Product Development in Insight Communities

Whether you are in the early, middle, or late stages of product development, an insight community can help you get valuable data about your customers’ needs and give you answers to questions that arise throughout product development, giving you a strong advantage over competitors.

Why is Product Development Important?

Product development involves the process of bringing a new product/service to market. Research is typically the first step in the process, to understand the customer needs and trends in the industry.

In this post we're going to be talking about how you can use insight communities to streamline product development and bring new innovations to life!

Benefits of Using Insight Communities for Product Development

When developing a new product, the process can be complex and time-consuming. It involves understanding your market and knowing what your customers need to make an informed decision about your product. However, with ever-changing markets and demands, it’s difficult to know exactly what will work for different groups of people.

This is where insight communities come in! Insight communities give you the opportunity to quickly identify key insights about your customer base and gain valuable information that can help shape your product decisions throughout the entire development process so that customers’ changing needs are captured. This can save a lot of time as other research methods can keep your team waiting months to capture the same level of insight. They also help you understand who your customers are as a people, such as their desires, their needs, their wants, and what makes them tick.

Here's how communities can be used iteratively to help you create better products.

Ways to Use Communities at Every Stage of Product Development

Pre-concept Exploratory

When initially exploring ideas for new products, communities can be used for early exploratory research to see what type of products customers are interested in and gauge their first response. Video Chats are a great way to introduce new concepts to members face to face and record their first impressions in real time!

Co-creation w/ Customers

Insight communities allow for idea co-creation to occur. Co-creation can show your customers’ pain and light points initially, helping you design a better product for market. Communities enable an open flow of communication to take place, making idea creation and refinement easier. Topics, the My-Take platform’s deep dive qualitative activity type, is perfect for conducting this type of research

Concept Screening

Communities can also help uncover which concepts and ideas are the best to proceed with before the refining of concepts begins. Screening early on with surveys before testing can save a lot of time later in the process.

Rough vs.Detailed Concepts

Sketch out your next idea and start to lay out the specifics with the help of your community. Learn which details stand out to customers and refine your idea to create customer-first products.

Product/Feature Prioritization

Which features do customers need? Which ones do they want? Which ones differentiate the product and make it unique? These questions can be answered with the help of a customer community.

Product Testing

Communities can be used during the middle stage of a development cycle for concept testing and validation. This is a great time to perform a home use test (HUT) to see how your product will work in customers’ natural environments. When your team has fleshed out concepts, you can use your community to see which ones consumers like best and have them answer any questions that arise for your team.

Launch Time Evaluation

When it comes to the later stages, insight communities can be used to find out the best way to advertise your product and validate marketing plans as well as test/evaluate campaign messaging. Communities can also be used for package refinement and pricing. In addition, in late development, they can be used to see how customers troubleshoot issues and even see how they explore your website to purchase the product.

For over a decade, My-Take has helped companies develop customer-centric products by providing a secure online insight community platform that helps them make better decisions for their customers.Click here to schedule a consultation and discuss your research needs.