Monthly Archives: October 2019

Using Mental Models for Product Success

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Lately ‘outcome, not outputs’ is the subject of lots of conversation within product & agile circles. How do you know what those outcomes should be and what will truly support your customers?

RSVP for ProdAnon’s November session on Thursday November 21st to find out.

No single methodology will help you create the perfect product, but you can increase your odds by understanding people’s deep, messy thinking and reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to uncover and design for those reasons. 

Developed by Indi Young, this framework helps you curb assumptions & cognitive bias through a bottom-up approach to data analysis. With less bias and greater clarity of opportunities, this approach will help you more closely align design possibilities to your customer’s needs and your organisation’s capabilities.

Our speaker, Tafida Negm will walk us through some of the important concepts within Mental Models after introducing what it is and why you should incorporate it into your toolkit. There will be a few activities to aid you in having a go and gaining some confidence in trying it yourself when you get back to the office.

About the Speaker

Tafida Negm is an independent Human-Centred Researcher and Designer coming from a Marketing and Psychology background. As a consultant, she has gained a wide variety of experience across for purpose and commercial contexts helping lead teams from discovery through to launch. Witnessing the value research has delivered in shaping products and services, she has been on a mission to continually hone her research skills. Having spent the past year learning from Indi Young she is passionate about spreading her love of problem space research.  

RSVP now. Doors open at 6:00 pm. Talk starts 6:30 pm

September Wrap – Net Promoter Score (NPS): Science or Pseudoscience?

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https://www.instagram.com/p/B23j5r4HS-K/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Over the years, Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become the default question to measure and maximise value. But is it right? Is it true? Daniel Kinal joined us to share his thoughts.

Where did NPS come from?
Back in 2003, Fred Reichheld introduced the concept to the world. He felt the current measures of loyalty were too convoluted and complicated. So he did his own study, with surprising results, even to him. What he came up with, Net Promoter Score – the one metric that was supposed to have the strongest correlation to company success.

Why should it work?
The more likely you are to advocate for a brand, the more people will be willing to trial the product, therefore reducing your acquisition costs. Also, those advocates are more likely to be repeat customers and increasing their lifetime customer value. Score. Double score!

Some caveats:

  • Simply irrelevant in some industries
  • Not predictive in a monopoly or near-monopoly conditions
  • Data analysed was historical, not future
  • Unconvincing replication studies.
  • Highly volatile measure
  • Obscures critical information

Is there a correlation? Well, yes. Is it good as a predictor for future success? Well, maybe not as much. In fact, in one study, NPS only explained 38% of future growth.

Bastardisation
If you game your scores, what do you really achieve? From colour coding, nudging your scores, and filtering out negative results. What are you actually able to learn?

Is there an upside?
Yes, some compelling aspects of NPS include, it is relatively cheap, fast, simple; and well accepted.

Already using NPS? Make the most of your data.

  • Don’t focus purely on the number.
  • Measure brand or full product experience rather than feature or interaction
  • Measure longitudinally and conduct trend rather than a point in time analysis
  • Keep it as scientific as you can (randomisation, third party research)
  • Compare your NPS to direct competitors
  • Remember what you are measuring (loyalty and propensity to evangelise, not product satisfaction).
  • Analyse the qualitative feedback
  • Collect actionable data too, such as customer satisfaction.

For a shorter version of Daniels’s talk please find this recording from his presentation at Web Directions. Here are the slides from the evening.

Thank you to Medibank for hosting, and all our Prod Anon volunteers for helping on the night, Nadia Gishen, Irene Toh, Marija Becker, Yau and Steve Cheah for this write-up.