Browsing by Author "Piuhola, Olli"

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  • Discovering Hidden User Needs of Globally Used Services in a Small Team Context
    (2021-05-17) Piuhola, Olli
     Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis
    New products and services often fail to meet business objectives. Primary reason for such product failures is that they do not address user needs that would differentiate the product from the competition and lead to user satisfaction. However, these needs are typically hidden needs, which means that users are unable to recognize or articulate them. The aim of this thesis was to investigate methods for eliciting hidden needs are suitable for small teams developing software for a global user base. A literature review was conducted to identify available methods for eliciting hidden needs. To assess their suitability in the context of small teams developing globally used services, an empirical study at a Finnish case company was conducted as an insider action research. The empirical study involved the application of two hidden-need elicitation methods which were the problem detection analysis and the lead-user method. The results showed that due to their clear structure and the ability to use pre-existing data, both problem detection analysis and the lead-user method can be applied with feasible amount of work and low monetary costs. Both methods could also be conducted fully remotely to elicit the needs of users around the world, with only minor challenges stemming from the use of incentives. Furthermore, the lead-user method was found to elicit novel needs with deep contextual information. However, the problem detection analysis was found to generate data that is less suitable for hidden-need elicitation due to its ambiguity. We conclude that the lead-user method provides more useful information about hidden user needs than the problem detection analysis. In addition, both the lead-user method and problem detection analysis can be applied remotely and with low resource requirements, supporting their suitability to the context of small teams developing products for global user base.
  • Teknisen velan priorisointi ohjelmistotuotannossa
    (2017-12-21) Piuhola, Olli
     Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Bachelor's thesis