Alignment of Product Portfolio Definition and User Centered Design Activities Ron Hofer1, Dirk Zimmermann2 and Melanie Jekal3 1
Siemens IT Solutions and Services C-LAB, Fürstenallee 11, 33102 Paderborn, Germany 2 T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, Landgrabenweg 151, 53227 Bonn, Germany 3 Universität Paderborn C-LAB, Fürstenallee 11, 33102 Paderborn, Germany 1
[email protected], 2
[email protected], 3
[email protected]
Abstract. To reach a product’s business objectives, the requirements of all relevant stakeholders have to be analyzed and considered in the product definition. This paper focuses on the processes applied to analyze and consider the needs and expectations of two of these stakeholder groups, namely the customers and the users of a product. The processes to produce customer centered product definitions and user centered product definitions are compared, rendering visual opportunities to increase their efficiency and effectiveness by means of collaboration. Keywords: Business Requirements, Customer Requirements, Marketing, Product Definition, Product Portfolio Management, Usability Engineering, User Centered Design, User Requirements
1. Introduction Activities for customer centered and user centered product definitions are generally different in scope. Therefore, usability researchers and practitioners conclude that research on customers cannot substitute research on users ([3], [5]). The authors believe, however, that understanding the basic differences of customer centered and user centered activities provide opportunities to identify areas, in which they can supplement each other within the product lifecycle (PL), resulting in reduced time schedules and efforts, optimized usage of resources available and increased product quality. This paper focuses on the initial step of the PL, in which the elements of the product portfolio are defined. The authors call this initial, cradle step, the Product Portfolio Definition (PPD). Within this step, a variety of influencing factors has to be considered and combined into consistent product scopes to be realized and commercialized in subsequent steps. For companies, which need to develop products with an assured degree of quality in use, one of these influencing factors is the context of use [13].
2. The Playground The roles that one or more person(s) might perform in a buying decision, can be classified into six buying roles which are the initiator, the influencer, the decider, the buyer, the user and the gatekeeper [1]. This framework helps to understand the different view angles, expectations and needs of the customers - and the users regarding the same products. Business plans consider all of these six roles to define products, which intentionally influence all factors leading to a purchase decision. One of these buying roles is the user. User Centered Design (UCD) offers established processes, methods and tools to understand and consider this part of the six buying roles, which leads to the authors’ belief, that an early start of UCD activities supports business decisions already in the initial phase of the PL. Another buying role is the decider (the one who decides on the purchase of a product). In the context of this paper, the motivation to make a purchase decision is different for organizational customers that purchase IT systems to be used by members of the organization (e.g. a call center or an intranet solution) and private customers who are actual end-users (e.g. the purchaser of a tax software or mobile phone). These differences will be addresses at relevant points within the paper. The PPD is conducted at the very beginning of a product’s lifecycle. Product portfolios (PPs) consist of a unified basic product platform and product modules, which are tailored to fit the needs of specific market segments. Objectives and requirements of PPs are defined in “product vision” documents [22]. The modules of a PP can be developed and launched as independent projects at different times. There is a wide range of drivers influencing the definition of product vision for PPs. Company-external drivers, such as society and politics, sciences and technology and the target market as well as more internal drivers like the business strategy, the product strategy and existing and planned own and competitive products are to be considered. This paper focuses solely on one aspect of these drivers, the so called “voice of the customer” ([16], [22]) which has to be heard and considered in the definition of product visions and project scopes to tailor the modules of a product line according to customer segments and to align each module with specific customer needs and expectations. Literature on the process of product definition (PD) emphasizes, that the analysis of the context of use provides valuable insights about customers’ needs and expectations and should be considered in the definition of product visions and project scopes ([16], [22]). On the other hand, usability experts (e.g. in the QIU Reference model [8]) and related ISO standards (DIN EN ISO 13407 [7], ISO/TR 18529 [13] and ISO/PAS 18152 [12]) point out, that the interests and needs of user groups that will work with the products should be considered throughout the entire product lifecycle, “from the cradle to the grave” to thoroughly ensure and enhance the ease of use and usability of interactive products.
3. Comparison of focus and methods The following comparison identifies activities within both processes which needs to be aligned to assure and increase both the customer and the user acceptance of products. To ease the comparison, both processes are divided into four steps, namely “Analyze Context”, “Specify Requirements”, “Produce Concepts” and “Evaluate Concepts”. This sequence is in line with the iterative human centered design steps [7] and customer centered approaches to define products [16].
Figure 1: The four activities within the PPD and subsequent UCD phase
For each step, product definition and UCD activities are juxtaposed to identify opportunities to increase the efficiency within both processes by joint activities and to explore the usage related effects of decisions within the product definition phase. The steps are mapped on a schematic diagram visualizing the commonly acknowledged sequence from the PPD phase to the UCD phase. 3.1 Analyze Context Analyzing the Business and Customer Context Within the business context, product visions and project scopes are defined, based on a thorough analysis. This paper focuses on a significant part of the overall analysis activities, namely the identification of “the voice of the customer” [22]. Within this part, significant differences between groups of customers are identified in order to segment markets and detailed insights about each customer groups’ specific current and future needs and expectations are gathered. In the case of product offerings for private customers, information about customers’ geographics, demographics (addressing the social levels and the family lifecycle) psychographics (addressing patterns by which people live and spend time and money) and behavioristics (addressing the customers extent of use and loyalty, unrealized consumer needs and the usage situation) ([9], [10]) supports “the process of dividing a market into groups of similar consumers and selecting the most
appropriate group(s) […] for the firm to serve” [19] and provides valuable information about the private customers motivation to make purchase decisions. Common sources to analyze customers’ needs and expectations are problem reports and enhancement requests for a current system, marketing surveys, system requirements specifications and descriptions of current or competitive products. These sources are supplemented with interviews and discussions with potential users, user questionnaires, the observation of users at work and the analysis of user tasks [22] to “perform foresight research into potential user groups in order to identify forthcoming needs for systems and new users or user organizations” and to “Identify expected context of use of future systems” [13]. These methods have significant overlap with analysis methods used in the UCD process. Analyzing the User Context UCD processes begin with a thorough analysis of the context of use. The context of use includes “the characteristics of the intended users”, “the tasks the users are to perform” and “the environment in which the users are to use the system” [7]. Additionally, a “competitive analysis” [17] of competitive systems can add valuable information. The characteristics of the intended users include information about their “knowledge, skill, experience, education, training, physical attributes, habits, preferences and capabilities” [7]. This information is summarized in user profiles [14] often represented as Personas ([20], [5]). User profiles help to keep each user group’s specific constraints, abilities and mental models in mind throughout product development. The relevant user goals are captured and analyzed to identify the as-is sequences of tasks that users proceed to reach these goals. The usage environment analysis adds information about “the hardware, software and materials to be used [and] the organizational and physical environment” [7]. Information about the environment helps to consider restrictions and to identify potential opportunities to enhance the product-to-be. Common methods to analyze the context of use are structured on-site visits, structured interviews or interviews using the master/apprentice model [3] with users and customers ([6], [11]). 3.2 Specify Requirement Business and Customer Requirements Business requirements set the overall “product vision” and determine the product portfolio modules to be developed. Furthermore, business requirements contain the identified business opportunity, business objectives and criteria, customer and market needs, business risks, scopes and limitations and the business context containing information about the stakeholder profiles. Customers are a subset of the overall stakeholders considered in the definition of business requirements. Business requirements are the basis to elicit customer requirements for each project. This is done in tight collaboration with customers. Customer requirements can be grouped into nine classes, namely “Business Requirements, Business Rules, Use Cases or Scenarios, Functional Requirements, Quality Attributes, External Interface Requirements, Constraints, Data Definitions and Solution Ideas” [22].
Business as well as customer requirements address issues related to the context of use. High-level business requirements “set business tasks (Use Cases) that the product enables” and “influence the implementation priorities for use cases” [22] and project related customer requirements include those Use Cases. User Requirements User or Workflow requirements specify how the system should support the user to complete his/her tasks and thus have an impact on the early definition of products and market segments [7]. They are captured in Use Cases that “describe the system behavior under various conditions as the system responds to a request from one of the stakeholders, called the primary actor” [4]. The core element of a Use Case is the main scenario, which lists the flow of interaction to reach a specific goal. This interaction flow is improved into a reengineered shall-be-status to “realize the power and efficiency that automation makes possible” and to “more effectively support business goals” [14] and customer requirements. Use Cases are an ideal container to gather all functional requirements necessary to enable a specific user group (primary actor) in reaching a specific goal. As products usually enable several kinds of distinctively different user groups in reaching several goals, Use Cases can be organized into a matrix showing user groups and their respective user goals. This matrix supports decisions concerning the product portfolio elements and project scopes. 3.3 Produce Concepts Business and Project Concepts On the business level, a consistent concept is developed under consideration of the business requirements. This process is of a complex nature, as there is more than one alternative solution for each component of the concept ([2], [18]. On the product level, customer requirements are consolidated into product definition concepts describing the “Place” variable (referring to a geographic location, an industry and/or a group of people - a segment - to whom a company wants to sell its products or services) and the “Product” variable (addressing a product’s functionality, product differentiation, product shape and the Product Portfolio management) of the “4Ps” of a so called “marketing mix”. From a marketing perspective, the “Pricing” and “Promotion” variables supplement the concepts [15]. Methods to systematically derive an optimum configuration of business and product concepts address the visualization of complex requirement interrelations, the production and usage of prototypes and the prioritization of requirements. To deal with the uncertainties given, usually several concepts are derived and evaluated to reduce the risks of misconceptions [22]. User Interface Concept The conceptual phase within the UCD process deals with two major objectives. The first objective is to organize the identified and reengineered tasks into models to describe the overall hierarchy and interrelations of tasks, considering the user and business perspective. The second objective is to translate these models into a
consistent specification of the UI through several iterations. The first iteration, focuses on the creation of the “Conceptual Model Design”, which defines “a coherent rule-based framework that will provide a unifying foundation for all the detailed interface design decisions to come“ [14]. This framework, visualized in mock-ups, represents the reengineered task models in a more tangible way and can thus support customer-focused evaluation activities. 3.4 Evaluate Concepts Evaluation of Business and Project Concepts From a business perspective, evaluation activities address business concepts and product concepts defining the segmentation of markets and the corresponding of products. These concepts are reviewed with customers (usually specific registered customers of the company) and relevant stakeholders and domain experts [22]. Customer requirements are evaluated with customers to get feedback on how to adjust concepts and which concept to choose. Feedback on product concepts is gained by surveys, focus groups, reviews and structured interviews with potential and known customers. In the case of several concepts to be compared, benchmarking methods such as the KANO method or the Conjoint Analysis method [16] are used to identify promising project concepts and marketing mixes. These methods are based on the assumption that customers are able to explain and predict their thinking and behavior [20]. They can be supplemented by methods to gain insights about the 95% of thinking that takes place in customers’ unconscious minds, and strongly affect their purchasing behavior [23]. Additionally, launching products with a limited area of circulation or functionality (single modules, beta versions) provides early feedback from the marketplace. User Centered Evaluation One of the basic principles of UCD is to develop human system interfaces in iterations to decrease costly the chance of changes and revisions at late stages of product development [22]. With this approach, the risk of unforeseen obstacles which might result from reengineered task sequences, task models and UI concepts can be reduced and initially undetected issues concerning the users’ needs and expectations can be considered at an early stage of UI development. There are two types of UCD evaluations. Summative evaluations (e.g. usability tests, benchmarks and reviews) aim at the final assessment of products, whereas formative evaluations are conducted continuously to support decisions concerning UCD concepts within the process. As this paper discusses mutual benefits in joint customer centered and user centered activities in the early “cradle” step of product development, the formative UCD evaluation is of foremost interest. The methods used for formative evaluations at this point of product development are collaborative reviews, expert reviews, validations with users and customers and focus groups. Formative evaluations confirm intermediate results within the process and identify potential areas for optimization or correction.
4. Mutual Benefits As shown, the methods used within product development overlap with methods used in UCD activities. This overlap can be a promising starting point to reduce time and effort (the two basic metrics for efficiency) within product development.
Figure 2: Promising areas for collaboration within the PPD and subsequent UCD phase
The second advantage of a simultaneous proceeding of Product portfolio definition and UCD activities is the opportunity to explore the effects of PPD activities on the context of use within the PPD phase. This feedback is a valuable basis to make adjustments within each of the PPD steps, enhancing the reliability of all subsequent steps and reducing cost intensive change request in subsequent PL phases. This enables the product definition team to adjust analysis plans, requirement specifications, concepts and evaluation focus accordingly. In the following, we summarize all potential areas of collaboration. The areas are mapped on the schematic diagram (Figure 2) visualizing the PPD and subsequent UCD phase, introduced in chapter 3. a) Joint analysis & customer selection The identification of relevant customer and user segments for analysis activities can be simplified by joint collaboration of business and user analysts. Business analysts can utilize user groups described in Personas to segment markets ([20], [22]), which
leads to a significant reduction of the set of customers to be investigated [16]. On the other hand, “ethnographic interviewers should use market research to help them select interview partners” [5] and derive user groups [20]. Some of the main methods used to analyze the characteristics of target customers are equally used within the UCD process to gain insights about the characteristics of the intended user, their user goals and the environment in which the users are to use the system. A simultaneous analysis approach could therefore reduce time and effort. The relevant interview partners can be jointly interviewed adding valuable mutual insights. As stated by Cooper, “data gathered via market research and that gathered via qualitative user research complement each other quite well” [5]. b) Exploring user requirements for Product Definition First (jointly analyzed) insights about customers and users can be utilized by UCD activities to “perform foresight research into potential user groups in order to identify forthcoming needs for systems and new users or user organizations” [13] which can be used as a basis for a user groups and goal oriented product modularization and the identification of “technology capabilities that would be needed” [21]. The UCD methods to translate user goals into meaningful Use Case requirements can be utilized in PD to “Identify expected context of use of future systems” [13]. Use Cases fill the “Use case or scenario” class of the customer requirements derived within PD [22]. Furthermore, early insights about the expected context of use can indicate missing analysis data about customers within the customer analysis step. c) Joint requirement specification Business requirements “determine both the set of business tasks (use cases) that the application enables” and “influence the implementation priorities for use cases and their associated functional requirements” [22]. Within the requirement elicitation phase of PD, analysts elaborate customer and user statements into general customer requirements. Some of these requirements address statements concerning user goals or business tasks that users need to perform. UCD methods can be utilized to condense these requirements in the form of Use Cases, which cluster all product requirements necessary to fulfill a certain user goal in one single requirement and can thus reduce the complexity of requirements to be considered. [17] In the requirement phase of the UCD process, task sequences are reengineered to optimally achieve the identified business goals. These UCD reengineering activities allow the consideration of improved workflows and changes in users and tasks within the PD phase. d) Explorative concepts Usage related product requirements can be translated into first conceptual models and mock-ups. Especially in the context of private customers, these mock-ups can be used in the requirement elicitation phase to get early customer feedback and adjust the requirements accordingly. e) Joint conception In the concept phase of PD, several marketing mix concepts are derived to identify the best mixture of all variables of the product offering. Joint conceptualization activities allow to see the effect of trade-off decisions in the marketing mix immediately and to
adjust the marketing mix concepts accordingly. Furthermore, a simultaneous creation of first conceptual UI models increases the real-world character of marketing mixes to be evaluated with customers and users. f) Explorative evaluation of usage related components of the Marketing Mix Explorative evaluation efforts to “assess the significance and relevance of the system to each stakeholder group which will be end users of the system and/or will be affected by input to or output from the system” [13] provide early feedback in the context of use. Marketing mix concepts can be evaluated up front by UCD activities based on the first set of user requirements to allow usage related concept adjustment within the PD phase. g) Joint evaluation UCD processes offer appropriate methods to evaluate the (high-level) usability of product concepts. Furthermore, UI mock-ups derived within the UCD processes help to communicate the product part of marketing mixes to customers and users within review and evaluation sessions. h) Positive influence on schedule, budget, resources and quality The alignment of PD and UCD activities reduces time and effort, enables to utilize each others expertise and increases the product quality and thereby the predictability of product acceptance of customers and users.
5. Summary This paper identified opportunities to improve the alignment of PPD and UCD activities. It offers a basis for the discussion of how these joint activities can be embedded into established product development processes. Considering the specific requirements of users within the Product Portfolio Definition increases the user acceptance of future products and helps to smoothly implement the UCD process into the overall Product Development: •
The users’ acceptance of future products is considered from the beginning and leads to strategic product portfolios aiming at high-level user goals.
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As UCD activities can start earlier in the product development process, the time necessary to analyze the context of use in subsequent process steps is reduced.
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The simultaneous customer and user focus enhances the shared understanding and awareness of business and user goals across development teams early in the project development process.
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Feedback about the user acceptance of portfolio definitions is provided early in the process, which enables the adjustment of product portfolios within the first process steps and thus reduces extra costs of change requests in subsequent steps.
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