Guidelines for Finding Lead User Like Behavior for Latent Need Discovery

DS 85-2: Proceedings of NordDesign 2016, Volume 2, Trondheim, Norway, 10th - 12th August 2016

Year: 2016
Editor: Boks, Casper; Sigurjonsson, Johannes; Steinert, Martin; Vis, Carlijn; Wulvik, Andreas
Author: Hölttä-Otto, Katja; Raviselvam, Sujithra
Series: NordDESIGN
Institution: 1: Aalto University, Finland; 2: Singapore University of Technology
Section: Design Thinking
Page(s): 339-348
ISBN: 978-1-904670-80-3

Abstract

Lead users, users that have a need before the general population and that may even have invented a way to solve the need or problem have been proven excellent sources for innovation. However, traditionally these lead users are the top of their field experts or extreme sportsmen and thus few in numbers and hard to find. In this paper we propose potentially useful dimensions for finding greater numbers of users that exhibit lead user like behavior. Three of these dimensions are experimentally tested. Results show that the tested dimensions of ability, age, and degree of development in deed help in finding people with lead user like ability to express latent needs, needs that are shared with but not originally found in regular users.

Keywords: Innovation, User centered, Lead User, Need Finding

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