Henry Ford said:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

The quote is about understanding the user’s needs. People said they wanted fast horses, but Ford understood that they wanted to get from one place to another faster.

The people described the solution they wanted. Ford realized the need, and we all know what Henry Ford offered to the people.

Ford Model T, the solution to the people problem. (Photo by Philip Schroeder on Unsplash).

It’s critical to understand users’ needs to be able to design products that people want. Furthermore, it’s a very insightful way to explain to other stakeholders why you, as a designer, made some decisions.

Over the last two years, I have tried to help junior designers gain knowledge about product design through private mentoring and as a team leader.

I share in this article an exercise that helps to clarify what “user needs” really are; this way, I hope junior designers will better comprehend it. In addition, team leaders and design teachers can use this exercise to help design students and junior designers.

From my experience, this is how people teach user needs

It’s the same technique that I’ve seen taught in different schools and bootcamps. Students conduct user interviews, then create empathy maps and user personas.

I think that these techniques are OK, and sometimes I use personas. Still, I use personas more to align everyone on the product team (product managers, developers, QA testers, and designers) with our user.

My problem with that method is that it’s too technical. It seems that the speed of the course is more important than anything else. Often, junior designers make user personas and empathy maps like robots without understanding and feeling the user.

When I interview new designers for my team, I often see junior designers explain the design process like a machine. When I ask them about something specific, they cannot explain the user’s needs beyond what is written in the user persona.

How I believe it is better to explain it to the people

If you want to understand more about the people and their needs, I recommend starting with something that isn’t directly related to an app or website. As a result, students will focus only on user needs.

The exercise is: “Buy a present for someone you know.”

Steps:

1. Choose a person you know well. It can be parents/brothers, a boy/girlfriend, a wife/husband, a grandmother/grandfather, or a close friend.
2. Identify some needs.
3. Find a gift that can solve one of their needs.

More info:

• This exercise focuses only on the user’s needs and a solution.
• Students must select someone they know very well, so they can understand their needs quickly. Normally we would interview the user and use other techniques to get to know the user. However, I wanted to avoid that, so the students could focus only on the user’s needs because they know the person well.
• The gift must cover a real need/problem, and the students must explain why they think the user needs it and share cases for it.
• It is not necessary to buy a gift. Of course, they can buy it if they want.
• Alternatively, you could ask them to buy the gift so they can see whether the recipients use it. In this case, I would set a limit on the price so that everyone will be able to afford it.

Task template in Figjam

I created an artboard in Figjam to help you get started on the task right away. Feel free to copy it from the Figma community.

Do you think it is a simple task? Think again.

We all know the moment when someone gives us a gift, but how many of those gifts were useful to us? I’ll take the risk and say that many of them weren’t.

In this task, I wish to highlight how difficult it is to understand people and their needs. It is easy to buy gifts but harder to buy gifts that people will use because you have to know them well.

Here are two examples

Buy a kitchen knife for a friend who is moving into a new house.

Your friend is moving into a new house. You know he likes to cook and lives in a shared house. Now he rents a new house without roommates.

Upon visiting your friend after he moved, you saw that he lacks basic kitchen tools, among them a high-quality kitchen knife, so you decide to gift him one.

But what kind of kitchen knife will you buy him?

There are many types. After you explained the situation to the store owner, he suggested you buy him a chef’s knife since chef’s knives are used for most cooking tasks. So you buy him a good chef’s knife.

Photo by Kevin Doran on Unsplash

Buy an AirTag for a friend

Imagine you have a friend who constantly forgets where her bag is. That makes her uncomfortable and stressed.

Since she uses an iPhone, you buy her an AirTag, so she knows where her bag is. She can now find her bag, and it reduces her stress.

Photo by Thai Nguyen on Unsplash

To summary

My goal in this article was to share with you a technique you can use to understand what it means “The user’s needs.”

I started by explaining why I think most schools are not using the most effective method today; I also provided a simple exercise so people can understand the point and two examples of the exercise.