Exercise 3. Analyse and draw conclusions
Well done, you! Before getting started, let’s appreciate that stack of interviews you’re going to be digging into in a moment. Great work there, some hiccups, but overall, you’ve definitely become a better conversationalist.
Going back to analysing and summarising your findings from the interviews serves two purposes:
Human memories are spotty and tend to focus on the highlights, so a methodical review will help you find the parts you don’t remember anymore. Yet these might be just as insightful for your product concept.
Having your findings summarised makes them easier to share with anyone you’d like to ask for feedback or work with. If you decide you need to validate more of your assumptions with some help, you’ve got a starting point to work with. If you decide to move forward with your product definition, you have a useful document to show to the Product Strategists and Designers.
What to do:
Go through each interview and map the answers in a summarised format, following the core questions you’ve been asking.
Group together similar challenges, topics or sentiments.
When you’re done, summarise the key points in a document to have to show to future co-workers, partners, investors, or interested stakeholders.
While you work:
Patterns are your friends
You need two skills to do this exercise well. The first is to summarise and extract the key points from each interview as you re-read it. Remember you’re looking for qualitative data, so look for substance, don’t count mentions. The second skill is your ability to recognise if two people are talking about the same thing, whether it’s the problem you’re researching or an aspect of it, but in different words.
Check again: are you done?
When you’re done, ask yourself again: have you found out everything you need for this stage?
Your brain will be doing pattern recognition as you’re doing the interviews, but once you’ve completed the Miro board, you’ll have the full insights in front of you. Re-do that flowchart to assess if you’ve reached the goals you’ve set out at the beginning. If not, it’s better to follow-up now than to move forward with unproven assumptions.
Erika Kramarik
Full-Stack Marketer
Erika is a full-stack marketer passionate about the intersection between technology and social impact. She mixes research with content design and a human touch to help people and startups succeed in delivering value through their work. When not writing or talking to people, you’ll find her reading or quoting Hamilton for any life situation.
