Qualitative data can seem difficult to parse—and may seem like it’s better suited for marketing (https://uservoice.com/blog/work-effectively-with-marketing) than product management.
Qualitative data can seem difficult to parse—and may seem like it’s better suited for marketing than product management. However, qualitative research uncovers customers’ inner motivations and feelings in a way that will benefit any product team. It asks (and answers) the holy grail of customer questions: Why?
Qualitative data analysis provides a rich, nuanced look into your customers’ ideas, preferences, and needs. Learning how to interpret it faithfully can give you the deep insight you need to create and maintain truly customer-driven products.
Qualitative research involves asking people for their responses to open-ended questions through interviews, focus groups, and case studies. It generates a rich, nuanced data set that provides context for people’s decisions and preferences. Gathering qualitative data starts on an individual level: you connect with customers one-on-one or in small groups and record their thoughts and feedback. From there, you can spot trends that show how your customers feel about your product.
Qualitative data aims to get at a deeper level of information than quantitative research does. While quantitative data is great for tracking key product metrics like user retention, it’s not as well-suited for stepping into the shoes of your customer and empathizing with their experience.
This form of research works particularly well for new feature ideas. Before you can take steps to validate whether your feature is a good idea, you need a hypothesis to test. If you’re just starting out and don’t yet have a value hypothesis, qualitative research can help you evaluate what your customers need from your product. Qualitative studies can reveal your customers’ nuanced, emotional reactions to your proposed product changes.
A famous example of this phenomenon is the story of New Coke: Coca-Cola changed its flagship flavor after encouraging taste test results, but they didn’t account for their customers’ strong, emotional connection to their original product. New Coke flopped, but the re-introduced “Coca-Cola Classic” boosted the brand’s popularity.Keep in mind that qualitative data collection isn’t a replacement for quantitative, and vice versa. They both have their uses and, for the most in-depth, complete understanding of what your customers need and desire, you should combine approaches.
Qualitative research methods are intended to find proof of an idea or concept—you could be looking for evidence explaining why your customers feel the way they do about your product, or you might be collecting information about the general sentiment in your market. Conduct your research with a set plan and parameters in place, always keep your purpose in mind, and practice excellent record-keeping.What does that methodical approach look like in practice?
Finally, watch out for your own biases while you collect data. Bias is inevitable; you’ll walk in the door of every interview or focus group with your set of preconceived ideas and personal context. While you can’t switch that off, you can reorient your thinking, so you don’t allow your own biases to affect your research process.
A good way to think of it is that, as an interviewer, you’re co-creating the data with the people in your interviews. The questions you ask, your presence, and your follow-ups will all have an impact on the information that your participants share. The observations you make during the sessions are also part of the data that you collect. For instance, if a customer says they would probably use a proposed feature, but they don’t appear particularly excited about it, that may be a good time to ask follow-up questions about what’s missing.
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