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如何化解用户对创新科技的恐惧?

如何化解用户对创新科技的恐惧?

Leslie Trigg 2022-05-23
如果你身处一个用户并未因为标新立异而受益的行业,毫无疑问的是,将有数不清的恐惧等着你去克服。

莱斯利·特里格(左)与一名使用Tablo透析仪器的病患合影。图片来源:COURTESY OF OUTSET MEDICAL

当我在十年前创建 Outset Medical公司、发明一种全新的透析技术时,我们对即将踏入的科技沙漠格局并没有充分的了解。在医疗行业摸爬滚打了25年后,我看到心血管这类领域一直在不断地创新。然而,说到透析这个由少数巨头统治的行业,设备毫无进步,而且现状停滞不前。在接下来的10年中,我们体会到了在一个鲜有创新的行业里进行创新是何种滋味,也因此而吸取了大量的教训。

肾衰竭,又称晚期肾病,通常使用血液透析来进行管理,这种疗法旨在从血液中清除代谢废物和体内过多的水分。多年来,它对营利性门诊诊所来说一直都是一个十分麻烦的疗法,这种令人不安的透析仪器不仅难以使用,而且需要大量的设施。

需要透析治疗的晚期肾病病患一周至少要做三次透析,每次3至4个小时,这种只能在设施内部开展的治疗方案可能会限制病患的独立性、工作能力和生活质量。当前,约60万美国人依靠这种治疗来续命,透析方面的支出每年耗费医疗系统约740亿美元。有鉴于肾病诱因的日渐盛行,例如高血压、糖尿病和肥胖,上述数字也是水涨船高。决策者和医疗系统正在寻求降低这一疗法的高昂成本。最近,包括新冠疫情在内的多个因素、不断变化的病患喜好,已经开始推动治疗方案向居家透析转变,而这正是我们希望服务的市场。

即使存在这些宏观层面的利好因素,我们深知,在一个用户行为已经僵化,不愿意接受或适应变化的领域中,引入创新并非易事。因此,我们采用了一种完全有别于老牌企业的方式来应对这个问题,同时专注于很多人可能忽视的一个理念:当你在审视产品设计时,落脚点通常是了解用户的需求。然而,当在某个鲜有变化的领域里进行创新时,我倾向于更多地关注用户的恐惧。

如果你身处一个用户并未因为标新立异而受益的行业,毫无疑问的是,将有数不清的恐惧在前面等着你去克服。如何将恐惧转化为信任,不妨了解一下以下窍门。

观察VS对话

市场调研的传统方式是询问用户大量的问题,比如他们喜欢或不喜欢产品的哪些具体功能及其原因。然而,这一策略可能并不会给你真实的答案,或者让你获得你想要知道的关键内容。为什么?因为你并不一定知道如何设置最为贴切的问题。用户的反馈可能会发生偏差,因为大多数人从本质上都是乐于助人的,并不愿意去冒犯他人,或者大谈特谈自认为在产品设计中非常重要的内容。他们希望自己的答案听起来富有逻辑性和理性。

然而,定价和购买心理意味着大多数人在制定购买决策时没有逻辑性和理性可言。情绪以及其他人的意见会产生重要影响。参与传统市场调研的消费者可能并不愿意承认,或者自己并没有意识到,其自我形象或自我愿望在影响决策方面发挥的作用可能比任何其他变量因素都要大。换句话说,你听到的通常并不是人们的真实想法。

作为对比,你看到的通常最为接近生活。与其询问问题,不如花时间去观察人们的行为。观看,倾听,然后得出结论。此举将让你了解事物更深层次的全貌。人们的所作所为要比他们的话语真实的多。

我在Outset的Tablo Hemodialysis系统(Tablo Hemodialysis System)开发早期便发现了观察的重要性,当时我到访了我们核心用户群的成员,透析病患,这些人代表了广泛的多元化年龄组。我会在他们的家中待一段时间,并观察他们使用现有的家庭透析仪器(当前市场上仅有两种经美国食品与药物管理局批准的设备)。我见证了导致恐惧的因素,以及他们在治疗过程中遇到的问题。观察其治疗过程以及他们自己琢磨出来的应对方法,让我发现了在产品设计中需要解决的重要痛点。通过观察所有的治疗步骤,我发现了最令病患感到恐惧和害怕的环节,且无需询问任何问题。

摒弃创新者的傲慢态度

为了提升创造性,尤其是在一个缺乏创新的行业,人们可能会走极端,并做出没有必要的改变。成为颠覆者会滋生傲慢情绪,人们很容易被“必须摒弃一切”的理念冲昏头脑,也就是认为当前的技术一无是处。这里的目的是找到一种平衡,也就是既要提供关键的功能,又要周到地对需要改善的领域进行创新,这样,你就不会在不经意间去解决那些并不存在的问题,并为你的用户带来恐惧。

我们的一个用户群让我们意识到了这个问题。肾病学家会向病人建议透析治疗方案。我们发现,当前的透析仪器要求医生使用复杂、非传统的数学来计算病患的透析频率,它反过来会打消医生使用这一系统的积极性。我们意识到,现有机器围绕一个医生通常并不存在的问题进行了创新。因此,新的解决方案在不经意间成为了病患恐惧其设备的一个诱因。这些教训告诉我们在开发自身系统时哪些事情不该做。

我们从第三个关键用户组(那些在医院或诊所环境中治疗病患的护士和透析技师)的视角出发,在Tablo的设计中吸取了这个教训。早些时候,我们以为他们希望将血液导管、泵和其他组件井井有条地收纳到设计在床边系统的一个舱门里面。我们的想法是,我们不希望病患在治疗期间因为看到自己的血液在类似于传统透析仪器中过滤而感到害怕。然而通过观察以及与这些提供商进行讨论,我们发现了一个完全不同的恐惧:如果系统中的这个舱门在治疗中处于上锁状态,那么他们就无法轻而易举地观测血流,并解决任何可能出现的问题。我们通过引入带有铰链的舱门解决了这一顾虑,并避免在不经意间引发恐慌,因为这个舱门可以在治疗期间处于打开或闭合状态。

利用自身的恐惧

在设计Tablo时最令我们感到担心的是其复杂性。我们是否能够为人们提供足够的简便性,以便其可以在家中自信地完成一系列治疗?我们解决这个问题的一个办法就是对我们的设备大小做文章。很多现有的透析系统十分庞大,而且设备尺寸对于坐在旁边椅子上准备接受治疗的病患来说十分吓人。这一点会给病患留下被设备掌控的感觉。由于我们的设备在尺寸上更小(88.9厘米高),用户下意识地感到自己能够掌控这个机器。这个教训告诉我们,设计需要从心理上与用户产生共鸣,解决其痛点、希望和恐惧,并给予其信心。

我建议所有企业要尽可能地接近自己的用户,要有同理心,并积极地倾听。解决对你产品设计的恐惧是一个实时、不断变化的过程,而且对于保持你产品的相关性以及在市场竞争中的引领地位至关重要。只有为创新运动创造合适的环境,也就是在科技沙漠中打造一片绿洲,我们才能引发颠覆性的转变。(财富中文网)

莱斯利·特里格(Leslie Trigg)是Outset Medical公司的首席执行官兼董事长。

译者:冯丰

审校:夏林

当我在十年前创建 Outset Medical公司、发明一种全新的透析技术时,我们对即将踏入的科技沙漠格局并没有充分的了解。在医疗行业摸爬滚打了25年后,我看到心血管这类领域一直在不断地创新。然而,说到透析这个由少数巨头统治的行业,设备毫无进步,而且现状停滞不前。在接下来的10年中,我们体会到了在一个鲜有创新的行业里进行创新是何种滋味,也因此而吸取了大量的教训。

肾衰竭,又称晚期肾病,通常使用血液透析来进行管理,这种疗法旨在从血液中清除代谢废物和体内过多的水分。多年来,它对营利性门诊诊所来说一直都是一个十分麻烦的疗法,这种令人不安的透析仪器不仅难以使用,而且需要大量的设施。

需要透析治疗的晚期肾病病患一周至少要做三次透析,每次3至4个小时,这种只能在设施内部开展的治疗方案可能会限制病患的独立性、工作能力和生活质量。当前,约60万美国人依靠这种治疗来续命,透析方面的支出每年耗费医疗系统约740亿美元。有鉴于肾病诱因的日渐盛行,例如高血压、糖尿病和肥胖,上述数字也是水涨船高。决策者和医疗系统正在寻求降低这一疗法的高昂成本。最近,包括新冠疫情在内的多个因素、不断变化的病患喜好,已经开始推动治疗方案向居家透析转变,而这正是我们希望服务的市场。

即使存在这些宏观层面的利好因素,我们深知,在一个用户行为已经僵化,不愿意接受或适应变化的领域中,引入创新并非易事。因此,我们采用了一种完全有别于老牌企业的方式来应对这个问题,同时专注于很多人可能忽视的一个理念:当你在审视产品设计时,落脚点通常是了解用户的需求。然而,当在某个鲜有变化的领域里进行创新时,我倾向于更多地关注用户的恐惧。

如果你身处一个用户并未因为标新立异而受益的行业,毫无疑问的是,将有数不清的恐惧在前面等着你去克服。如何将恐惧转化为信任,不妨了解一下以下窍门。

观察VS对话

市场调研的传统方式是询问用户大量的问题,比如他们喜欢或不喜欢产品的哪些具体功能及其原因。然而,这一策略可能并不会给你真实的答案,或者让你获得你想要知道的关键内容。为什么?因为你并不一定知道如何设置最为贴切的问题。用户的反馈可能会发生偏差,因为大多数人从本质上都是乐于助人的,并不愿意去冒犯他人,或者大谈特谈自认为在产品设计中非常重要的内容。他们希望自己的答案听起来富有逻辑性和理性。

然而,定价和购买心理意味着大多数人在制定购买决策时没有逻辑性和理性可言。情绪以及其他人的意见会产生重要影响。参与传统市场调研的消费者可能并不愿意承认,或者自己并没有意识到,其自我形象或自我愿望在影响决策方面发挥的作用可能比任何其他变量因素都要大。换句话说,你听到的通常并不是人们的真实想法。

作为对比,你看到的通常最为接近生活。与其询问问题,不如花时间去观察人们的行为。观看,倾听,然后得出结论。此举将让你了解事物更深层次的全貌。人们的所作所为要比他们的话语真实的多。

我在Outset的Tablo Hemodialysis系统(Tablo Hemodialysis System)开发早期便发现了观察的重要性,当时我到访了我们核心用户群的成员,透析病患,这些人代表了广泛的多元化年龄组。我会在他们的家中待一段时间,并观察他们使用现有的家庭透析仪器(当前市场上仅有两种经美国食品与药物管理局批准的设备)。我见证了导致恐惧的因素,以及他们在治疗过程中遇到的问题。观察其治疗过程以及他们自己琢磨出来的应对方法,让我发现了在产品设计中需要解决的重要痛点。通过观察所有的治疗步骤,我发现了最令病患感到恐惧和害怕的环节,且无需询问任何问题。

摒弃创新者的傲慢态度

为了提升创造性,尤其是在一个缺乏创新的行业,人们可能会走极端,并做出没有必要的改变。成为颠覆者会滋生傲慢情绪,人们很容易被“必须摒弃一切”的理念冲昏头脑,也就是认为当前的技术一无是处。这里的目的是找到一种平衡,也就是既要提供关键的功能,又要周到地对需要改善的领域进行创新,这样,你就不会在不经意间去解决那些并不存在的问题,并为你的用户带来恐惧。

我们的一个用户群让我们意识到了这个问题。肾病学家会向病人建议透析治疗方案。我们发现,当前的透析仪器要求医生使用复杂、非传统的数学来计算病患的透析频率,它反过来会打消医生使用这一系统的积极性。我们意识到,现有机器围绕一个医生通常并不存在的问题进行了创新。因此,新的解决方案在不经意间成为了病患恐惧其设备的一个诱因。这些教训告诉我们在开发自身系统时哪些事情不该做。

我们从第三个关键用户组(那些在医院或诊所环境中治疗病患的护士和透析技师)的视角出发,在Tablo的设计中吸取了这个教训。早些时候,我们以为他们希望将血液导管、泵和其他组件井井有条地收纳到设计在床边系统的一个舱门里面。我们的想法是,我们不希望病患在治疗期间因为看到自己的血液在类似于传统透析仪器中过滤而感到害怕。然而通过观察以及与这些提供商进行讨论,我们发现了一个完全不同的恐惧:如果系统中的这个舱门在治疗中处于上锁状态,那么他们就无法轻而易举地观测血流,并解决任何可能出现的问题。我们通过引入带有铰链的舱门解决了这一顾虑,并避免在不经意间引发恐慌,因为这个舱门可以在治疗期间处于打开或闭合状态。

利用自身的恐惧

在设计Tablo时最令我们感到担心的是其复杂性。我们是否能够为人们提供足够的简便性,以便其可以在家中自信地完成一系列治疗?我们解决这个问题的一个办法就是对我们的设备大小做文章。很多现有的透析系统十分庞大,而且设备尺寸对于坐在旁边椅子上准备接受治疗的病患来说十分吓人。这一点会给病患留下被设备掌控的感觉。由于我们的设备在尺寸上更小(88.9厘米高),用户下意识地感到自己能够掌控这个机器。这个教训告诉我们,设计需要从心理上与用户产生共鸣,解决其痛点、希望和恐惧,并给予其信心。

我建议所有企业要尽可能地接近自己的用户,要有同理心,并积极地倾听。解决对你产品设计的恐惧是一个实时、不断变化的过程,而且对于保持你产品的相关性以及在市场竞争中的引领地位至关重要。只有为创新运动创造合适的环境,也就是在科技沙漠中打造一片绿洲,我们才能引发颠覆性的转变。(财富中文网)

莱斯利·特里格(Leslie Trigg)是Outset Medical公司的首席执行官兼董事长。

译者:冯丰

审校:夏林

When my company, Outset Medical, set out 10 years ago to build a new dialysis technology, we didn’t fully appreciate the tech desert landscape that we would be entering. Having spent the last 25 years in health care, I had seen sectors such as cardiology continuously innovate; but in dialysis, an industry dominated by a few huge manufacturers, advances in equipment stagnated and the status quo calcified. What transpired over the next 10 years has offered us many lessons about what it means to innovate in an industry where innovation is rare.

Kidney failure, or end-stage renal disease (ESRD), is commonly managed with hemodialysis, a treatment that removes waste products and excess fluids from the blood. For years, it’s been a burdensome therapy performed primarily at for-profit, outpatient clinic settings, with intimidating dialysis machines that are difficult to use and infrastructure-intensive.

ESRD patients require dialysis at least three days a week for three to four hours at a time, with an in-center treatment regimen that can limit their independence, ability to work, and quality of life. Currently, about 600,000 Americans rely on it for their very survival, at a cost to the healthcare system of about $74 billion annually. These numbers are rising with the increasing prevalence of kidney disease risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. Policymakers and health-care systems are looking to reduce the burdensome costs of this treatment. More recently, several factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, changing patient preferences, have begun driving a shift toward home dialysis—a market we hoped to serve.

Even with these macro-level tailwinds, we knew that introducing innovation in a space where users are very set in their ways, and not open or used to change, would not be easy. So, we tackled the problem in an entirely different way from the entrenched players, while focusing on a concept that many might overlook: When you read about product design, it’s usually centered around understanding user needs. However, when innovating in a space that has not changed, I tend to focus more on user fears.

If you’re in an industry where users have not been rewarded for doing something new, you can absolutely bet that you’re going to have to overcome a lot of fear. Here are some takeaways about how trepidation can be transformed into trust.

Observation versus conversation

The conventional approach to market research is to ask users a lot of questions, such as what they like or dislike about specific product features, and why. But this strategy may not result in truthful answers, or get to the heart of what you want to know. Why? Because you don’t necessarily know the most revealing questions to ask. User responses can be skewed, because most people fundamentally want to be helpful, don’t want to offend, or are stuck in their own narrative of what they think matters in product design. They want to appear logical and rational.

However, pricing and purchase psychology indicates that most of us are not logical or rational when it comes to purchase decisions. Emotions and the opinions of others have a heavy influence. Consumers participating in traditional market research may not want to admit, or have the self-awareness to realize, that their own self-image or self-aspiration may drive decision-making much more than any other variable. Said differently, what you hear is usually not what people actually think.

By contrast, what you see is often most true to life. Instead of asking questions, spend time observing behavior. Watch, listen and draw inference. It will lead you to connect dots on a deeper level. What people do is far more truthful than what they say.

I discovered the importance of observation in the early development days of Outset’s Tablo Hemodialysis System, when visiting members of our core user group, dialysis patients, representing broadly diverse demographic backgrounds. I spent time in their homes and observed as they used the incumbent home dialysis machine (there’s currently only one other FDA-approved device on the market). I witnessed the fear-inducing issues and problems they experienced during treatment. Watching their treatment rituals and homegrown workarounds led me to identify the most important pain points to solve in product design. Observing all the treatment steps revealed what they most feared and what intimidated them—all without asking a single question.

Avoiding innovator’s arrogance

In the pursuit of being inventive, especially in an innovation-starved industry, you run the risk of going too far and making unneeded changes. There’s an arrogance to being the disruptor, and it’s easy to get carried away with the concept of “everything must go,” assuming the incumbent technology is entirely bad. The aim is to strike a balance between providing essential features and thoughtfully innovating in the areas that need improvement, so that you don’t inadvertently solve for a problem that doesn’t exist and create fear in your users.

One of our user groups taught us this lesson. Nephrologists prescribe dialysis to patients. We found that the incumbent dialysis machine required physicians to use complex, unconventional math in order to calculate patient prescriptions, which in turn, caused reluctance among the doctors about using that system. We realized the incumbent had innovated around a problem that physicians didn’t actually have. Instead, the new solution unintentionally created a “fear factor” around their device. These learnings informed us of what not to do in developing our system.

We applied this lesson in Tablo’s design based on the perspective of a third key user group: nurses and dialysis technicians who would be treating patients in hospital or clinic settings. Early on, we assumed they would want to have blood tubing, pumps and other components tucked cleanly away behind a door designed into the bedside system. Our thinking was that we didn’t want to cause fear in patients who might see their blood being filtered in and around the machine during treatment, as with conventional dialysis machines. Through observation and in discussions with these providers, however, we uncovered an entirely different fear: if a door on the system was locked into place during treatment, they would not be able to readily monitor blood flow and address any potential problems. We solved this concern and avoided unintentionally inducing fear by including a hinged door that could be left open or closed during treatment.

Use your own fear

What we feared most when designing Tablo was complexity. Could we deliver enough simplicity for people to confidently complete a serious medical treatment in their home? One way we addressed this is with the dimensions of our device. Many existing dialysis systems are large and intimidating in size to a patient sitting in a chair next to it for treatment. This can give the impression of being dominating. Because of our device’s much smaller size (it’s 35 inches tall), users subconsciously can feel that they can master it. The lesson here is that a design needs to psychologically connect with its users, address their pain points, hopes and fears, and give them confidence.

I advise all businesses to get as close to your users as possible, practice empathy and active listening. Addressing fears in your product design is a real-time, evolving process, and is critical for keeping your product relevant and ahead of the competition in the marketplace. Transformations begin with creating the right conditions for an innovation movement—an oasis in the middle of a tech desert.

Leslie Trigg is the CEO and chair of Outset Medical.

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