User Requirements

if you could determine what features your customers needed and what they would pay extra for, you would...wouldn't you?

A big contributor to new product failure is that products don't have the functionality that users want or don't work the way they expect. To succeed, you need to understand the user's needs and goals, the business's needs and goals, the context of use, what your competitors are doing, and the technology environment. Gathering all of these requirements takes work but it won't grind it your project to a halt. Determining the right "must haves," "nice to haves," and future enhancements upfront will save you time later. Making the trade-offs between these sometimes conflicting requirements and setting the correct priorities is a skill that has made Chili's consultants in integral part of development teams that have won awards, been granted patents, and deployed successful products for the past 18 years.

Services:

• User research
• Competitive evaluations
• Mystery shopper
• Situation analysis
• Business case validation
• End user and functional requirements documentation
• Use cases, user scenarios, and user stories

Case Study:

An Internet startup company was looking for financing. They had a high level idea for a new product, but for constantly being asked my investors for more details and for some sort of proof that consumers were interested in their ideas. first, a business case validation program was implemented to discover if the idea was interesting to the target market. From that research, the product direction was shifted more towards a concept that users would pay for. Next, requirements analysis was conducted to determine the needs and goals of users as well as those of the business and the investors. The requirements were documented based on actual feedback from potential users and the key stakeholders. When investors reviewed the customer feedback, saw the detailed functional requirements, and were presented with user interface and technical design directions, the value of the product and intentions of the startup were clear. The company was funded, launched their business, and have since been acquired by a large, well-known Internet player.