Some time ago, I summarized a "Y theory" and recently compiled a " Z method" . I personally feel that it is easy to practice and everyone can watch and play.
There are many methods for demand collection, or user research. The more classic classification is based on the two dimensions of " qualitative vs. quantitative; saying vs. doing ". Let me first review what I said in "Everyone is a Product Manager" :
Horizontal, qualitative and quantitative.
Qualitative research can find out the reasons and is biased towards understanding; while quantitative research can discover phenomena and is biased towards confirmation. Both are important and indispensable. Only quantitative analysis will lead to "substituting standards for the basis". If you see problems but do not know the reasons, only qualitative analysis will "generalize from partial to complete" and may be led astray by the special circumstances of some samples. The process of people recognizing new things usually goes from qualitative to quantitative to qualitative to quantitative, and spirals upward, and understanding and verification are also constantly evolving iteratively.
Vertically, what users say and do.
What you say reflects your goals and views, and how you do it reflects your behavior. What users say and how they do it are often inconsistent. Both aspects are important. I used to believe that "hearing is false, seeing is believing", so seeing what users do is more real and useful than listening to what they say. But later I realized that there is no way to know the reasons behind it if you only understand what it does. , and not knowing the cause of the problem means that the problem cannot be solved fundamentally. So we not only need to see what users do, but also listen to what users say, although what they say may not be the truth.
Among the four quadrants, the most common methods are as follows - user interviews, questionnaires, usability testing, and data analysis . This content has actually been mentioned a long time ago, but recently, these methods have been compiled into a "Z" to facilitate students' memory. It can be said that it is the simplest combination punch that needs to be collected.
The “Z Method” of Requirements Gathering
Speaking and doing, qualitative and quantitative, can be used in a reasonable combination to achieve the greatest effect. For a product, different methods can be used at different times. Here is a typical example, which happens to use the above 4 ways, in chronological order, "top to bottom, from left to right" to draw a capital "Z" in the picture:
The first round is the product planning stage. Listen to what users say qualitatively, determine the product direction, and what to do? Randomly sampled 40 users for interviews and wrote a list of requirements based on this.
Round two, the early stages of a project. Listen to what users say quantitatively, determine the priority of needs, and what to do first? 200,000 questionnaires were sent out to determine the priority of needs.
The third round is during project implementation. Let’s look at what users are doing qualitatively. What are the requirements that need to be met first? How should they be done? While designing, I successively found 10 users to verify and do usability testing.
The fourth round is the optimization stage after launch. Look at what users do quantitatively, conduct data analysis based on user usage of the product, and continuously improve the product.
For details on how to do it, see other materials. Of course, this is a relatively important product, so we invest more time and manpower in user research. More often than not, we will adopt simplified solutions depending on the situation.