132 - Leveraging Behavioral Science to Increase Data Product Adoption with Klara Lindner
Dec 12, 2023
auto_awesome
Klara Lindner, Service Designer at diconium data, discusses leveraging behavioral science to increase data product adoption. She shares insights on user research, human-centered design, and the disconnect between data professionals and their own advice. Klara explores easy user research techniques, responsibility for user adoption, and upcoming webinars on behavioral science frameworks. Topics also include service design, renewable energy technologies, and challenges faced by B2B SaaS product leaders.
Service designers focus on the entire user journey and create solutions that address specific user needs in order to increase product adoption.
Understanding user behavior and addressing anxieties and resistance are crucial for driving adoption of data products.
Deep dives
Understanding the Role of Service Design in Product Development
Clara Lindner, a service designer and founding member of the data product leadership community, discussed the role of service design in product development. Service designers focus on the ecosystem surrounding a product and ensure a seamless connection between the product and its users. They consider the entire user journey and create solutions that address the specific needs and context of the users. By understanding how users interact with the product and the outside world, service designers can improve user experience and increase product adoption.
Turning Data Products into Sustainable Solutions
Clara Lindner shared her experience working at Mobisol, an energy company that aimed to provide renewable energy to people without access to electricity. By placing solar systems with connected SIM cards on people's roofs, Mobisol created a data product that allowed for preventive maintenance and better understanding of user behavior. The data collected helped identify new services and partnerships to enhance the value of the product. Clara emphasized the importance of understanding user behavior and leveraging data to provide solutions that meet users' needs and drive adoption.
Overcoming Resistance to Change with Behavioral Science
Clara Lindner discussed the concept of forces of progress, a mental model from behavioral science, to address low adoption of data products. She highlighted that users often face anxiety and resistance when switching from existing solutions to new products. By understanding and addressing these anxieties, as well as considering the existing behavior patterns and systems users are locked into, product designers can develop features and communication strategies that facilitate adoption. Clara emphasized the importance of taking a more humane approach to design and focusing on the desired future state for users.
The Value of User Research in Data Product Development
Clara Lindner debunked the misconception that user research is only relevant for B2C products. She emphasized that understanding users is crucial for any product, including data products. By conducting user research, designers gain insights into user frustrations, anxieties, and existing behavior patterns. This information helps guide the development of data products that address these needs and increase adoption. Clara encouraged product leaders to invest in user research, even with limited resources, by starting with online research or observation of user behavior, which can provide valuable insights for product improvement.
In this conversation with Klara Lindner, Service Designer at diconium data, we explore how behavioral science and UX can be used to increase adoption of data products. Klara describes how she went from having a highly technical career as an electrical engineer and being the founder of a solar startup to her current role in service design for data products. Klara shares powerful insights into the value of user research and human-centered design, including one which stopped me in my tracks during this episode: how the people making data products and evangelizing data-driven decision making aren’t actually following their own advice when it comes to designing their data products. Klara and I also explore some easy user research techniques that data professionals can use, and discuss who should ultimately be responsible for user adoption of data products. Lastly, Klara gives us a peek at her upcoming December 19th, 2023 webinar with the The Data Product Leadership Community (DPLC) where she will be going deeper on two frameworks from psychology and behavioral science that teams can use to increase adoption of data products. Klara is also a founding member of the DPLC and was one of—if not the very first—design/UX professionals to join.
Highlights/ Skip to:
I introduce Klara, and she explains the role of Service Design to our audience (00:49)
Klara explains how she realized she’s been doing design work longer than she thought by reflecting on the company she founded, Mobisol (02:09)
How Klara balances the desire to design great dashboards with the mission of helping end users (06:15)
Klara describes the psychology behind user research and her upcoming talk on December 19th at The Data Product Leadership Community (08:32)
What data product teams can do as a starting point to begin implementing user research principles (10:52)
Klara gives a powerful example of the type of insight and value even basic user research can provide (12:49)
Klara and I discuss a key revelation when it comes to designing data products for users, which is the irony that even developers use intuition as well as quantitative data when building (16:43)
What adjustments Klara had to make in her thinking when moving from a highly technical background to doing human-centered design (21:08)
Klara describes the two frameworks for driving adoption that she’ll be sharing in her talk at the DPLC on December 19th (24:23)
An example of how understanding and addressing adoption blockers is important for product and design teams (30:44)
How Klara has seen her teams adopt a new way of thinking about product & service design (32:55)
Klara gives her take on the Jobs to be Done framework, which she will also be sharing in her talk at the DPLC on December 19th (35:26)
Klara’s advice to teams that are looking to build products around generative AI (39:28)
Where listeners can connect with Klara to learn more (41:37)