Beyond Drill Bits and 1/4 Inch Holes
A while back, I wrote a post about the difference between user wants and users needs (Of Drill Bits and 1/4 Inch Holes).
It is based on Theodore Levitt famous quote:
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.”
In that post I stated: “In Levitt’s quote above, the drill bit is a want, but the hole is an actual need. That is, the customer’s need (his/her job-to-be-done) is to put a hole in the wall. The method by which they achieve that is secondary and less important. They don’t care to use a drill, a nail and hammer, or a laser gun. As long as they end up with the right size hole in the wall, they’d have met their needs and are happy.”
Well, time goes by and, sometimes, we have epiphanies and we are able to advanced our thinking and/or change our points of views. So, as it is, I had a very powerful epiphany!
Note: please noticed that I said “I had”. I’m not claiming to be the first one to come to this realization as there are a lot of smarter product people out there and I’m sure some of them had this realization as well! ;)
The epiphany was that knowing that my users need a hole, in and of itself, doesn’t tell me much as to what’s the core problem that they are trying to solve (their job-to-be-done). And if I, the product person - responsible for delivering the right solution, don’t have a clear understanding of their problem, then how can I possibly know that what I offer them in terms of a solution will be valuable and solve their problem?
In order to get to the core problem we need to ask one additional question:
“Why do my users want a hole in their walls?”
The possibilities are almost limitless, but here are three imaginable reasons, however funny and/or made up, why:
- They want a hole large enough to install a window so that they can see the beautiful view outside and/or let the sunshine in.
- They want a few holes to hang a bookshelf so that they can organize their library.
- They are mounting a new flat screen TV on their wall and they want to be able to hide the cables behind it.
As you can see, had we just stopped at “our users need holes in their walls” we would, most likely, have delivered the wrong solution (a drill bit, nail and hammer, or laser gun). I’d imagine that only very few people go about putting holes in their walls just for the hell of it.
So if putting holes in the wall is not their final job-to-be-done, then ideating optimal solutions for creating the wholes will still not deliver the right solution to the user and solve their root problem.
Now that we have a few ideas as to why our users need a hole in their walls, and what their real problems are, we can start validating which of the three possible reasons identified about they fit in. Once this is done, we can finally start thinking and ideating about what the right solution looks like.
Remember the old saying about Product Managers falling in love:
So what could be some of the reasons why our users want holes in their walls?
They want a large window: In this case, may be they want some beautiful scenery to look at or they want more sunlight coming in because they have a vitamin D deficiency. Then perhaps we can offer them some large and high-quality landscape prints to hang on their walls, some SAD lights which simulate sunlight (which helps trigger the brain to release serotonin, often called the feel-good hormone and which can help with depression and sadness) or provide them with a home-delivery subscription service for vitamin D.
They want a bookshelf: If organizing books is what they are after, then may be we can offer them a beautiful standing shelf system (thus saving them from having to put holes in the wall), a library membership, a Kindle e-book reader and even a service that will pick their book collection up, digitalize them and then upload them to their virtual library.
They want to hide cables: If hiding and/or organizing cables is what they are in need of, then we could offer them some type of molded plastic tube that can be colored matched to their wall colors, or may be we can innovate and embed, into the TV, wireless chargers and audio/video transmitters that can be installed into the wall thus removing the need for cables.
The need (a hole in the wall) is the same across all the examples given, but upon further analysis we can see that the hole in and of itself is not really what the users needs. Thus, if we just think of better ways of creating holes in the wall, chances are that we will not be delivering the optimal solution to our customers.
I’ll leave you with two framework that I’ve found very powerful in helping me think beyond the immediate needs of my users and get to their root cause problems: the job-to-be-done and the Five Whys. Using these methods will allow you to past the initial perception of a problem-solution findings and deliver truly innovative solutions that solve your users root problems.
