Why You Won’t Get Your Product Right The First Time (Part 1)
We all know the story about how many times Thomas Edison failed when attempting to create a lightbulb. He tested over 6,000 different materials before even finding the right filament. According to Edison himself (supposedly), every failure carried with it a seed of equivalent success:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
This mindset is particularly apt today for people in the software product business (both those working for companies with software acting as the core business and those working in businesses where software is a complement to the core business). Most likely, founders fail to get the product right the first time. Or, for that matter, the second. A ‘successful’ product simply cannot be developed overnight.
It is very hard to create a good product that people actually use. This is why many consider failure to be a good thing (there is even a conference you can attend that celebrates failure and encourages iteration). Take it from me — I had a rather naive opinion when I jumped into the software industry several years ago. I thought that we would create a product and people would find it, use it, love it, pay us, tell their friends about it. Fast forward to today. Let’s just say that humility has settled in.
In entrepreneurship, it is essential to be a dreamer, but you must also recognize and accept reality. The only thing we can do is take meticulous steps to recognize and correct mistakes early, before they become too big to overcome. At the end of the day, failures occur, and it’s best to learn from them quickly and take steps towards improvements.
Before the software is built
I know that you have heard this a hundred times, but the best way to avoid creating a failed product that no one wants is to start talking to your customers very early in the process. Early, in this case, means even before you start working on your product! I am not talking about biased conversations with people you know (because most of the times, they will only tell you what you want to hear) but live conversations with your target customers.
- Is there a market for your product?
- How severe is the problem you are solving with your product?
- Can you build a sustainable business around the product?
Of course, the biggest customer you can listen to is yourself. If you are solving a problem that you have had at one point, it only makes the case that much stronger. Prior to the founding of University Beyond, my co-founders were running a successful watch company. To expand their brand, they initiated the efforts of creating a brand ambassador program. It was a real struggle. Not only was it really hard to find the right people on the right campuses, it was even more difficult to manage them all. This was the spark that inspired University Beyond. (Side note: You should always do a lot more market research to confirm that you are not the only one experiencing the problem and that the market is truly demanding your service.)
Sure, passion is essential, but don’t be afraid to pivot or move on to the next idea if initial conversations are not going as planned.
Now here comes the paradox. As important as it is to listen to your customers, there are times when the market does not know what it wants. The master of figuring out what the customer wanted before they knew themselves was Steve Jobs, which is part of the reason he has achieved cult-like status in tech.
For us mere mortals, it’s important to follow your gut instinct and get the market a prototype of some sort. You have to accept the potential for failure in order to build something amazing. Therefore, if there is a a unique idea that people don’t quite understand, don’t be scared to take the next step forward. You are an entrepreneur after all!
The best way to avoid failure is to crush and/or pivot an idea even before a single dollar is put into development. Trust me, ideas are cheap, creating a product that no one uses is expensive. You have to make sure that what you are going to build will actually be used before you just go ahead and build it.
During the building process
Now that you have found an idea that you are passionate about and that your customers need, it is time to get moving with your product. To minimize failure here, follow this cycle diligently and rapidly —
Prototype. Share. Iterate. Share. Iterate. Share. Iterate…Release.
Before I jump right in, let me tell you about our initial approach to product development. Like I mentioned earlier, University Beyond was based on a problem that we ourselves had faced. Based on that alone (for the most part), we constructed a 50 page functional specification document that outlined exactly how the product would work. Every day we had internal meetings that resulted in additions or subtractions that slightly ‘improved’ the product’s functionality. We were in full stealth mode. A year later (obviously delayed), the product was ready. We then launched the site, excited for the virtual ‘red carpet’ event that was ready to occur. Five minutes went by. We waited, staring at Google Analytics. 15 visitors on our site. Definitely our family.
Over time, of course, we figured it out. However, if we would have followed this iterative process from the beginning, the initial ‘failure’ could have been largely avoided. And, in all honesty, it would’ve saved us a lot of time, effort, and money.
Everyone, to some degree, knows the scientific method: (1) Propose a question, (2) Create a hypothesis, (3) Run an experiment, (4) Analyze the results, (5) Draw a conclusion, and run the cycle all over again. Scientists all around the world have discovered and developed amazing things following this rather intuitive protocol. Treat your product as nothing but a continuous science experiment.
However, before you run any ‘experiments’, determine what the ‘magic moment(s)’ of your product is going to be — whether it’s purchasing something, friending someone, listening to something — whatever you believe the key action on the site is.
If your site has multiple magic moments, split it up into stages — Step 1, Step 2, Step 3. For example, at University Beyond, we have divided our key stages accordingly —
- Step 1: Student applies to a job
- Step 2: Student gets hired
- Step 3: Student completes all the assigned tasks
- Step 4: Student gets reviewed by the company.
At the end of the day, the goals here are twofold: make sure that customers value the ‘magic moment(s)’ and that we build a product where customers complete the ‘magic moment(s)’ quickly and efficiently, without any confusion.
With these goals in mind, you construct your first prototype. I believe that the first prototype should be no more than pen and paper diagrams or a low-fidelity prototype. Focus predominantly on basic flow and navigational qualities of the product. Don’t worry about the design yet. The goal is to be quick and dirty, and get it in front of customers (check below to get an idea of how exactly this should appear). Get answers to the following questions.
- Do users understand what the product does after showing it to them?
- How does it measure up to their expectations? Best/least important feature?
- What features are missing?
- Does anything seem out of place or unnecessary?
- Were they confused somewhere?
- If users had a magic wand, what would they change about the product?
Once you get feedback from your customers, make the necessary changes to your prototype. Get rid of things that didn’t work, keep things that did work. Then get it in front of your customers again. Be agile, speed is essential here. Run this cycle as many times as necessary (from experience, 1–3 cycles with about 5–10 customers usually does the trick here.) Get inside your customers heads and mock the product you believe they want. Remember, if things don’t work out, this is a rather ‘cheap’ time to crush or pivot the idea. If you are seeing continuous improvement, you are onto something!
Ultimately, you graduate to different levels of prototype. Once you have ran through the low fidelity cycle a couple of times, look to medium and high level prototypes (check tools like UXPin and Sketch.) This is where you invest more time and money and start mocking what the final product will look and feel like. Gain as much insight as possible into the look and feel of the product, as well as how efficiently the user complete the goals of the product.
*Note: The process I have outlined is very similar to the lean startup methodology. I am just taking it a step further and outlining the specific steps to actually make use of the lean startup methodology. Knowledge is power only if you know how to use it.
Post launch and beyond
Congratulations, you have released a product out to the public. Even though you have taken steps to ensure the necessity and usability of your product, there is a lot more to come. New features, UI/UX enhancements, you name it. I will discuss the methodology to avoid failure with a live product for Part 2 of this series.
As a recap, I want to stress that the iteration model is by no means a way to guarantee success. It is just framework for recognizing and resolving mistakes early, quickly and cheaply. ‘Failure’ may still occur at any time for a handful of reasons that, sometimes, you may not even have control over. Trust your customers, your processes, and most importantly, your entrepreneurial instincts.
Originally published on LinkedIn by Rich Anand, the co-founder and CTO of University Beyond. He was a member of the Spring 2016 edtech cohort at Dreamit.
