During the CCTV as a product manager, a leader said a sentence: "If the product manager does not know what to do, arrange for their own research work", his sentence explains the importance of the product manager to do the research work, but the research in the end is to do what? What is the purpose? What are the methods? There are a lot of such problems need to be clarified one by one.
In fact, so many years to do the project, I would like to use a sentence to summarize, with a historical perspective to do the research work, this word is a little big. Boiled down to the purpose of saying, is the use of human history to understand the development of an industry, the status quo, so as to figure out the level of a product, a clear understanding of the current product's known customers, clear product customer habits and customer distribution range. If we figure out the more branches and details, the more likely in the back of the research results found and sorted out potential information points, these information points may be expanded and extended into new features or design optimization, or even find a new direction for the product, and this new emerging product direction is not specifically designed for the user at the beginning of the product design, in the research and analysis stage to make adjustments The new direction of the product is not specifically designed for the user at the beginning of the product design, the research and analysis phase of the adjustment.
What is the historical perspective? That is, we have often said, to learn from history, from history to find patterns and experience. We study history in addition to know what has happened, but also know why it can happen at that time, the social surface of the situation, the scientific and technological situation, the socio-political situation, the situation of the community of people. For example, in the development of the Internet, we have experienced many events such as dial-up, broadband, village-to-village communication, and lower tariffs, which include policy nodes, technological development and innovation nodes, and aspects of great development of the overall level of society and so on. Further to the details, each update must be similar to the reference event will occur in today's new technology and new products in the process of development, we only familiar with and master the history of the minutiae of the story has occurred, in order to be in the current era of the upcoming key moments to maintain sufficient sensitivity, handy correct grasp and development of our products.
For example: we research the public soft text of each robot manufacturer, from their robot landing application cases, to sort out their customer scenarios, types of customers, landing time and the basic use of the product introduction and other information. Step by step to piece together these competing manufacturers of the current range of customers, customer direction and other key information, from these information centers, we can know what others have occupied which customers, which direction of the market, from their past soft text, can be restored to what they have experienced the adjustment of the direction of the past, which may be the past of their failures, or it may be the capital or the channel of the focus of the change resulted in The company can let us know clearly, which is the pit? What are the fruits? What are the temptations? What are the opportunities?
Let's take an example: a robotics manufacturer, assuming that this robotics manufacturer is the most important competitor known to us, according to their statements and soft documents, can be restored two years ago, they used to be in the health care industry, and later shifted to the hospitality industry, based on this information, we need to continue to research to know, what is the reason for this transition? Did it come from the financing two years ago? Or in two years ago, the medical industry is just a time in the business test water, there is no specific business stereotypes. Of course, these are just our guesses, and we need to collect more information, including the background information of their early investors, to analyze whether it is because the investors themselves have a background in the healthcare industry that they are involved in the healthcare industry? Is it because of the investor's background in healthcare that they got involved in healthcare? Was it a product design problem? Problems with utilization? Problems with quality? Or was it a problem of misclassification of users?
Research can be thought of as intelligence gathering, and to a larger extent, espionage. We can learn how intelligence work is done between countries. This is very much a reference. Of course, we do not encourage the use of illegal means to obtain valuable information. There are still many means that can be utilized within some reasonable and legal limits. For example, we can call to get the other side of the basic parameters of the product information, to understand their classic customers, use cases and scenarios, these are valuable to us. From this information, we can know why they want the product size to be designed as such? Why is the use process of the product designed as such?
Analyzing our competitors' product information allows us to accelerate the product definition. Always be respectful of this because rival products have also gone through the process of research, validation, trial, and improvement, especially in terms of products with large-scale user experience on the ground and shipments. They must have been abused and destroyed by their customers, and only after rounds and rounds of improvement did they finally come close to their customers' requirements. For us post-chasers, we can avoid a lot of roundabout work by researching and analyzing our rivals. If we and our competitors are in line with each other in terms of user orientation and product features, we can choose the nearest route by referring to and learning from the research results, directly copying the competitor's latest product, and doing micro-innovation on this basis. This move can greatly reduce the difficulty and failure rate of our early product design, which is one of the most cost-effective product ideas.
What is the method of product research?
There are many ways to collect information, the most basic are the official website, public number, microblogging, shaking voice and other self media, as well as more authoritative media and organizations in the industry issued by the news, information and other materials. Of course, there is the most direct way to call each other's 400 hotline, so that the other party's sales and product personnel contact phone number or WeChat, directly request relevant information and information. Especially when the other side of the sales staff, in order to increase the possibility of their own single, not only product data and information, even the relevant project applications and implementation programs, they can help you get, which of course, need to rely on your ability to mouth.
The research has no frequency and cycle requirements, it is reasonable to say that should be done every day, there is time to do, you can not expect a collection of information through a collision of wisdom and product inspiration, it is impossible. It is best if the team has specialized people to do it every day, and have the ability to collect and dig, to be able to bring out the value of the information, but this is really the most most ideal situation, the reality is often very cruel, with this level of people are few and far between, and most of the people just have the ability to collect information is good.
Often people will say, how many peer enterprises I research, this is already all the enterprises in the industry, does not mean that the research work has come to an end? Even after researching all the peers, there are industry research, you do not need to know how the industry is evaluating the ability of these manufacturers now? Even after the industry research, you still need to know the user's situation, which users have been covered, which users are still to be developed? Which users have been lost? Which users have not been accurately matched and so on. There are capital research, research at home and abroad, research on the product function itself, research on other related products that are not similar products (for example, I'm a robot manufacturer, you can also research remote control car products, research on intelligent devices, research on large household items, such as refrigerators, color TVs and cars, etc.), these are not robotic products, but for robotic products, how do they design the appearance? How to design the interaction? How to design the function? All of them are inspirations and references for robotic products. This involves another concept, that is, a high degree of abstraction and the ability to categorize, which is left to later analyze in detail.