How rainbow clusters of sticky notes can inform customer-centric innovation

Experts in User Experience Design (UXD) have matured their industry into a science. Industry leaders like Nielsen Norman Group have published incredibly rich and detailed guidelines for user empathy interview analysis [1] to ensure customer feedback is leveraged as data-rich sources of information to product backlogs.

Smaller teams often miss out on those valuable UX research insights. So, what should they do when they can't afford to hire a UX researcher or train an employee in these rich methodologies? The secret: rainbow clusters of sticky notes.

To put the customer experience first, we start by talking with customers. With detailed notes taken throughout the interviews and by referencing recordings and transcripts of the interviews, we can generate a full whiteboard (real or virtual) of quotes from the interviews. When each customer’s interview is captured on a different color sticky note, any common trends across the various experiences will reveal themselves in a rainbow cluster.

Here is the full step-by-step process:

1. Conduct your interviews.
Choose as many participants as you need to fully represent all types of target users of your product. In the early stages of innovating your product, keep your interviews focused on their actual experiences instead of “what ifs” or solutions.

2. Capture observations and quotes.
Transfer notes and transcripts to sticky notes on a wall or whiteboard using one color sticky note per interviewee. At this step, the only things written down should be direct quotes or objective observations – no interpretations of body language, naming of feelings or interpretations of emotions. If you’re working in a distributed team, tools like Miro, Confluence whiteboards (pictured below), FigJam and Lucidchart are good virtual tools for this exercise.

3. Group the observations and quotes into common themes.
At this step, you can let groups of sticky notes evolve into a theme that reflects some interpretation or inductive reasoning applied to the objective quotes and observations. For example, four interviewees who smiled and leaned in when asked the same question about how their experience is when seeking customer support could be grouped into a theme of “positive body language about customer service.” Three interviewees who used words like “painful,” “hard,” “difficult” or “I felt clueless” when asked about finding a specific piece of information should be grouped into a theme about negative feelings around finding that information.

4. Let the rainbows reveal themselves!
Anywhere you see a full rainbow of sticky notes, it’s a quick indication that the theme is a shared experience. Alternatively, you may see one theme is dominated by several sticky notes of the same color, which might indicate that theme applies more strongly to one user type.

5. Translate themes into user stories or user problems to solve.

a. Use a user story format to focus on delivering a need or a want
As a ___ I want to ___ so that I can ___. Using this phrase to structure stories helps identify the motive. The “so that” is the most important piece. In this step, an exercise like The 5 Whys [2] can be helpful to make sure the “so that” reflects your user’s true motivations in their story.

b. Or, craft a problem statement to solve
Unlike user stories, problem statements don’t take the intuitive leap from the user’s current situation to what they need or want. Instead, they capture problems that can be solved by the design thinking processes of ideation, prototyping and testing. Be specific about the problem and the financial, usability or customer satisfaction impact it has.

View examples from a manufacturing company in the figures below.

Figure 1: Example of how a cluster of sticky notes can inform a problem statement.

Figure 2: Example of how the rainbow clusters can look on a digital whiteboard, grouped by participants’ responses to the interview and the problem statement their cluster suggests.

During this process, it’s important to stay present during each step. The end result is an exciting and compelling one, but thinking ahead may introduce bias into your early steps. We often go into user research with preconceptions about what we’ll find, but setting those aside is critical to having a truly customer-centric innovation process.

This can become a successful, lean approach to customer-centric innovation. Over several hours, including the interviews, your team can accomplish what mature product organizations hire UX researchers to focus on daily. This process can give organizations confidence that they are working on the highest-value problems for their customers because these rainbow clusters can directly inform their development backlog priorities.

How we can help

Baker Tilly’s Digital Solutions team can help to find the lean sweet-spot of UXD techniques to ensure your organization is thinking from a customer-centric perspective. We can conduct assessments and innovation workshops, involving your organization’s stakeholders to make sure everyone is aligned, working toward achieving your desired business goals and improving your customer satisfaction.

Sources

[1] How to Analyze Qualitative Data from UX Research: Thematic Analysis, nngroup.com
[2] 5 Whys, Interaction Design Foundation