How I Can Use Me and My Shadow

Processing the Results

Organize a meeting of everyone who visited or observed customers. It is best if everyone can attend this meeting in person (not a teleconference). Hand each person a stack of 5"x8" note cards and masking tape or large sticky notes and ask them to transcribe their observations onto these cards, one per card. When they have finished, ask them to tape each card to the wall. Review each observation, grouping them into meaningful patterns. Discuss the patterns, capturing any meta-observations (observations about the patterns and/or the observations) as new observations. Next, do the following:

1. Transcribe all observations into a spreadsheet, with one observation in each row.

2. Assess each observation along the following dimensions:

   • Novelty The degree to which the observation indicates a novel or unintended use of the product.

   • Performance gap The degree to which the observation indicates a performance gap between desired and actual performance. Large gaps mean large problems.

   • New opportunity The degree to which the observation indicates a new opportunity for solving a customer problem.

For example, suppose you make various tools for home gardening and you decide to watch how home gardeners use these tools. You might observe that a home gardener forms a "pouch" with their shirt to hold vegetables they pick from their garden. If you or your team have never seen this before, you might rank it as highly novel, with no relationship to your existing tools, and a strong new opportunity for a new solution that would help gardeners hold the vegetables that they pick (like a special gardening shirt with big pouches).