Insight, that great unknown for many

Surely more than once you have heard the word insight in your field of work, since it has become a buzzword in everything related to user experience, product design and marketing strategies.

Insights are defined as the aspects of behavior and internal motivations of consumers, users or customers, which are usually not obvious, so you must find them by crossing information and analysis. That is, an in-depth investigation is required to detect them.

Despite having such a clear definition, there is still some confusion about what an insight is and, above all, what it is for. Just as the other parts of the process are easily understood, the concept of insight creates difficulties because it is not such an intuitive term. If we add to that that in Spanish there is no word that defines it literally, the term becomes complicated.

Insight comes from English and means understanding, perception or knowledge. In fact, it is a word that has multiple connotations that vary depending on the field of study. For example, psychology differentiates between three types of Insights: The intellectual insight, the Emotional insight and structural insight. But we are going to focus on the business world, more specifically in marketing strategies, where the meaning of consumer perception is attributed; an opinion, a behavior or an expectation. And here, what are the types of insights we find?

• Emotional insights : consumers connect with the product through their emotions.
• Symbolic insights : refers to all those truths of products and brands that are not obvious.
• Cultural insights: those that refer to the social environment of the consumer, such as their routines, fashions, trends, beliefs …

I said earlier that insights are not usually obvious. They are difficult to obtain and are the key to developing products and services that solve real needs and create differential experiences for our users. But we better go step by step… An insight is not the solution, but the starting point that leads us to find a real solution, since it will lead us to understand the whys behind the apparent needs. A well-formulated insight should help our client quickly and directly understand:

• The context: why it’s interesting.
• The implications: identifying patterns of behavior and predicting trends.
• How to apply this information to stakeholder objectives: what opportunities exist.

After a thorough investigation, the insights detected will allow us to know the need or key problem on which to build the project and thus look for those solutions different from the usual ones. Being an element of in-depth analysis, the innovation that is carried out is much more disruptive than what we would achieve if we based ourselves on the apparent needs of users.

For example, why does a beekeeper wear such a bulky suit? Surely you are thinking that it is so that the bees do not sting … But in reality, the real reason is because he wants to catch the honey. Protecting yourself from bites is an apparent necessity, while honey is the real insight.

And after all this stuff you may wonder, but where do the insights come from? Because we are talking about research, but an investigation can be very broad. How do you get insights? Well, of something we call data and findings.

Finding is not an insight as insight is not data.

Once we have made our research plan and we have obtained the data, it is very important, first of all, to organize the information by related blocks and then synthesize it to make it more manageable. For example, a tool that could be used for data analysis are mind maps. Once we have the data organized, the next step would be to find the problem and start looking for the connection between the different blocks of information, to locate the points in common. From here it only remains to ask the reason for these points and, thanks to our intuition, we will detect the correct insight .

We already know that insights come from research or data analysis. So it is clear that an insight is not a data. A data is a concrete fact that we can obtain in various ways and corresponds to the “what” of user behavior. For example: 80% of the users who enter my website do so from mobile and only 10% from desktop. This would not be correct to call insight.

What must a data comply with for it to become an insight?

• Must provide useful knowledge applicable to the business
• Should help make decisions
• Must drive an action or strategy
• It must become the key to solving a problem, avoiding it or improving some aspect of the business

Nor can we call insight to trends in the market, declarations of desire of users or preferences they have. Certainly, the literal phrases of the users in interviews are not insights, but in the same way, you can get a lot during these, the key: empathize with the user.

In conclusion, remember that data shows us what users do, while insight solves why they do it, that is, the cause or reason that bases the data. A finding will never lead us to why.

How to move from a finging or data to an insight

If there is something that characterizes us people who dedicate ourselves to research, it is the ability to question and look for the origin of everything. Yes, we are one of those who like to spin everything … So when we extract a finding or a data we always go further to get to the why, we can not stay only with that.

For this, it is very important to choose the most appropriate technique or methodology for the product we are going to analyze and its context (user test, interviews, observation …), so we make sure that we ask the necessary and timely questions.

As I said before, it is also very important to get to the cause or root of the problem and for this there are also different techniques that can serve us. I bring you a very easy one, which is to ask “why” iteratively to explore the cause and effect of the problem. For example:

• I’d rather shop with my mobile than with my computer – why?
• Because I buy when I usually go on the subway – why?
• Because it’s the only time of day I have to buy – why?
• Because I work many hours a day and have no other free time – why?
• Because the only free time I can spend shopping is when I ride the subway – here’s our Insight!

How do we realize that we have detected a good insight?

• It won’t be obvious. Insights appear when we go beyond what we know.
• It will be relevant. In order to create impact for our users and for the business.
• It will be actionable. It will allow us to have ideas and carry out concrete actions for the product.

Insight
, or how to discover the truth.

I hope you get here with a slightly clearer idea about what an insight is and, above all, what it is for in marketing strategies.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that an insight is not a data, nor a finding nor a finding. An insight is never in the visible information, it is generated as a result of in-depth research and the knowledge of our users.

It is true that it is very easy to confuse the conclusions of an investigation with insights, since the data we get sometimes look quite similar, but they are not the same. Insights are presented as truths that we did not know, unexpected findings that thanks to them makes us understand another perception of reality.

Data helps us make decisions, while insights help us break new ground.

All insights are findings, but not all findings are insights.

To detect and analyze an insight, apart from in-depth research, the following steps must be followed:

• Observation: you have to know how to see what the consumer would like, the feeling, need or desire of the consumer.
• Motivation: we focus on the why or the justification of the consumer.
• Brake: the famous “but” that leads the consumer to frustration.
• Brand response: The product, service, or brand that satisfies the initial need.

To finish, I leave you a phrase from Joanna Ngai who is a UX designer at Google, so you do not forget the importance of research in design projects:

“If you want to make better design decisions, start with user research”.

(“If you want to make better design decisions, start with user research.”)