Present customers in the midst of using your product with a short, engaging survey.
👥 10 and more | ⏰ hours | 💪🏼 medium effort
Objectives
When a team is wrestling with questions around general consumer behaviour, on-the-street surveys present a quick opportunity to partly validate those assumptions with real people through a short questionnaire.
While some teams may already have detailed user research about their existing customers, on-the-street surveys can offer easy progress for those struggling with understanding whether their assumptions about their product or user are even remotely correct. These types of surveys should produce a few qualitative insights and quotes, acting as a compass for how to further validate the team’s assumptions about the customer.
Who is involved?
On-the-street surveys require a suitable location for doing on-the-street surveys (parks, malls, and other places of leisure are good spots, while transportation hubs or areas with high activity are unsuitable); and a team to get out of the building, engage with the general population, and discuss survey responses and interesting quotes from participants.
How is it done?
- Create a short survey, taking a maximum of five minutes to administer, with a healthy mix of demographic (age, employment, commute, etc.) and open-ended questions (how and why, rather than yes and no).
- Get out of the building! Keep in mind: many people may decline your request to take the survey, so do not feel discouraged if this happens often. The team should aim at around ten or so survey responses.
- After the surveys have been completed, sit down as a team and review the responses to pick out compelling quotes and decide which assumptions have been partly validated or invalidated.
Source:
https://www.slideshare.net/almingwork/nyt-product-discovery-activity-guide