Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People's Needs

Abstract

ALTHOUGH Robert Becker and Dev Patnaik acknowledge that needs don't generate specific product or service solutions, they know that the science of needfinding can be a dynamic platform for design. The authors define terms related to this process and outline the steps that help identify development opportunities. Critical need‐finding principles include letting consumers guide the flow of research, collecting data in a variety of different forms, and integrating research and design in a series of iterative stages as a way to fine‐tune results.