complete the goals. Additionally, I want to note that “What do we want them to DO?” = tasks, so do not confuse this question with the question in step 5 “What do they DO?”.

“SEE”, “SAY”, “DO”, and “HEAR” are all external environments. We talked more about environments in the “SWOT Analysis” article.

Step 3. “What do they SEE?”

Describe everything that the respondent saw in his environment.

For example, our respondent saw:

• A large number of CVs from designers.
• There are few high-quality works in the reviewed CVs.
• Most candidate portfolios are without user research.

Step 4. “What do they SAYING?”

You need to remember all the important opinions that the respondent shared with you during the user interview: small details and life stories, perhaps the respondent repeated the same thought several times, emotionally recalled some moments, etc.

For example, our respondent said:

• Often looks closely at talented designers who are still studying at the courses.
• Spends a lot of time on self-development.
• Engaged in mentoring in his spare time.

Step 5. “What do they DO?”

This refers to the specific actions of the respondent that he committed in the past or the present.

For example, our respondent does:

• Invites and conducts interviews.
• Verification of test tasks of designers.
• Developing the design team.

Step 6. “What do they HEAR?”

We need to describe what the respondent has heard from family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, or on social media.

For example, our respondent heard:

• It is better to hire experienced designers.
• An experienced designer is hard to find.
• Experienced designers need to pay a lot of money.

Step 7. “What do they THINK and FEEL”

Only after we have completed work on all external environments, do we move on to what is happening in the respondent’s head (internal environment). This is the most important step. Finding this data will give us an idea of “how to be our user”.

Consists of 3 sections:

• “Paints” section. These are the problems that the character faces. That is, what are their fears, frustrations, and anxieties?
• “Gains” section. These are the benefits to which the character goes. That is, what are their wants, needs, hopes, and dreams?
• “What other thoughts & feelings might motivate their behavior?” section. These are drivers that can motivate or push you to take the first or next steps.

Step 8. Analyze and group similar responses from your respondents

We are done with the empathy map. Now carefully analyze your artifacts and find similar answers (they may be from different sections). Name the groups last.

Step 8. Synthesize insights

Here it is necessary to understand this term comprehensively. There are two types of insiders: in terms of psychology and marketing.

From the point of view of psychology:

• Insight is a sudden understanding that was not obvious to you before.
• Insight is the moment when you get a sudden insight that allows you to solve a certain problem or find the answer to an exciting question.
• Insight is when Archimedes (Greek mathematician) shouted “Eureka!” That is, something to which he could not have come on his own, and this turned out to be a surprise for him.

Insights in marketing are built not on sudden understanding, but on the results of research into what the consumer needs.

From a marketing point of view:

Marketing insight is a hidden human need. In other words, this is when a person wants something (there is a hidden motive of the target audience here), but for some reason does not get it (has some kind of problem or barrier).

Insight = [motive] + [problem or barrier]

Recommended: You can read about the motive in the following “User personas” article.

Step 9. Synthesize needs

A need is a strong need for “something”. In other words, it is a very strong driving force.

We will use the synthesized insights and needs when working on the “User personas” and “Point of view (POV) — Problem statement & How might we (HMW) questions”.

To develop an empathy map, you can use one of the following services: Google Docs, Jamboard, or Miro.

Empathy mapping (uncovering insights & identifying needs) was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is an image of our target audience of the product, united by common behavioral factors, goals, and motives. The user persona is based on real user research.

In the last article, I recalled that once I managed to ask one question to Mr. Alan Cooper, who explained his point of view in detail, for which I am infinitely grateful to him. In this article, I again want to remember this brilliant man.

Mr. Alan Cooper suggested that increasing empathy for your user in interaction design would have a positive effect on the outcome. For example, Mac mini/Macbook Air is suitable for users with light tasks, iMac/Macbook Pro for creators, Mac Studio/Mac Pro for very powerful tasks, etc.

If we focus on all users in the world, then the result of such work will be a product that no one will need.

Such a product will cover everyone, but at the same time, it will not qualitatively fulfill any of the tasks assigned to it.

There are 3 types of personas:

• Marketing persona. Not suitable for UX design, as they describe not the behavior, goals, and motives, but the demographics of the buyer (customer) of the product.
• Proto-persona (Non-empirical persona). This is the type of persona with whom we begin our study. In short, this is an image of the future user, based only on the assumptions of the team and not confirmed by the results of the study.

Important: This type of persona is used solely to imagine the target audience of the product. As a result of our presentation, a proto-persona will be developed. With the help of a proto-persona, we can conduct an online survey, find and conduct interviews with potential users, and, based on the qualitative data obtained, develop an empirical persona, which we will use in the future.

• Persona (Empirical persona). This is exactly the type of persona that we need. That is, this is the image of the target audience, which has common behavior, goals, and motives, and is the result of the research.

A user persona is a concentrated image of your target audience that has similar behaviors, goals, motivations, needs, and concerns.

Also, you need to understand the difference between a role and a user persona:

• Role. Based on access and required functionality. In other words, this is a group of users in the system, which is united by a certain set of access rights.
• Persona. It is built based on motives, goals, and problems.

For example, let’s look at the Preply service (a handy service for learning languages).

In my opinion, Preply contains the following roles: Super Admin, Admin, Help Desk, Teacher, and Student.

Let’s take the role of a student as a base. Hypothetically, as a result of a user interview, they could identify the following 4 personas:

• A student who does not speak English but wants to learn it from the very beginning to a good conversational level.
• A student who has already studied English has basic knowledge and wants to develop further.
• A student who has a very good command of the language at the B2 level and wants to develop a business language for professional purposes.
• A student who speaks C1/C2 but wants to get rid of the accent.

Each of these personas is united by similar behaviors, goals, motivations, needs, and concerns.

A list of some definitions that you should understand as they are often used:

• Persona and archetype. They are functionally identical because they contain the same data and information about user behavior, relationships, goals, and pain points. The difference between the two is that a user persona has a photo, a name, and a biography, while a user archetype is not tied to specific names or faces.

• A client is someone who pays a specialist, company, or organization for services or advice (consultations). A feature of the client is long-standing closer professional relationships and personalization, which means that you can work with clients for years, and have a special relationship and an individual approach to solving their problems.

Personalization or customization is the process by which a user customizes the web interface, operating system, or real-life things (such as the desktop) according to their personal preferences.

• A customer is a person who visits a physical store or an online store with the intent to buy something. Often this is a one-time sale of something without building a long-term relationship. This is just a business, namely the exchange of money for goods, and services.
• A consumer is someone who has bought or will directly use your product or service. The consumer himself doesn’t need to buy a product or service, it could be done for him, and he will only use it. For example, a company buys a certain InVision service plan for $4 per month for a design team. In this case, the company will be in the role of the customer, and the design team in the role of the consumer.

For example, the state claims that it failed to warn consumers about the danger of a severe thunderstorm in Lviv.

Client, customer, and consumer terms are described in the Cambridge Dictionary.

• A user is a person who interacts with a system, product, or service.

The term is described in ISO 9241–11.

Or you can also say that this is a person using something: someplace, equipment, product or machine, etc.

For example, beach users complain that the beach is very dirty.

Important: A user in a marketing plan is someone who came to your site, interacted with it, closed it, but did not order anything, and did not call. That is, it did not bring any value to the company in the form of profit.

The purpose of the user persona

This method will help you understand the goals, desires, needs, and fears, hear the story and see the relevant user experience.

Value for the team

In this way, the team will increase empathy for their target audience and design the best solution.

Value for business

In addition to all of the above, understanding users will greatly reduce the risk of developing the wrong product or service.

Important: The wrong choice of the target audience will give the team the wrong results, which can lead the process in the wrong direction.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 2 to 5 hours per 1 empirical persona

Creating process:

If you’ve already done an Empathy Map then you can transfer the existing information into the user persona, but I recommend re-thinking with the team on all the blocks, you might be able to add something new to the persona.

We have developed a proto-persona to understand who our potential users are at the subjective level of the team and stakeholders, find them, and conduct a user interview. After the user interview, we have a large amount of qualitative data that we can turn into an empirical persona based on real data.

Step 1. Demographics

Enter only essential information such as name, age, country, city, education, industry, and position at work. And all this. Don’t invent anything else, don’t beautify the persona, and don’t turn it into a marketing persona with more product customer demographics.

User ≠ customer. An artifact that will be aimed at increasing sales and a profit strategy is not what we are looking for. Our goal is to improve the user experience.

Step 2. Story

This block is also called background or biography. Tell a story where you explain the reason why the user uses your product or service, and in what context he does it.

Step 3. User goals and tasks

First of all, add the goals of the respondents you interviewed. Mr. Alan Cooper divided them into 3 types:

• The motive is “experience goals”. In forensics, this term is also used, and it allows you to determine why a person commits a crime. Preferably there is one motive, but very global. For example, the desire for professional self-development.

Motive is the strongest internal driving force that motivates a person to action. So it’s a huge motivator.

• Goals are “life goals”. Goals flow from motive. Ask, "Why would a user use your product or service?”. Carefully analyze the answers of the respondent, and I am sure that you will find at least 3–5 goals.

This means that if the user’s motive is the desire for professional self-development, then the goals will be: have a high salary, buy a house for your family, eat the best products, use branded appliances, and relax with your family abroad 2 times a year, etc.

• Tasks are “end goals”. Objectives flow from goals. In short, these are specific tasks that the user needs to do to complete the goals. That is 1 goal = several tasks. To find a task, ask yourself the question “How can the user achieve his goals?”.

This means that if the user’s goal is to have a high salary, the tasks will be to find a list of all the necessary methodologies on the Internet, check their quality and effectiveness, sort them by priority and study them.

Step 4. Understand the needs, wants, and fears

• Needs. These are the business aspects that help the user achieve the goals. I carried them over from the Empathy Map after we discovered the insights and turned them into needs.

For example, an affordable tuition fee, live communication with mentors, constant feedback from mentors, and a certificate.

• Wants (external environment). Sometimes this block is called motivations or drivers. That is, this is everything that will make achieving user goals more enjoyable or push them to take the first or next steps.

For example, our user wants to get everything they need from one reliable resource and in a logical sequence.

• Fears. Sometimes this block is referred to as risks or frustrations. In short, this is a strong fear or the worst thing that can happen to a user.

For example, a user is afraid because he found many articles on the Internet, and they are all different. Our user does not understand what needs to be taught to him first, and what not to learn at all. He also fears for the quality of the information and in what logical order to teach it. A serious problem is a fact that he is not sure that he will be able to learn so many methodologies.

Step 5. Expectations

“A day in the life” story is fine, but that kind of story doesn’t say much about user interaction. In turn, the mental model is based on data that we obtained during a qualitative study called a user interview.

A mental model is a personal subjective previous experience that reflects only a personal attitude to objects and processes, and may not correspond to reality. Also, the mental model of 1 person may be different from other people.

We need to turn the mental model into a storyframe.

Why is it important to identify the mental models of your respondents? In the end, we will have two options for the development of events:

• Have fun with the team in the game “Battle of Psychics”, where you will think on your own over the question “What would John do?”;
• Or ask respondents a few questions about how they imagine interacting with a future product or service.

So what should be done?

• Select the main goal from the “User goals” section.
• The goal you choose should contain several objectives.
• We describe everything steps by step.

In other words, a story is like a use case, but with more detail, rather than just a long list of steps the user can take until they reach their goal.

You can use one of the following tools to develop personas: Google Docs, Xtensio, Userforge, UXPressia, or Miro.

User personas was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This low-cost, reasonably fast, and practical research method will allow you to obtain quantitative and qualitative data about potential or existing users.

An online survey is a quick and easy way to get data about current or potential users. With this method, meaningful results can be obtained. The survey does not need moderation after its launch.

Recommendation: You can use Survey Monkey or Google Forms for this purpose.

An intercept survey is a survey that is launched when using a site or program and is designed to ask the user questions.

This research method includes the ability to rate the site on a scale from 0 to 10 points, you can ask open-ended questions and ask for detailed answers, and you can ask closed questions and show answer options where the user selects the necessary ones. Thus, you will receive feedback from users.

Recommendation: You can use Hotjar for this purpose.

An email survey is a survey sent to users of a product or to those who voluntarily provided their email address (for example, subscribed to a blog or granted the right to send emails when registering on a site) to obtain user data.

This research method is the same as the online survey, but it is distributed using bulk email services.

Recommendation: You can use MailChimp for this purpose.

The purpose of the survey at the beginning of the project

It is this type of survey that we will consider in the article.

Test simple hypotheses and get an understanding of who our potential target audience is. Also, get important details about their experience, find out the attitude of potential users to certain services or services, find out information about the products they use, get contact information for interviews, etc.

A simple hypothesis can be tested with closed questions. The respondent can easily answer questions with multiple answers. Complex hypotheses require interviews.

Important: An online survey, intercept survey, and email survey only point your research in the right direction.You must understand that the quality of these answers is not high, because potential users do not always try to answer qualitatively and honestly.

The purpose of the oral survey during the wireframe testing phase

We need to understand the general impression of respondents from our user interface. Find out if it was difficult for them to complete the tasks assigned to them.

Explanation #1: After completing the guerrilla testing (also known as hallway usability testing) or usability testing, you can survey respondents. That is, a post-test survey will provide an assessment of the overall impression of the respondent.

Explanation #2: You can also poll respondents after each completed task. That is, the survey during the test is to identify the most difficult tasks, and understand the most problematic places in our user interface.

The purpose of the oral survey at the stage of testing the finished solution

In addition to usability, our respondents will be able to evaluate the quality of the product implementation itself. Thus, it will help us understand how difficult it is to complete the tasks we have set and share our general impressions of our user interface.

Value for the team

If the team clearly understands why they want to conduct a survey, what they will receive in the final result, determined their goals, and made clear, simple, and concise questions, then such a survey will be able to provide a large amount of data (i mean, a lot of quantitative data, and a few qualitative data).

Also, this research method can be a bridge from a survey to interviews with potential users, since the last question can be an offer to talk more about his experience. An example of such a question is described in step 6.

Value for business

The survey can be conducted at different stages of product development, this method is cheap and fast, and also serves as a good guide for making the right decisions.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 5 to 8 hours to prepare 1st survey, up to 3 hours to find places for distribution, or up to 3 hours to set up an email service (if there is a list of users)

Creating process:

Step 1. Preparation and discussion

It is necessary to make sure that the whole team clearly understands what goals it sets for itself and what it will receive as a result of this research method.

Ask the team these questions:

• What do you want to know and why? — Question Answer: The team wants to know the frequency and duration of room bookings, the factors by which customers rate a hotel, and the most common problems customers have when booking a hotel room. By analyzing the responses, we will get important data, a list of problems, and recommendations that need to be fixed first.
• What will the team do with the information it receives and how will it apply the results of the survey? — Answer to the question: The team will suggest ways to solve problems. For example, redesign the functionality of booking a hotel room.

Step 2. Search for respondents

I already wrote about this step in the previous article “User interviews (based on proto-persona) & Hypothesis”, and the principle of finding respondents for the survey is the same.

Important: Incorrectly selected potential respondents are a path to incorrect results. Remember this.

Step 3. Compose questions

Questions are of 2 types:

• Closed questions = quantitative data. You will be able to get quantitative data from users, i.e. numbers. From this data, it is impossible to learn the context, motivation, and reason for the answer. These questions are accompanied by checkboxes and radio buttons. The resulting structured data is very easy to visualize in a chart and compare with other quantitative data. Quantitative data help draw general conclusions from the study. This data type answers the question “What”.
• Open questions = qualitative data. You will receive qualitative data about user behavior, actions, motives, opinions, and problems. These questions are accompanied by a text box so that the respondent can express all their thoughts. This data type answers the question “Why”.

Important: Open-ended questions begin with one of the question words: “who”, “how”, “what”, “why”, etc.

So, by this point you should have accumulated a lot of hypotheses that you need to turn into questions:

• If the hypothesis is simple, then we turn it into a closed question and give options for answers.

Hypothesis: The owner of the hotel wants to make it possible to book rooms through his website, but we assume that this will not give the desired result since almost all bookings go through popular services or reception.

Question #1 (closed): How often do you book a hotel room? — Answer options: once a week, 2–5 times a month, 6–9 times a year, more than 10 times a year, I don’t book hotel rooms at all.

Question #2 (closed): How do you book a hotel room — Answer options: use Booking, use Airbnb, search for contact information online and call reception, your option (other)…

• If your hypothesis cannot be answered with “yes”, “no”, or another option, you need to ask an open question.

Question #3 (open): Please describe in detail how exactly your process of choosing and booking a hotel room goes.

Important: Do not abuse open-ended questions and do not turn the survey into in-depth interviews, as this will harm the results. Want to ask a question and listen to the respondent? Do a full interview.

Types of closed questions:

• Dichotomous questions. You must choose 1 of 2 answers. Possible answers: “yes” or “no”, “correct” or “incorrect”, “agree” or “disagree”.

Question: Have you ever booked hotel rooms? — Answer options: “yes” or “no”.

• Multiple-choice questions. You must select 1 or more answers.

Question: What websites did you visit to find a hotel room? — Answer options: Booking, Airbnb, OLX, CouchSurfing, Zillow, your choice (other)…

• Interval scales: Likert scale or semantic differential.

Likert scale questions: How often do you take a suitcase full of things with you? — Answer options: always, often, sometimes, rarely, never.

Semantic differential question: Do you agree that booking a hotel room online is very convenient? Scale with answers: disagree | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5| agree.

Step 4. Conducting a test version of the survey

Please check the survey for unclear, difficult, or inappropriate questions, and grammatical errors, check the logical sequence of questions (for example, first general questions, then about his life, and only after that about the user interface or the problem you want to investigate).

Important: Avoid the case when you ask the question “Have you ever booked a hotel room?”, the respondent answered “No”, and your next question is “How often do you book a hotel room?”. Believe me, few will fill out the survey for you to the end …

To do this, you need to show the survey to your colleagues so that they provide their feedback. This is very important, don’t skip it!

Step 5. Write an accompanying test

An example of a survey title. Surveys for people with hotel reservation services.

Example of accompanying text. Good afternoon! We are the design team of OTAKOYI company, our website is [URL]. One of the main tasks of our team is user research, which reveals the problems and needs of people, and insights to develop a website or mobile application specifically for the target audience. At the moment, we are deeply studying the topic of how people book rooms in hotels. Thank you in advance for agreeing to participate and share valuable information with us! The survey will take approximately 10–15 minutes.

Step 6. Add a request to find respondents for an interview

Example. We will be very happy if you leave your email address or a link to your profile on any social network. Then we can contact you and arrange a more detailed conversation about your hotel booking experience. Completing the interview will earn you a $25 Apple Gift Card.

Step 7. We send the survey to our respondents and wait a few days to complete it

Places for distribution:

• A business can provide a bulk mailing list. These are people who are already using the product.
• Social media. Look for groups that may contain your target audience. Arrange with the administrator to publish the survey or send it manually to all group members using private messages. Also, you can buy ads (1,5 thousand impressions of your ad = $5).

Recommendation: The manual submission option is very long and complicated.

• LinkedIn. We are looking for the necessary people and send them a personal message with a link to the survey. You can take the accompanying text the same as that of the survey.
• Professional services (paid). UserTesting, Userbrain, Lookback, UsabilityHub, Userlytics, Userzoom, Loop11 and more.

Surveys was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most important marketing tools for researching user needs.

A focus group or focused group interview is a qualitative research method where 5 to 10 respondents talk about a topic given by a moderator interviewer.

The interviewer-moderator has a pre-designed script (guide) that he uses in a group discussion. The process of creating a guide is very similar to what we do for user interviews.

A focused group interview differs from a user interview in that all communication takes place between the participants, and the moderator only sets the topic and directs the conversation in the right direction.

The purpose of the focus group

This method allows you to find out the values and motivation of the respondents, as well as see how they pose or perceive the problem you proposed for discussion. In other words, we need to find out the opinions of each of the participants.

Value for the team

It will allow revealing insights during the discussion of the respondents among themselves on the question asked. The data obtained is difficult to obtain in an interview with a single user, since information important to us only comes to light during the discussion.

Value for business

Allows you to define attitudes, beliefs, desires, and reactions to a product or service.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 6 hours
• Main activity: from 2 to 4 hours

Creating process:

A professionally conducted focused group interview provides a lot of data for analysis, but there is also a big disadvantage of this approach since there is a high chance that respondents will influence a friend, and prevent them from sharing valuable opinions or feedback with a moderator interviewer.

This can happen because there will be a respondent in the group who will impose his opinions and values on others, and all other respondents will agree.

Step 1. Decide on the type of focus group and goals

You must understand what goals you set, and based on this, select the group of respondents that is right for you.

The following types of focus group interviews are distinguished: two-way focus group, dual moderator focus group, dueling moderator focus group (fencing-moderator), respondent moderator focus group, client participant focus groups, mini focus groups, teleconference focus groups, creativity groups, band obsessive group, online focus groups, phone or web focus groups.

Recommendation: You can read more about all types of focus groups on the Wikipedia website in the Focus group article.

Step 2. Search for respondents

You can use the same methods of finding respondents as you would for user interviews.

Step 3. Make a list of questions

Again, the principle of writing a script (guide) is the same. You must correctly compose open-ended questions in order to ask them to the respondents and thereby start a discussion.

Step 4. Start the interview

Introduce yourself and explain to the respondents why you have gathered them, what is the interview plan, and introduce them to each other. In other words, create the most comfortable conditions for them.

Recommendation: each respondent should feel that he is not limited in time for expressing his thoughts, and should also feel the attention to himself.

Step 5. Record the conversation

Give prior notice and obtain permission from respondents to record their conversations.

Step 6. Analyze the data

For data analysis, I recommend using the Affinity mapping method or its other name — Affinity diagramming.

Affinity diagramming is an amazing technique that will help you turn a lot of qualitative data (for example, after an interview) into insights.

Step 7. Make a report in any form for the team and stakeholders

Focus groups was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The best method that will allow you to test your hypotheses with the help of feedback from users, and thus find out real problems, get insights from the target audience to create a product specifically for their needs.

A problem is a difficult theoretical and practical task, where the ways to solve it are unknown or known, but not completely.

A respondent is a participant in an interview, survey or test who answers questions and acts as a source of information.

An interview is when, with the help of feedback from the market, we test our ideas, find out what difficulties people have, what they want and create a product according to their needs.

In other words, this is the most important UX research, where a specialist asks open-ended questions to respondents on several topics to get answers that will help him create a product specifically for their needs.

Important: User interviews / Field studies: Direct observation & Contextual inquiry / Diary studies / Focus groups are qualitative user research methods.

A hypothesis is your assumption that you will test.

The hypothesis is included in the scientific method of research: Observation > Questions > Hypothesis > Experiment > Analysis > Outcome: the hypothesis was confirmed or refuted.

At the beginning of this article, I want to immediately clarify a few very important points that I have to explain very, very often, namely:

• You, your team, and stakeholders ≠ your users.
• If your stakeholders claim to know what the problems and user needs are and refuse user research, then you need to convince them that they are not the target audience for the product. We must remember that UX is a USER experience, not a CUSTOMER experience.

Please try to understand my train of thought. When you are given the task of designing an interface or proposing a solution to a problem, we cannot do it without user research, and you do not need to rely on all our experience, since everything that we have heard, seen, discussed, guessed is only our subjective opinion, and it can ≠ the real picture of the world.

How can a person who has never had children claim to know how to be a mother or a father? In my opinion, this is not correct, although I can agree that this person may have certain experience, for example, he participated in raising a child, worked as a nanny, heard and saw what problems parents face, but this is still your subjective opinion, which may not be true.

Once I was able to put a question to Mr. Alan Cooper on a live broadcast of the Projector Institute. If you have 10 minutes, then be sure to watch this piece of the interview, it is very informative.

You can watch this video on the YouTube channel Projector Institute. Video title: Talk with Alan Cooper | Projector (1:12:19).

The purpose of the user interview

This is one of the qualitative methods, where the interviewer must reveal the respondent and record his answers to get the maximum number of hidden insights.

Value for the team

This is one of the most effective techniques to help you understand your users to create a solution that is just right for them. The team will get a lot of data that they can process and use for the next user-based UX methods.

Value for business

Many UX methods depend on a deep understanding of the problems, pains, fears, and needs of users, so this crucial step in the research should not be skipped. In the future, the team will be able to generate an analysis of business and user goals, where you can see if they match, and then understand what:

• If so, that’s very good, and your product will solve user problems, and they will in turn pay you money for using your excellent product.
• If not, then there is a good chance that when we launch the product, it will not fulfill the problems that users come in with, and thus will not make money.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 8 hours
• Main activity: from 1 to 2 hours per 1 respondent, and it is also necessary to set aside time for creating a proto-persona (if this is the beginning of a project and there is no empirical person yet), searching for respondents with the help of recruiters or by hand, preparing for an interview and compiling a report for stakeholders and teams.

Creating process:

The interview is part of a very well-known Customer development methodology, that is, first, the greatest attention is paid to the problems and needs of customers, and only then to the product.

According to this methodology, there are 3 types of interviews:

• Problem interview. Allows you to validate the hypothesis and find out non-obvious problems of users and reveal insights.

This is the option we will consider.

• Solution interview. It allows you to quickly test the solution and understand whether your product solves the tasks assigned to it by users or not, and also find out whether customers are ready to purchase your product or service.
• Expert interview. This is not just an interview, because we will not be talking to users, but experts in a certain field. Therefore, this type of interview will help you collect information from professionals in a certain field that you cannot get from users. These people understand the needs and behavior of your potential users very well.

Step 1. Decide on the segment with which you will communicate

First, you need to decide who you want to talk to. You must understand that each segment of your users will have different hypotheses, different interviews, and different results.

Each customer segment should have common problems or needs.

Recommendation: You can read more about customer segments in the business model canvas (BMC) and value proposition canvas (VPC) articles.

Our next step is a workshop with the team and stakeholders. Create a proto-persona to at least roughly understand who you want to communicate with.

Proto-persona (non-empirical persona) is a collective image of the target audience, based only on the team’s assumptions and not confirmed by the results of the study, and serves as a preliminary representation of the target audience before research.

A proto-persona is built, just like an ordinary persona, but it is based solely on the assumptions of the team and stakeholders. You can learn how to build them correctly in the article User personas.

Step 2. Formulate ideas and assumptions about your customers and turn them into hypotheses

To generate hypotheses and more, you can use the Value proposition canvas (VPC), where you can use a tool to collect your first vision about your customer segment and structure ideas that you turn into hypotheses.

Above, I wrote about the scientific method of research, in which you first need to ask a question that interests you, and only then formulate a hypothesis. Without hypotheses, there is no point in conducting an interview, since you will not know the answer to the questions:

• What do you want to check?
• What questions do you want to ask?

Hypotheses are formulated in different ways, but usually, they look like this:

We believe that [that the need to introduce new quality standards in the design of complex products] for [UX designers] will [make their decisions much better].

You can also write like this:

We believe that [that the need to introduce new quality standards in the design of complex products] will result in [the development of better design solutions], because [IT companies that have already done this earn 30% more money].

But this option is very simple, I also met it in my work:

Designers need new quality standards for designing complex products.

Step 3. Choose the right questions to validate each hypothesis

After you have received the hypotheses, you need to formulate questions. Correctly folded questions will help you confirm, refute or learn insights.

We believe that [that the need to introduce new quality standards in the design of complex products] for [UX designers] will [make their decisions much better].

A few questions about the hypothesis:

• When was the last time you implemented new standards?
• Why did you implement them? What results did you get?

Step 4. Finding possible respondents

This can be done by a recruiter or team member using these methods:

• The business has a list of users who are already using the product. You can create a Survey and send it out to users’ email addresses, where the last item will be the question: “Do you want to talk more? We are interested in your experience, leave your contact details, and we will contact you.
• Social media. We are looking for groups, contacting the administrators and asking them to post a Survey or a full-fledged message asking them to respond to an interview with the developers. You can also buy ads (1,5 thousand impressions of your ad = $5);
• LinkedIn. We are looking for the necessary people and offer to talk.
• Professional services (paid). UserTesting, Userbrain, Lookback, UsabilityHub, Userlytics, Userzoom, Loop11 and more.

Recommendation: You can offer to share data with administrators or offer them $50–100 as payment.

Step 5. We conduct a test version of the interview

A very important step. Before the event, try to conduct test interviews with colleagues and find out if all the questions are clear and understandable, where there are problems, etc.

Step 6. We conduct an in-depth interview, but we record everything both on a voice recorder and manually

Step 7. Reward respondents for their time

It can be anything: from certificates to a free trial version of the product for 1 month.

Step 8. Transcribe the interview and analyze the data

To analyze the results, you can use the following methods:

• Identification of patterns of behavior. We highlight the most recurring answers to our questions. This step can be done in Empathy mapping.
• Affinity diagramming. An amazing method that will help turn a large amount of data received after an interview, namely: grouping the results into groups and identifying insights.

A few tips for in-depth interviews:

• Ask open-ended questions only. Answers are meant to be detailed rather than yes or no, as we need to dive into the segment experience and do our best to get the respondent to actively share insights with you.
• Ask additional and clarifying questions. Be prepared for the fact that you need to be as attentive as possible and, if necessary, ask additional questions that may reveal insights. In other words, if you see that the respondent has begun to tell things that give him pleasure or some problems, then you should ask him clarifying questions. To do this, you can use the 5 Whys technique.

Recommendation: A lot of articles have been written about the 5 Whys technique, but please do not abuse this method in an interview.

• In-depth interviews are long and very detailed. The average session is from 30 minutes to 1 hour, because if the interview is shorter, then you will not have time to establish an emotional connection with the respondent and thus miss important insights, and if the interview is more than 1 hour, then there is a possibility that the respondent will lose concentration, attention and will already be tired. Therefore, do not try to ask all the questions in the world, but only the important ones.
• Don’t ask questions about the future. Ask questions only about past and present experiences.
• Ask for real-life examples. What respondents talk about in interviews and what they do in reality are two different things.
• Questions should begin with the word: where, why, how, when, etc.
• Don’t interfere with the respondent’s story. You must take a neutral position. Do not prompt, do not try to direct him to the answer you want to hear, do not argue, and do not interrupt. Just listen and analyze what the respondent says.
• Record your interviews. This is very important because you won’t be able to remember everything in your mind.

Recommendation: Please advise that you will be recording and that this is for analysis purposes only and that the recording will not be transmitted or published.

User interviews (based on proto-persona) & Hypothesis was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

BPMN is a system of symbols for modeling business processes, which allows you to illustrate the business for a team or client and validate your understanding of the business.

A process is a sequence of actions that must be performed in order to obtain a certain result.

A business process is a logical sequence of actions of a person or group of people in a company or commercial structure.

Business process model and notation (BPMN) is a process modeling standard that is based on a sequence of events and activities that have a beginning and an end.

In other words, BPMN is a diagram that consists of blocks and unifying elements of various purposes, showing all the actions taking place in the system.

There are 3 main approaches to business modeling:

• Functional modeling. Everything is considered only through the prism of functions. In this model, there is no temporal sequence, but only an entry point (example, user interface for a customer) and an exit point (example, the desired outcome, such as purchasing a product if it is an online store). In other words, in this model, we know the entry and exit points, but the sequence of actions is the object of development.

For a better understanding, please find examples of functional modeling in IDEF0 format.

• Process modeling. In terms of BPMN, this is a process that is based on a sequence of actions (the beginning and end of an event, for example, ordering McDonald’s products using a special mobile application).

This is the modeling that we will be looking at in this article.

• Mental modeling on the example of a mental map. In general, the cards are drawn in free form, which will help to structure your knowledge in a format that is understandable to you.

For a better understanding, please find mental map examples.

Recommendation: You can view the full documentation on omg.org v.2.0.2.

The purpose of business process model and notation (BPMN)

Create a notation that will be understood by all team members from business analysts who create these diagrams in the discovery phase to developers who will work effectively on them, since there will be no more time to delve into the system and understand its processes. This is a standardized tool, the rules for describing circuits are the same for everyone.

Value for the team

Diagrams will help you see the full picture of business processes that will help the team communicate better not only among themselves but also with stakeholders. Also, well-designed BPMNs will greatly speed up product development.

Value for the business

BPMN will clearly show where the weak points of our business processes are. This refers to those places where potential customers can “leave” your business for your competitors. Also, well-designed schemes will help to transfer information to developers with the highest quality, which will significantly reduce the time to understand business processes, as well as reduce the number of possible errors, because everything is subject to clear, standardized rules.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 8 hours
• Main activity: from 1 to 4 hours for 1 model

More about the method:

Base object #1. Events

This is the event that occurred in the described process. In other words, events symbolize what is happening in the business process. They come in 3 types, let’s look at a call to a service center, for example:

• Start event. This is the first step in the process. For example, an incoming call from a customer with a problem.
• Intermediate event. This is all that happens between the first and the last event. For example, a call from a service employee with clarifying questions.
• End event. It’s a final step, e.g. a call to a client with a final solution to his problem.

BPMN Event Symbols

Each of these characters can be customized according to the needs of a particular process, here is a list of the most common characters:

• Message symbol provokes, completes the process, or facilitates the intermediate process.
• Timer symbol. It is implied that the time or date provokes the beginning of the end of the process or intermediate operation.
• Escalation symbol. This means that a more qualified specialist in a higher position is involved in the process.
• Conditional symbol. This process begins and continues if a business condition or rule is followed.
• Link symbol. This is a subprocess that is a part of a larger process.
• Error symbol. This is an error that is detected at the beginning, middle, or end of the process. The main process is always interrupted by the subprocess which exists within it.
• Cancel symbol. In the end event, this symbol indicates a provoked process cancellation.
• Compensation symbol. This is a refund due to a partial non-execution of the transaction.
• Signal symbol. It is a signal that is transmitted through several processes and can both start and end a process or facilitate its execution.
• Multiple symbols. These symbols are triggers that push the process.
• Parallel multiple symbols. This is an instance of a process that would not begin, continue, or end until all possible events have occurred.
• Terminate symbol. This is the immediate completion of a step in the process. All related instances of the step will also be aborted at the same time.

Base object #2. Activity

This is a specific action or task that must be performed at a specific stage of the business process and is divided into:

1. BPMN tasks

Each task is a simple action that cannot be further detailed, which means it is the very base component, which is not divided into smaller components. For example, the “Create design concept” process may include the “Create adaptive design” task:

Process: Analysis of terms of reference > Development of design concept > Editing of design concept > Final version.

• Normal task. This is a one-time action that occurs in a business process, such as sending a design concept to a customer.
• Loop task. This is a task that is repeated the required number of times in a sequence, such as editing a design concept.
• Multiple instance task. This is a task that is done several times, and these cases can be parallel or sequential. For example, you’ve sent a design concept to a stakeholder and received a simultaneous response from two of them with adjustments.
• Compensation task. This is a special version of the task, which arises only in cases where there was another specific task set previously. Usually, it is used to show the timelines of payment for work already done in the process. For example, before sending the final version of the design concept, the customer sends to the contractor the payment for the work done.
• Compensation loop task. It makes compensation a recurring event. For example, stakeholders pay for an additional design page each time you create one.

2. BPMN Sub-processes (subtypes of BPMN tasks)

This is the same action (big one) that requires further detailing during modeling and is divided into:

• Loop. This subprocess is repeated sequentially.
• Multi-instance. This subprocess can be performed simultaneously with other similar subprocesses.
• Compensation. This subprocess of compensation is for a group of tasks that describes some methods of compensation, such as debt.
• Ad hoc. This is a set of tasks that exists exclusively for one purpose - to work on a particular case and complete part of the process.

3. Event sub-process

Used to describe events that occur within a subprocess and are not part of the normal flow, as they are self-contained and occur within the subprocess context. In other words, it is a group of tasks that are very closely related. They are displayed in two ways:

• In a minimized form with a ‘+’ sign, which allows you to expand the full list.
• In an expanded form, which contains all the tasks in full, describing this subprocess.

Also, they are divided into 2 main types of subprocesses:

• Interrupting. It interrupts the regular business flow.
• Non-interrupting. It differs in that it does not interrupt the regular business flow.

For example, if the design concept is almost ready, but the stakeholders terminate the contract with you, then, further cooperation is interrupted, however, if the stakeholders add new requirements to cover more problems users are stuck with, the process does not interrupt but continues.

4. Transactions

This is a specific sub-process that represents payment processes, that is where payment is involved. Transactions must confirm that all participants have completed their transactions before the payment can be completed.

5. Call activity

It is a global process that is used every time a certain process needs to be implemented.

6. BPMN task types

I will not dwell on them in detail, as they are rarely used.

Base object #3. Gateway

These are decision points that can regulate the path of the whole flow depending on some necessary conditions and are divided into:

• Exclusive gateway. It allows you to display alternative paths in the business process. For example, if you send a design concept to stakeholders, they may either approve it, make some changes, or terminate your collaboration.
• Event-based gateway. This is a branching depending on the event and is similar to the Exclusive gateway as two of them lead to the choice of a particular direction in the flow, but the direction is dictated by the event being occurred, not the condition met. For example, before sending a ready design concept to stakeholders, you decide to get final approval from the Lead Designer, and in case he is absent or unavailable at that moment, you won’t be able to send an email.
• Parallel gateway. It does not depend on conditions and other events but is designed to display parallel tasks in the business process. For example, the design department both works on the tasks assigned to them simultaneously and looks for new designers to join the team.
• Inclusive gateway. This gateway is created to display alternative, but at the same time parallel paths in the process, in other words, it divides the flow of the process into one or more directions. For example, you have made three examples of the design concept, and if the stakeholders choose the 1st one - it will provoke one process, if the 2nd - another process will take effect, and if they choose the 3rd one and are not satisfied with the work done, then, they will terminate your contract.
• Exclusive event-based gateway. It is created to reflect a decision made by a person who is not involved in the process. For example, there is a request for approval of the design concept, and a certain stakeholder decides either to approve and make a payment or not to approve and request changes.
• Complex gateway. It is created to display some of the most complex flows in the business process. For instance, a student needs to pass an exam to get a driver’s license. In case a student scores 90-100 points, he will successfully pass the exam and get the license, if 80-90 points, the student will get one more opportunity to pass in a week, if he gets 0-80, he will not pass the exam, and will be allowed to try again only after 6 months.
• Parallel event-based gateway. It allows you to run multiple processes at once, but the processes must depend on certain events. For example, in the process of buying new hardware for an employee, everyone who is responsible for it must confirm the purchase.

Base object #4. BPMN Connectors

These are lines leading from one object of BPMN-flow to another and are divided into 3 types:

• Sequence flow, which shows the order of actions to be performed. That is, it combines flow objects in strictly sequential order.
• Message flow, which displays messages from one participant in the process to another. For example, through departments, between 2 participants.
• Association. It demonstrates the relationship between artifacts and the flows of objects. For example, a markup with explanations.

Base object #5. Pool and swimlane

In addition to helping to organize various aspects within the BPMN process, pools and swimlane group actions into categories, which in turn can identify delays and areas of low efficiency, as well as clearly show who is responsible for each stage of the process. Paths can be placed both horizontally and vertically.

Base object #6. Artifact

During business process modeling, artifacts allow you to visually represent some objects that exist outside the real process, and can also represent data or notes that will describe the process. There are three main types of artifacts:

1. Data objects. This is information that is placed in the process. This data can be obtained as a result of the process itself, or as data that needs to be collected and stored. These objects are divided into 4 groups:

• Data input. It is the need for some specific information, which directly affects the task in the business process.
• Data output. This is information that was collected as a result of the business process.
• Data collection. This is information that was collected during the business process.
• Data storage. It is the ability to store information or access data that is related to the business process.

2. Annotations. It allows you to describe the business process and additional sections of the model flow in more detail. In short, the moderator adds an annotation to make BPMN more readable and to improve the understanding of the process as a whole.

3. Groups. They help to combine tasks or processes that are important in the overall context of the process.

Recommendation: BPMN can be created in Lucidchart.

Business process model and notation 2.0+ (BPMN) was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An analysis applied to strategic planning that identifies strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats.

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that will help you conduct a detailed study of the external and internal environment of your business.

In other words, it is an effective business planning tool that can help you analyze your business from a strategic point of view.

SWOT analysis is used in addition to competitive analysis.

The purpose of SWOT analysis

Comprehensively look at the business from all sides to qualitatively assess the internal environment — positive impact (S and W), and the external environment — negative impact (O and T).

Value for the team

This is a universal technique that will help us take a sober look at the strengths and weaknesses of the business, as well as identify opportunities and identify possible threats, and thus significantly increase the understanding of the business for which we are developing a product.

Value for the business

The main goal of every business is to be successful, competitive, and make money. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to be objective and balanced in decisions. SWOT analysis helps to see and evaluate all the factors influencing decision-making and identify business development opportunities.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 4 to 6 hours

Creating process:

The external environment is what directly or indirectly affects the business (new market and economic trends, business relationships with customers or partners, demographics and political changes, etc.). The company cannot control these processes, but must be aware of all these points and take them into account when developing its strategy.

The internal environment is resources (financial, physical, human, access to the natural resources of the Earth, various patents or copyrights, etc.) and processes on which the company has a direct influence (training courses: trainings, workshops, various lectures or loyalty system, hierarchy in departments, etc.).

Step 1. Strengths of the company are its strong points (internal environment, negative impact (S))

These are the things that the company does particularly well or that make it different from other companies. Any aspect of the company that brings it a clear advantage is a strength.

For example, you are the largest IT company in Ukraine, which provides the largest number of services at a market price.

Step 2. Weaknesses are the weak points of the company (internal environment, negative impact (W))

These are the factors that hinder the growth of the company (make it vulnerable in the market) in the process of moving towards achieving strategic goals. At the same time, one must be able to distinguish between weaknesses that directly depend on the actions of the company and threats that do not depend on the actions of the company.

For example, since you hired a lot of staff, but did not find a project for them, they are not working now, and this hinders the growth of profits due to high maintenance costs.

Step 3. Opportunities are the company’s potential capabilities (external environment, positive impact (O))

It is necessary to include all aspects that are at least somehow related to the development of the market or the actions of competitors. That is, these are phenomena that the company cannot directly influence, but from which it can benefit if it implements certain actions in the short and medium term.

For example, the study of new technology, thanks to which you can reduce the cost of a product or enter the market with a new offer.

Step 4. Threats to the company (external environment, negative impact (T))

This means anything that can cause significant damage to the company. The section is very important because understanding the threats gives us a deep understanding of how to run a business to save the maximum amount of money.

For example, new IT companies appeared on the market, providing the same quality services, but 15–20% cheaper.

SWOT analysis was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A process to help you find and evaluate direct and indirect competitors to gain a complete understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, which will help you gain a competitive advantage over them.

Benchmarking or comparison of indicators is the process of finding a standard or reference (best) solution to compare with a future or existing product.

Benchmarking is of 2 types:

• Internal benchmarking. For example, this is when you compare your product characteristics with indicators for the past period or target (desirable) metrics.

Use the following methods: digital analytics, SWOT analysis, and process mapping.

• External benchmarking. If very briefly, then this is the collection of various data from other products (companies). It is this type that we will consider in this article.

Competitors are usually divided into 3 main groups: direct, indirect, and potential competitors:

• Primary (direct competitors) are companies that offer the same or similar products or services to the same consumer groups, such as iOS and Android (both products provide essentially the same services).
• Secondary (indirect competitors) are companies that sell similar or different products to the same consumers, but differently (perhaps with less functionality), such as Meta Messenger and Slack (in both products, people can chat with each other).
• Tertiary (replacement competitors) are companies that can expand their line of products, and services, or apply new technology to better satisfy their customers, and become your direct competitors in the future, such as DSLR cameras and iPhone (both are quality products for photo and video filming).

Competitive analysis is the identification of competitors and the evaluation of their strategies, which will allow you to determine the strengths and weaknesses in comparison with your product, service, or idea that has not yet been implemented.

To summarize, competitive analysis helps us understand:

• What our competitors offer.
• What is their monetization?
• Strengths and weaknesses of the product. This will allow us to compare them with our capabilities.
• Helps to identify types of customers and how those customers, who use competitors’ products, solve their problems.

The purpose of benchmarking

Find and implement the most effective practices, ideas, and trends that should bring your product into a more perfect form.

The purpose of competitive analysis

Increase product knowledge, soberly assess the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, identify threats, gaps in products or services, and generate new ideas, and find new business opportunities to gain a competitive advantage.

The value of benchmarking for a team

This method will help you find your competitors and then conduct a competitive analysis. You will also be able to collect trends (global, visual, and industry) which in turn will help the team imagine what the final product should be like.

The value of competitive analysis for the team

It will help you to see the following things:

• What services do your competitors provide?
• What functionality do they use to solve the problems of their users
• Evaluate this functionality using heuristics to see errors made and assess usability to design the best solution.

Recommendation: do not blindly copy all the decisions of your competitors, try to understand “Why did they do this?” For example, there are 2 seemingly identical products, but some solution works in one, and not in the other. Think about it.

The value of benchmarking for business

It will allow the business to understand how its product differs from the products of other companies.

The value of this method is not only that the business does not need to “reinvent the wheel”, but that if you carefully analyze the achievements and mistakes of other designers, you can develop or improve your bicycle that will ride the roads of your business as efficiently as possible.

The value of competitive analysis for business

A well-researched competitive analysis will help businesses understand what our competitors are offering and how we can create a better product in the marketplace with broader offerings that address a wider range of needs.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 30 minutes
• Main activity: from 2 to 4 hours to evaluate each competitor

Creating process:

If you are very lucky, you can find ready-made “Preparatory & Secondary research (Desk research)”, I wrote about this before. The studies or reports you find may contain competitive analysis.

Recommendation: check the data you find, as it may not be professionally done or may not correspond to reality due to outdated data.

Step 1. Setting the goals and tasks of the project

You can’t just go ahead and do a competitive analysis.

Every study is done for a reason.

Ask yourself and the team:

• Why do you need to conduct a competitive analysis?
• What do you want to achieve and what do you want to get as a result of competitive analysis?

Summarize the tasks that the business sets before you.

Step 2. List your competitors

How to do it? Everything is very simple. At the “Preparatory & Secondary research (Desk research)” and “Kick-off meeting & Stakeholder interviews” stages, you must find competitors, and if you couldn’t do it yourself, then ask the stakeholders a question:

• Who are your direct, indirect, and potential competitors?
• Why do you think so? Explain your point of view.

Stakeholders are the main source of knowledge, since most of them do a lot of market research before applying to the company.

If you are told that there are no competitors, then this is not entirely true. There are always competitors, perhaps the stakeholders simply do not know about them.

If for some reason you have not found out about your competitors, and you can no longer do it, for example, a client has set a task for you, and will not be available for communication within the next 2 weeks, then you need to:

• Prepare a list of keywords for search queries related to the industry you want to analyze.
• Google.com is the first starting point. All searches must be done in “incognito mode” so that the search engine does not take into account your previous searches. Also, check the promotional search results.

Recommendation: Use Google Advanced Search.

• Also, use such excellent services for finding competitors as Similarweb, Crunchbase, Trustpilot, etc., and for mobile applications, use Google Play and Apple Store.

Recommendation: analyze the reviews of the found competitors.

Step 3. Create a table, start analyzing features and recording data

If you need to analyze only the user registration process, then the table will not have the same structure as the analysis of the full product with all its sections, etc.

A feature is a special function, an unusual property, a “chip”, that is, something that is of value to the user.

Everything that you will analyze and record in the table depends only on your goals and tasks. Unfortunately, there is no universal method.

For example, in addition to analyzing features and product sections, you can also evaluate usability using Jacob Nielsen’s heuristics.

Benchmarking & Competitive analysis was originally published in OTAKOYI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.