I’ve written before about how you can quickly test a hypothesis or product feature with an MVP implementation. You can find this information in the article «How to test ideas quickly and without budget».

In this article, I want to break down a very specific but effective way of doing research. The purpose of this research is to determine the minimum viable functionality of your product. Again, any MVP can be projected not only on the product, but also on the feature. The key goal of the MVP is to test the hypothesis in a minimum amount of money and time.

The research method discussed in this article will help determine what must be done and what can be sacrificed in the first iterations of a product or function.

We will talk about the Kano model.

What is the Kano model?

The Kano model is a method used to determine user satisfaction with certain parts of a product.

Traditionally, this can be divided into 3 main categories:

1. Basic features are must be in the products, otherwise users won’t even consider your product.
   
   For example, the basic function of YouTube is video uploading. It is on this function that the entire service is built.
2. Desired features arefeatures that users would like to see in your product for some reason. This category has a direct impact on customer satisfaction. And it’s in this category that unique competitive advantages are created that influence user choice.
   
   For example, a desirable YouTube feature is a recommendation feed that recommends content based on previously watched videos.
3. Admirable features are features that the user doesn’t expect to see in your product and responds positively when they start using them. This doesn’t directly affect customer loyalty because users don’t even expect to see it, but it can greatly increase it.
   
   For example, the ability to scroll through YouTube videos with just one finger. When watching a video, you can tap on the screen and scroll to any point.

How do use it into practice?

The Kano model has a certain structure for designing a survey.

But before you design a survey, you need to decide on the functions and audience segment you want to test.

Once you’ve decided on the functions and audience, you can start designing your survey.

Traditionally, a Kano model survey consists of a sequential test of each of the functions. This validation consists of 2 basic questions:

1. How much do you care if {your product name} had a {function name}
2. How much do you care if {your product name} did NOT have {function name}?

These are closed-ended questions that contain the following answer choices:

1. «Very important»
2. «Rather important»
3. «Partly important, partly not»
4. «Rather NOT important»
5. «Totally Not Important»

And so you design the survey by asking 2 questions for each of the features you want to test.

What to do with the results?

After you have received a sufficient number of answers to the questionnaire, you need to interpret the results correctly. Based on the answers, you should assign each of the features to one of 3 categories (basic, desirable, admirable).

You can use the table below to analyze your results (I have also attached a hyperlink to it):

Positive ones are questions about the presence of features, and negative ones are questions about the absence of features.

I would also like to mention another category of undesirable features. These are the features that directly affect customer loyalty. Try to avoid having them in your product.

Also, pay close attention to conflicting answers. If there are a lot of them, it’s possible that the survey is designed wrong and needs to be fixed urgently. This can skew the final results of the survey.

Conclusions.

The Kano model is another method you can use to quickly test and validate your product or feature. I am an evangelist of methods by which you can quickly test hypotheses and get results.

Kano model research is one of the best ways to test a hypothesis quickly. Just define a feature, design a simple questionnaire in Google Forms and ask UserIntreviews for respondents (or you can use my tips for free respondent recruitment) and test your hypothesis. Fast, cheap, and effective.