Pulse PEMF Director of Product on Executing Effective Customer Discovery and Validating Innovative Solutions

How does a healthcare company take innovation to the people? During the customer discovery phase in a life science product, it is crucial to understand the top priority of the user. Though companies and PMs often get excited about their latest product, there is only value insofar as it addresses a user’s biggest problems. In this talk, PulsePEMF Director of Product Ryan House shares insights on executing effective customer discovery that allows an organization to validate innovative solutions.

Join us for new conversations with leading product executives every week. Roll through the highlights of this week’s event below, then head on over to our Events page to see which product leaders will be joining us next week.

On the importance of continuous research in customer discovery

“A survey of 600 individuals found that 78% of organizations believe they need more research. So continuous research is becoming a practice. And so organizations are investing time and resources into research with the customer early, early on. Second trend is that 64% of respondents reported that not only researchers, but product managers, designers, engineers, marketers conduct research. We do that as well. I have some examples I’ll talk about that are a little creative, but still kind of fit within the framework. 

“And then just quickly on the third trend, 74% of respondents felt that research is effective or partially effective in decision making. By doing continuous research, it enables more effective decision making. I think you’re seeing a trend of spending more time on customer discovery than you are, you know, building a lot of features and hoping that works. 

“Just one more important trend that I found as well is that 83% of respondents say that research should be conducted at every stage of the product. That is also kind of a shift, because as you’ll see later on, that also includes after you build and ship the release or product or solution. So that’s a really important trend.”

On ‘learn quick, validate quicker’

“Learn quick. Validate quicker. This, I would say, has been one of our biggest improvements and really helped us succeed. We try to learn as quickly as possible. And we try to validate even quicker. We try to find themes and user interviews. If we’re conducting a lot of interviews, we don’t wait weeks or months to go over the data. We try to go over it the next day or whatever makes sense. But we want to validate that quick before we start building.”

On Undercover Boss-style user testing

“Every time we hire someone new, we have a mystery visit. It’s like usability testing in a way, because you’re watching them use the technology. We send them to whatever practitioner is close to them. So they get to see firsthand how our technology is used, what they are struggling with. 

“And what’s nice is the owner of our product doesn’t know that they’re from our organization. So they’re very honest, and that’s extremely helpful for us. I don’t know if Undercover Boss is a good example. But we found a lot of success, and especially just seeing how our users are using the equipment, and especially the technology.”