A comprehensive guide on how to identify customers for research, ask right questions, and communicate insightsPhoto by Daria Nepriakhina onUnsplashMy favorite part of being a Product Manager is talking tousers.After becoming a product manager, I took to user research as a fish takes towater.Building a product used by people across geographies and industries helped me connect with people from diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their career. Such conversations are quite enlightening and helped me understand the impact of myproduct.In this article I want to discuss everything I learnt about user researchdifferent types of user research, identifying users to talk to, questions to ask them, communicating insights, quick ways to do usability testing and gathering insights from data already available toyou.Lets divein.Two types of userresearchDepending on the purpose, user research could be either of the following:Generative user researchThe purpose is to understand your users betterwhat they do, what are their goals, what are their expectations & pain points (in the context of the product you are building).Evaluative user researchIt helps you evaluate the usability of a particular feature or a workflow (eg. onboarding, checkout etc). It could be done either with a design prototype or with the live version of the product. It helps you understand the following about the product/featurehow easy it is to use, what do users like/dislike, what are the information & designgaps.As a Product manager, you will do both generative and evaluative research.Identifying users to talktoLot of people are not able to find relevant users who will be interested in connecting and sharing insights. A lot of time seems to be wasted in simply finding the users to talkto.My advice here would beto:Get started earlyIt takes time for people to respond to your outreach. Meetings are usually set 13 weeks after the first response.Build a relationship with customers Regularly send them updates, proactively address bugs reported by them and be responsive to their outreach. This will make it easier to setup feedback calls with them. (We have setup slack connect to message our customers from within slackitself)Take help of internal teams to setup calls with customersForexample:Take the support teams help in setting up calls with customers who are asking queries or raising complaints via the support channels.Take help of the account managers to reach out to customers mapped to them. (You can also join the monthly/quarterly touch base calls conducted by account managers)Take help of sales team to talk to prospects who are actively considering airmeet and have featurerequestsTake help of user education and onboarding team to reach out to customers who have just been onboarded onto theproduct.Using the above, you can hopefully avoid the problem of not finding users to talkto.As product managers, you should also have access to your product analytics and CRM tool so that you can quickly filter out customers based on segment, use case, company size, feature usage etc. Doing this reduces dependence on others for finding the target customers to reach out to, thereby making the entire interview scheduling processfaster.Reaching out on email and scheduling timeIn case you are doing a direct outreach via email, share context and the questions you may have. Include a meeting scheduler link as well so that users can book a meeting as per their convenience.If I am reaching out for feedback on a particular feature, I tend to include 2-3 questions in the email itself. The user is free to respond to them via email or book a meeting withme.I ask questions directly in email when seeking feedback on afeatureAsking the right QuestionsAsking the right questions is everything. It is the single most important factor in determining the richness of the insights youcapture.Some useful tips torememberBreak the ice with a warm introductionKeep your questions short, simple andpreciseAvoid Yes/No questions and ask open ended questionsListen way more than youspeakUnderstand their past experienceAsk them to describe the last time they used the product. What was their experience like?When they make feature requests, delve deeper. Understand the underlying userneed.If you are trying to understand the feedback with the complete productbreak down the questions into various stages of the user journey. (For eg. as a PM at a virtual events platform, I break down the questions into pre-event experience, live event experience and post-event experience)If you are seeking feedback on a particular feature, you can focus on the followingwhat problem does it solve for you, what was your experience of using it, what would you like to improve onthis?Have the questions ready before the user interview beginsOtherwise, you will be scratching your head during the interview process.If its an existing user, see if you can gather insights on their product usageThis way, you can ask them highly contextual questions around theirusage.To reduce rework for every interview, prepare a document with the standard questions you want to ask during the user interview.Heres a detailed guide I have previously written on conducting insightful interviewsLink toguideCapturing and Communicating InsightsRecord all user interviews you do. This way, any team member (including you) can refer back to them in thefuture.Dont worry too much about taking meeting notes. This distracts you from asking good follow up questions to the user. Every recording software automatically generates interview transcripts and summariesSo, rely on this technology fornotes.While summarizing interviews, I break it into the following parts:Introduction about the customername, industry, use case, dealvalueDetails about the customers use casegoals for using the product, frequency of usageetc.Customers pain points and expectations What activities is the customer struggling with, what features are missingetc.Key themesyou also want to highlight the key theme emerging from your interview. These would help identify product areas or key tasks that users are struggling with. The themes which reoccur across multiple interviews can then be considered for prioritization during roadmap planning.Getting screenshots (via screenshare) and customer quotes is also useful for explaining the customer problems to design and engineering.Communicating insights is as important as conducting interviews to capture insights.Useful tips to remember while communicating insights:Dont wait too long to share the insightsShare these as soon as the interview isdone.Share them as widely as possibleWe have a #product-feedback channel (on slack) where most of the company employees are present. I share all the interview summaries there.Make the insights memorable by sharing customer quotes, screenshots and crisp summaries. (Make these quotes and screenshots part of yourPRDs)Use product/design team meetings to discuss these insights and plan action on themWhen everyone reflects on the insights, they are much more likely to act onthem.Using Evaluative Research for Usability TestingAs mentioned above, PMs need to do evaluative research as well. This is useful for testing out the usability of your upcoming features or existing workflows.Usability testing is a way to find out gaps in Information architecture, UX copy or the visual design in an upcoming feature or the existingproduct.The best practice here is to have a clickable design prototype. (Figma makes it very easy to create clickable design prototypes)Heres the process and some tips to do thiswell:At the start, the user is given a set of tasks to performFor eg. in an e-commerce product, task could be how you search for aproduct.Give no more than 34 tasksOtherwise it might become too overwhelming for theuser.While performing the task, the user is expected to talk out aloud about what they see, what they understand and what do they expect to happen when they click a particular button. (Talking out aloud is very important as you want to know what the user is thinking)Towards the end, you could also ask the userHow would you describe the feature to a co-worker? (This can aid the product marketing efforts)Researching with internal teams instead ofusersSometimes, you are running short of time. And cant seem to find relevant users to test yourfeature.In such cases, take the support of your customer success and salesteams.Share the design with them and ask for their feedback This can help you identify gaps and usability issues. While its not the perfect method for testing, something is better thannothing.Using sales conversations for userresearchYou cant possibly talk to every customer and prospect thats outthere.A lot of insights can be gleaned from simply listening in to conversations that your customers/prospects have with your sales and account management team.Heres the process IfollowPeriodically log into Gong (It is the platform we use for recording all our customer interactions).I go over the summaries of all the conversations which seem relevant. (Gong automatically summarizes conversations and highlights key points fromthat)There are two kinds of interactions which arerelevantProspect interactions Use these to understand why prospects are looking to buy your product, what are their expectations and what are the gaps in the existing solution?Customer interactionsUse these to understand how regularly are customers using the product, what are their pain points and what more do they expect from theproduct?Reading these summaries on a regular basis arms you with wealth of insights. These can be used for informing prioritization and strategy decisions.Thats all on how I drive user research to understand what to build and evaluate what we are building!Understanding your users deeply and knowing what they want is a superpower indeed.User research helps you consistently build the right things and solve the right user problems.So, If you want to start getting things right, its time to get talking and researching.Additional Readinghttps://www.userinterviews.com/blog/usability-testing-best-practices?https://www.nngroup.com/articles/thematic-analysis/https://dovetail.com/blog/the-qualitative-research-process-end-to-end/How to do user research effectively as a busy product manager was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If youre looking for the Wordle answer for August 14, 2024 read on. Well share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Todays puzzle is easier; I got it in three. Beware, there are spoilers below for August 14, Wordle #1,152! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to todays Wordle game.How to play WordleWordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if theyre correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isnt in the days secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)Ready for the hints? Lets go!Does todays Wordle have any unusual letters?Well define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it Edwin Shirdloo, like a name, and pretend hes a friend of yours.)They're all common letters from our mnemonic today. Can you give me a hint for todays Wordle?This is found alongside a lake or river. Does todays Wordle have any double or repeated letters?There are no repeated letters today.How many vowels are in todays Wordle?There are two vowels.What letter does todays Wordle start with?Todays word starts with S.What letter does todays Wordle end with?Todays word ends with E.What is the solution to todays Wordle?Ready? Todays word is SHORE.How I solved todays WordleI started with RAISE and TOUCH, which left only two words with the five letters and only one that fit: SHORE. Wordle 1,152 3/6Yesterdays Wordle answerYesterdays Wordle was medium difficult. The hint was sounds like a horse and the answer contained four common letters and one fairly common letter. The answer to yesterdays Wordle was NEIGH. A primer on Wordle basicsThe idea of Wordle is to guess the days secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, youll see an empty grid of letters. Its up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word.Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word:Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and its in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then its game over.The best starter words for WordleWhat should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, thats still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isnt a single best starting word, but the New York Timess Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:CRANETRACESLANTCRATECARTEMeanwhile, an MIT analysis found that youll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:SALETREASTTRACECRATESLATEOther good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that its better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.How to win at WordleWe have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if youre a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, dont waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldnt have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.Wordle alternativesIf you cant get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after anotherDordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the days solution. Youre required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.

Spotify can now show its users in the European Union how much its plans cost within its iOS app after their trial period ends. The company has revealed that it's opting into Apple's "entitlement" for music streaming services in an update to an old blog post. This "entitlement" was created after the European Commission slapped Apple with a 1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) fine back in March for restricting alternative music streaming apps on the App Store. The commission's decision followed an investigation that was opened when Spotify filed a complaint against the tech company, accusing it of suppressing its service in favor of iTunes and Apple Music.Apple initially rejected the update that Spotify submitted in April this year to add "basic pricing and website information" on its app in Europe. Now that Apple has approved changes, users will be able to see pricing information, as well as promotional offers, within the Spotify app for iPhones. They'll also see a note saying that they can go to the Spotify website to subscribe to any of the service's plans. However, the service chose not to provide users with an in-app link that would give them access to external payment options. As The Verge notes, it's because Apple recently tweaked its App Store rules in the EU, stating that it will still take a cut of developers' sales even if customers pay via third-party providers."Unfortunately, Spotify and all music streaming services in the EU are still not able to freely give consumers a simple opportunity to click a link to purchase in app because of the illegal and predatory taxes Apple continues to demand, despite the Commissions ruling," Spotify wrote in its post. It added that "if the European Commission properly enforces its decision, iPhone consumers could see even more wins, like lower cost payment options and better product experiences in the app."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/apple-finally-allows-spotify-to-display-pricing-in-the-eu-123010178.html?src=rss

DivineCut and DivinePrint simplify creating 3D clothing in Blender. Xane Studios' fast-evolving plugin and its new texturing extension make it possible to create animation-ready 3D clothes in Blender via a fast, intuitive workflow.https://www.cgchannel.com/2024/08/divinecut-and-divineprint-simplify-creating-3d-clothes-in-blender/

AI companies are ordering more and more SSDs, with constrained supply translating to higher purchase prices.

While Google's live demo on Tuesday had some bugs, the company showed it's closer than its rivals to bringing artificial intelligence to smartphones.

https://ow.ly/v1Xw50SXkbwHow Wt FX crafted the lead characters facial performance in Deadpool & Wolverine with Nuke and some machine learning techniques, and how they were also called upon to reanimate Wolverines corpse.

How Wt FX crafted the lead characters facial performance in Deadpool & Wolverine with Nuke and some machine learning techniques, and how they were also called upon to reanimate Wolverines corpse.When Deadpool was released in 2016, one of the ways the characters emotions were conveyed from behind the superhero mask was through visual effects augmentation of the costume itself, a task completed by Wt FX. That was also the case on Deadpool 2 (2018) and, most recently, Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). Not unexpectedly, the techniques to tackle that work have evolved over the three films.On the first film, we had a combined Maya to Nuke workflow, explains Wt FX visual effects supervisor Daniel Macarin. That involved our artists lighting and animating the mask in Maya and moving that through a standard process. Then just at the end of the first Deadpool, we started looking into a more 2D approach and keeping more of the practical that we could. We refined that in Deadpool 2 and advanced it to where we werent using any other package but Nuke.On Deadpool and Wolverine, continues Macarin, we refined that further, mixing both machine learning into the pipeline, as well as refining our relighting system and adjusting angles to make sure that we were able to rebuild and keep the resolution of the plate and the fabric and everything that we were touching no matter what direction that any character moves.Breaking down the facial animation workflowWt FX was solely responsible for this Deadpool mask work in the film. The process started with a relatively traditional matchmove of the head or anything the head and face needed to interact with. This was done in Nuke. Once we got that matchmove, the artist would work directly in Nuke to animate the mask, outlines Macarin, who notes that the facial setup in Nuke is connected to Wt FXs standard facial system of around 128 face shapes. Also, weve been making some tech refinements over the last few shows to make sure that the artist isnt having to clean up a dramatic amount. The only thing that theyre concentrating on is the performance.Plate.FinalWt FX has orchestrated its workflow to deal with any kind of plate that includes a facial performance from Reynolds or a stunt performer. Sometimes hell have the actual black leather on the mask, says Macarin. Other times he wont have any black leather and itll just be clear and it has to be replaced. Then theres the stuntie mask, which is more of a very thin fabric mesh that you can see through almost the entire time.In the platedepending on the kind of mask wornthe movement in the mask from mouth and other movement was something Wt FX directly used in its own animation, as Macarin discusses. In terms of the mouth movement, this is actually helpful to us because any movement from the mouth or the rest of the face guides us into the performance that we want to add. We want to link those up so that you understand that everything is connected.Its the same with body movement or position, adds Macarin. If the face is doing something that the body isnt doing, youre going to quickly read that something is off. You may not know exactly whats wrong, but youll see that something is wrong. The facial movement on a plate is only difficult for us when someone says, Wed like to change the line, wed like them to do something else. And then youre trying to readjust the jaw, stabilize everything, get rid of any lip movement or facial movement, bring it back to a neutral set and then animate on top of that.One of the important aspects for Wt FX in animating Deadpools facial performance is to not simply stretch the costume fabric, or make the animation cartoony. To ensure this did not happen, the visual effects studio endeavored to retain the plate as much as possible. The plates have so much detail in them, states Macarin. The on-set crew and the art department and the costume department go to such great lengths on these costumes. I think the audience really reacts to how well theyre designed, so much so that we would worry that going CG might potentially lose some of that detail. The more we keep, the better we feel about doing that.The machine learning sideArising from a suggestion by Wt FXs compositing supervisor on Deadpool 2, the visual effects studio investigated how machine learning could be used to aid in the facial animation of Deadpools mask for Deadpool & Wolverine. The idea was, relates Macarin, what if we took the audio and we process it in a way that it looks at all of the finalised keyframes of similar audio height levels and volume levels and tries to find what it thinks the facial performance should have been.The result provided an estimation of what Deadpools mask could be, given the inputted dialogue. The animator in Nuke could then use this as a starting point for the final nuanced animation. Interestingly, this machine learning audio approach proved to be extremely valuable in terms of environmental stimulus, as Macarin explains.Anytime someone shuts a car door or you hear an explosion in the background, the eye does a little tweak or a twitch. That wasnt something we wouldve normally hand- animated because its just not part of the dialogue. But when we had those machine learning paths, which had thousands of keys, you could scale down what it was doing and you got this really, really nice ambient motion to the face that gave it a much more natural feel and allowed the artist not to have to do thousands of little micro keys to try and get those really subtle movements. It helped give a little more life to the character than just straight facial performance.The tricky task of Wolverines maskDuring the film, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) also dons his iconic yellow mask, and here Wt FX was called upon to also add facial expressions. The process had different challenges to Deadpools mask. In fact, initially, no augmentation on Wolverines mask was going to occur, since the mask featured stiff metal pieces and parts of Jackmans face were visible.Plate.Final.However, Macarin and the team at Wt FX felt that some movement in the mask would help communicate Jackmans trademark Wolverine performance. Having grown up with the comics and even cartoons like X-Men 97 and its earlier counterpart, Wolverine has certain facial expressions that I really felt that we could bring out. Also, when you look at Hugh when he plays Wolverine, he often has a very, very particular scrunch in his inner brow that is there most of the time, and you can really tell the emotion that hes feeling at the moment when he does that. When you didnt have that, we were concerned you were losing something. So, we did a test.Wt FX sent the test to production. The decided outcome was that the metal sections of Wolverines mask would not be moved, or only in very small ways. The yellow fabric between the metal parts, and the eyes, could be animated. Now, being that you are taking a plate within this mask and if you scrunch it down, theres nowhere to grab, advises Macarin. So, we had to rebuild the outside sections of the eye anytime his eye got smaller. Thats a challenge we didnt have with Deadpool.In terms of how far to take the eyes, we showed production tests where we went all the way to comic book eyes. They looked at it and they said, It looks really cool as a still frame, but if you watch it in motion, it comes across as a cartoon character. So, we slowly ramped it down and found a percentage of how much comic book we could put in that still brought the character to where we wanted it to be.Reanimating Wolverines corpseA slightly stranger animation task was also given to Wt FX for the films opening titles sequence, which features Deadpool digging up a variant of Wolverine from his grave. Here the studio needed to digitally augmented Wolverines corpse, something Deadpool talks to and even uses to fight a number of adversaries with.Plate.Final.The original idea was to have a zombified body, but it was going to bring up too many questions, like, would he heal? details Macarin. So for on set, they built an adamantium skeleton with almost no skin anywhere at all, and thought that was the easiest solution for the audience to not ask too many questions.During editorial, it was deemed funnier to give more life to Wolverines corpse. Wt FXs art department developed concepts that considered adding more remaining skin to the skeleton and versions with a mummified eyeball. They sold the idea to us with a very specific moment, recalls Macarin. They said, For Hughs credit, were going to rip the skin oI of his face and then you see Hugh Jackman underneath. The shots all slow-mo so theres all this stuff going as the skins tearing.The decision to add more skin and pieces to the corpse meant that Wt FX had to matchmove the skeleton prop that had been used on set, and then replace it. Macarin was confident the extra CG effects elements added the desired extra humor to the sequence. After the first shot they saw the CG additions in, which was Ryan playing with Hughs chin and talking to him, they said, We love it. This is going to work. Everyone was really happy.Final.The post Behind the mask: how intricate facial animation was added onto Ryan Reynolds Deadpool appeared first on befores & afters.

Upcoming customer webinar: On Wednesday, August 21, 2024 at 12:00 pm ET / 9:00 am PT, were hosting a creator-led session focusing on transitioning from Unitys Built-in Render Pipeline to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP).Register now: https://unity3d.info/4fdOpID#GameDev #MadeWithUnity

The business world is inundated with newfangled AI tools and technology, but younger business ownersGen-Z and millennials, in particularare much more interested in using them than Gen Xers and baby boomers.Thats one of the main takeaways from a new survey of small businesses by American Express, which was conducted by Morning Consult and polled more than 1,100 small business financial decision-makers. It found a massive generational rift when it comes to adopting AI for small business use. Specifically, almost 60% of millennial and Gen Z respondents said that their businesses were already utilizing AI to some degree, compared to only 34% of Gen X and baby boomers respondents.The survey also shines a light on how different generations of business leaders are using AI. Among younger respondents, the most common uses were for task automation and cash-flow analytics, whereas older respondents main use was for chatbots, virtual assistance, fraud protection, and workforce management. Overall, the most common use of AI among all respondents was for analyzing customer data, deploying chatbots or virtual assistants, and content creation.Even AI skeptics see some valueIn all, the survey provides a bit more insight into how AI is being used by small businesses in a broad sense, and how that use breaks down by generational lines.While many older Americans are approaching artificial intelligence with a healthy amount of skepticism, theyre also finding AI tools beneficial in many cases; there are even classes that seniors can take to get up to speed on all things AI-related. But younger people are taking a slow approach, too, in many cases. One report released in June found that only 4% of Gen Zers utilize AI tools on a regular basis.Consumers often dont see the upsides, either. A recent study from Washington State University found that some consumers will actually eschew products that mention AI in their descriptionsinstead opting for the normal dumb versions if given a choice.Still, the new Amex survey does offer an interesting glimpse into the generational divide thats occurring when it comes to AI use among small businesses. Whether that leads to a division in profitability for those differing business approaches, at this point, is anyones guess.