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In this Live Session, we do a run through of a Value Proposition from Workshop Tactics.
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Session highlights
- Traditionally a marketing tool
- Marketing is intrinsic to building products and services.
- We must be able to connect with who we’re designing for.
- It helps get everyone on the same page about what you’re doing.
- It’s the Why of your product.
When to use it:
- The who, why, what and the how always evolves.
- At the start of a project to get a clear picture of what you’re trying to do.
- During a project to stay aligned
Why?
- The value of this tactic lies in the differences in the team’s answers.
Facilitation tips
Try and group/theme sort post-it’s as people are sharing. Not whilst they’re writing them. (They might not be finished). Things are different remotely. In person workshops share them one by one.
During in-person workshops, ask your team members to put their hand up once they have shared their post-it so that no one is missed in the sharing parts of the session. Alternatively, have all team members to put their hand-up at the beginning of the sharing exercise and take them down once they have spoken about post-it.
You can try the above hand raising method on Zoom. To do this, ask your team members to press the ‘raise your hand’ button after they have shared their post-it/thoughts. By doing this, all participants can see who has shared and who hasn’t.
In an in-person workshop, have all members share their post-it’s/thoughts before sending them on a 10 minute break. During this break, theme sort the post-it’s so you can resume with the workshop without having to allocate actual session time to theme sorting.
During the blind voting part of the workshop, if there is a tie vote you can resolve this by using one of these methods;
- The team can decide to all agree on one of the post-it’s with the most votes and ignore the rule of majority.
- You can give someone in the room/team a deciding/additional vote – this could be someone with more authority like the product owner, CEO or someone that is running the project.
How to run the Value Proposition tactic
Before you begin, set the expectation of what you are trying to achieve in the workshop.
It is a good idea to try and get a sense of what your team currently thinks the value proposition of the product/service is before running the tactic.
It is a good idea to try and get a sense of what your team currently thinks the value proposition of the product/service is before running the tactic.
New ideas will emerge and the end result will be an act of discovery.
- Who is the target customer (a descriptive name?) The more specific you are, the better.
- What is their need? Try and group customer descriptions to their needs.
- Describe the service, what does it do?
- Display the product/service name somewhere visible to the entire group. You can then stick the post-it’s around the product/service name
- What are the intrinsic benefits of the product/service?
The crux of this exercise is to find the ‘why’ for this product/service. The intrinsic benefits would usually evoke some feeling or emotion. The benefits aren’t always clear, your participants might have to dig deep for these answers. - What are the main themes emerging from the participants answers? Can you find links between the themes and sort them into clear groups?
- Looking at each group of themes, which post-it/idea has the best wording? Ask participants to vote on what they believe is the best worded description of each theme.
- Showcase the winning post-its and discuss/reword these until your are happy with your final value proposition
- After the workshop, it’s a great idea to have this value proposition printed out and displayed somewhere to remind yourselves what it is you’re trying to achieve with your product
At the end of the workshop, your value proposition statement should look something like this:
“For all home owners [target customer], who want inexpensive but quality and well-designed home furnishings [statement of need], IKEA [product name/service] is a large furniture shop that is good quality but low on price selling mostly flatpack furniture [product description] that allows you to have the home that you want on the budget that you can afford [statement of benefit].
How to auto-facilitate post-it sharing:
Pick on someone by name
Get participants to nominate someone after they’ve read their post-it
How to use blind voting on Miro:
- Press the thumbs-up button at the bottom of the screen
- Change the name of the vote to something relevant e.g. Value Proposition
- Set a time limit for voting e.g. 10 minutes or less
- Allocate the number of votes per person to 4, there should be 1 vote for each segment of the value proposition (not including the product name/service) statement e.g. 1 vote for the target customer, 1 vote for the statement of need and so on
- To make things clear, circle the voting groups on Miro
- In the ‘Vote For’ section, un-tick the check boxes so that ‘sticky notes’ is the only option selected
- Click ‘Vote Now’
- Once your team has finished voting, click ‘end voting for all’
Tips on using Miro for blind voting:
- Participants will need to click ‘begin vote’ before starting.
- Be sure to have all of the relevant post-it notes on the main body of the page otherwise Miro will exclude these post-its from the voting.
Questions & Answers
Q: What are your thoughts on playing background music during your workshops?
A: Playing music during workshops is absolutely fine. To play music with good sound quality, you will need to change your advanced settings on Zoom, then if you play music from Spotify, it should play in good quality for your participants.
A: Playing music during workshops is absolutely fine. To play music with good sound quality, you will need to change your advanced settings on Zoom, then if you play music from Spotify, it should play in good quality for your participants.
Playing music is a nice addition to workshops to make the atmosphere more relaxed. Although, be sure to ask everyone if it is ok to play music during the session as some people can’t think well with background noise. You should also think about the type of music that you play.
Q: When is it best to use the value proposition tactic?
A: When you are developing a product, it helps not only for your outward marketing efforts, but also your inward stakeholder buy-in and team cohesion. A value proposition makes it clear why anyone should care about what you are making. From a customer point of view, it helps answer "What's in it for me?". From a team point of view, it helps answer "What's in it for our customers?".
A: When you are developing a product, it helps not only for your outward marketing efforts, but also your inward stakeholder buy-in and team cohesion. A value proposition makes it clear why anyone should care about what you are making. From a customer point of view, it helps answer "What's in it for me?". From a team point of view, it helps answer "What's in it for our customers?".
Q: How does it fit into a single project if this is about a product?
A: Whatever the context of the project, there should be some explicit value the project is delivering. If you can't communicate this clearly, then it'll be hard to persuade or convince people the project should happen in the first place.
A: Whatever the context of the project, there should be some explicit value the project is delivering. If you can't communicate this clearly, then it'll be hard to persuade or convince people the project should happen in the first place.
Q: Can it be too reductive as an exercise? E.g. it favours generalisation over detail and can end up with a HiPPo veto.
A: A value proposition's purpose is to get really specific about the value the product/project delivers. The act of reducing it down to a single statement cuts out the noise. "A thousand songs in your pocket" is far more effective than "a product that allows you to store MP3 files on a portable device so they can be listened to anyway, exceeding the memory size of a compact-disc."
A: A value proposition's purpose is to get really specific about the value the product/project delivers. The act of reducing it down to a single statement cuts out the noise. "A thousand songs in your pocket" is far more effective than "a product that allows you to store MP3 files on a portable device so they can be listened to anyway, exceeding the memory size of a compact-disc."
Q: How would you use this alongside prototype personas?
A: Prototype Personas can help you flesh out the WHO, so when you refer to a particular type of customer or user, you have a shared understanding of their behaviour, needs and motivations. It's hard to think about the value you are creating without first understanding who you are creating it for.
A: Prototype Personas can help you flesh out the WHO, so when you refer to a particular type of customer or user, you have a shared understanding of their behaviour, needs and motivations. It's hard to think about the value you are creating without first understanding who you are creating it for.
Is it better to have 1 value proposition or different ones for different user groups?
A: It depends. Whatever feels right. It's likely that a complex, multifaceted product may have different value for different personas. McDonalds milkshakes value proposition to commuters is a filling, tasty, quick cheap snack that fits in their car's cupholder so they don't have to worry about breakfast. To someone else, it's a one-off treat / indulgence as a reward for eating well the rest of the time. Your potential target market size will probably determine who you focus on, when it comes to marketing efforts.
A: It depends. Whatever feels right. It's likely that a complex, multifaceted product may have different value for different personas. McDonalds milkshakes value proposition to commuters is a filling, tasty, quick cheap snack that fits in their car's cupholder so they don't have to worry about breakfast. To someone else, it's a one-off treat / indulgence as a reward for eating well the rest of the time. Your potential target market size will probably determine who you focus on, when it comes to marketing efforts.
Q: Can you use the same tactic on a feature?
A: You can, you can just change the ‘product/service name’ to ‘feature name’. At a development level, a value proposition ensures everything being worked on has value for your users - and isn't a "because we can" feature that is shipping because a highly paid person likes it.
A: You can, you can just change the ‘product/service name’ to ‘feature name’. At a development level, a value proposition ensures everything being worked on has value for your users - and isn't a "because we can" feature that is shipping because a highly paid person likes it.
One of the few newsletters I look forward to.
- Dave Cunningham, Head of DesignOps @ NHS
