the love and the break-up letter
design research method
Nomaan Ahgharian
What is it?
A personal letter written to a product often reveals profound insights
about what people value and expect from the objects in their
everyday lives.
A personal letter to a product.
WHy the hell you want to use this?
- You need some original marketing materials?
- You want your participants to have fun?
- You want to know why you are losing users?
- You want to make the participant feel in charge?
Participant
When do you do it?
- After your first iteration
- You want to give your users enough time to make an emotional connection with your product!
WHERE In design thinking this happens?
HERE
Ok, give me an example...
Break up letters:
Dear Apple headphones,
We have been in this together for a year now, and I can’t say we haven’t shared some great memories on the subway and thousands of miles in the air. But I just can’t keep doing this. You are unreliable and temperamental and a really hard guy to pin down. Every time I want to share a long walk with you, you act squirmy and distant. Apple was playing matchmaker when they first introduced us. They knew I loved music, and that we would be a great match. Because of you music isn’t the same… but without you there is none. Even though this is going to be very hard, I think it’s best we go our separate ways. Thanks for all the good tunes!
Karuna Harishanker
P.S. Do you have other friends I can meet?
AND APPLE HAS SIMPLY IGNORED THAT!
CASE STUDY:
STEPS:
- Find Slack users
- Ask them to pour their hearts out
Reality check:
You have no coworkers in your new city, so you have to do it over an online survey.
AVOID online surveys
You're probably like:
When you do it over an online survey, you lose a lot of non-verbal cues.
As tempting as it sounds:
and...
it's twice as hard to make sure the participants understand what you are asking from them!
At least in my case!
Recap:
- Find participants
- Ask them to write to your product as if they were in a relationship (an example coming up)
- Watch them read the letter - Ask them to record themselves
- Identify why they like or dislike your product
- Learn about competitors that users have moved on to
You love [your product name]? let's write a love letter. Talk about what made you love him/her? What characteristics of him/her you never want to change?
You hate [your product name]? let's write a breakup letter. Give Slack reasons that the relationship didn't work. Let's talk about the habits that annoyed you. It's your chance to write and make it easier for both of you to move on. Feel free to give names that you cheated on Slack with.
Here is an example
GOOD LUCK!
