Technology leaders need to closely work with business transformation leaders to create value innovation rather than just focusing on technology innovation; initiatives which focus only on technology innovation fail miserably.  When Google Glass was launched, I was having an argument with some leaders (who liked this futuristic innovation) regarding whether it would be adopted by the end-user or not. There is no doubt that Google Glass was appealing, but the hype around a product does not work every time. My point of view is that the creator of Google Glass assumed that users wanted a new way to click pictures on the spot without carrying a separate device. Google had failed to validate the user’s need; they focused mainly on technology innovation rather than creating real value for users. It was never clear what benefit it would provide to the end-users and why they would use it. Inadequate market research was the reason behind the failure of this revolutionary product launched by Google.

Surveys are an essential element of user research. You might have already attempted a long, annoying, and excruciating survey. Thousands of people have experienced this ‘survey fatigue’ and have dealt with it by just clicking random answers, often defeating the purpose of market research. This purpose pertains to getting honest answers in the survey and using them to develop a product that is well-liked by the users.

One of the retail clothing companies (which was initially using traditional surveys) had been seeing a downward trend in sales because the clothes produced by it had not been well-liked by its customers. To resolve this issue, the sales manager teamed up with the company’s IT team to develop a fashion gaming app for its customers. This gaming app lets the user create their avatar and design clothes that their avatar would wear for virtual fashion competitions with other users. By intimately recording the customer preferences in terms of clothes, the clothing company was able to determine which clothing items are popular and was able to manufacture them for its retail line, thus, being able to give its customers what they prefer.

You need to know what customers like and what they don’t like about your products & services. Understanding their priorities and prioritizing features accordingly in your solution is what satisfies them the most. Mobile manufacturing companies can use games to get answers for specific inputs, for example, what models of the phone, the end-users would like to purchase or what features they would like to have. Many times, customers do not even know what they need, and when you show them something, they understand their needs better. To understand their needs better, we can analyze the behaviour of customers through games.

Your customers have a better idea of how you can improve your product and services. By engaging them in a playful experience, they get an opportunity to share those ideas with you. Engaging them in ideation can help you understand the needs which they have never told you or are not known to you. Hence, you attain insights for creating a new product or service altogether. One can also build experiences which can capture data from end users to gain necessary insights for demand forecasting. For example, mobile manufacturers can identify what models of the phone would sell well in the market.  These experiences provide new ways of understanding the voice of the customer. It can help the product development team to understand their customers better and truly create innovative products & services. 

Marks & Spencer conducted market research by using eye-tracking technology which is usually native to video games and motion capture studios. These sensors were placed in front of M&S display windows in malls to capture the number of glances towards their displayed products as people passed by. This software was also able to recognize and categorize every glance according to their age groups and genders. Such experiences allowed them to measure the demographic structure of passers-by in real-time. This data was further correlated with the number of people entering the store, thus, allowing the company to measure the popularity of existing displays/ads and understand what gains more attraction.

Key Takeaways
The foundation of Digital Transformation is in understanding and validating customer needs. Therefore, even revolutionary technology products may also fail due to poor market research. Business & technology leaders should collaborate to focus more on value innovation rather than just focusing on technology innovation. You can Leverage playful experiences to understand the demand, for example, collecting the demographic information and customer desires & priorities on what model of phone people would like to purchase & with what features.