What came first, the product or the user? Defining the User.
There are no chicken and egg causality dilemmas with your startup idea when you take the time to understand your user.
If your answer to the title of this post was: “it depends!” or “product!”, you’ve bought into the field of dreams lie and you are wrong so keep reading.
Far too often, I read great posts by successful entrepreneurs and wonder why I never read stories of founders while they are still in the trenches. This series of posts is my attempt at a narrative during the journey. I plan on breaking this up into a series of posts documenting the ups and the downs so strap in. If you’ve ever been a startup founder you know what’s coming, lots of ups and lots of downs.
Lets begin: A technology startup without ongoing user research principles from it’s onset is a hobby. I say this assuming you are creating a product that users can not live without.
I have come to equate the practice of understanding the user first, to understanding the idea as a first step in a product design sprint. As a two time startup founder, I had to learn that without clear definition of the customer, there is no foundation for the company.
My last startup was LynxFit, an innovative idea by all accounts. The idea was to turn a smart glass device into a hands free workout experience with sensor-driven virtual coaching. My goal was to monetize through white-labeling and licensing the software. For a year we dominated pitch competitions and even had the honor of having co-founder of Google experience LynxFit.
Amazeballs right? Yeah, the product failed at launch and aborted. We failed to get a cool idea off the ground because too much focus was on validating the technology and not the end user. Also Glass never launched. I firmly believe that had we defined our core user, we would have better understood timing and perhaps tested on mobile. To go back to the Field of Dreams analogy, we built it, and the users never came. My team reflects on this often, focusing on the user is obvious so why did we talk about the user every day but not to the user.
These days I am embarking on a new journey with a disciplined path to address these pretty obvious missteps at the onset. First, I met with and engaged a spectrum of my users.
As a technology startup, understanding your user through interviews is the best way to begin idea validation. Validating the idea presents a shortcut to better understanding users needs without the cost of learning post-launch.
As part of kickstarting your product or launching a major update to an existing product, hearing from your customer provides clearer insights on how you design, develop, test and deliver your product. It gives you a lense into timing, how long it will take until product market fit, monetization strategies and so on. To get these sorts of insights with an interview:
- Create a hypothesis that drive your product, business strategy or both,
- Look at the extremes of your customer base as your selection pool of interviewees,
- Decide on cohorts in that pool you want to interview,
- Define the questions that emerge from your hypotheses and then,
- Go hear from your users.
Here is one sample template I am using for my next adventure. During your interview, fight the urge to talk about your product. Do not mention how awesome your features will be. Be transparent about why you’re conducting the interview before hand.
For the interview, you generally want to know how the user achieves their goals today. Run a money test to see how much they are willing to pay for your solution without telling them what your solution is. Another byproduct of a money test is to inform if your monetization strategy is sound.
If you can, observe the interviewee through their current process. Be conversational but brief, shut up and let them talk. Have them describe each question in detail while you use Google Forms or similar, to tick off these insights as you get them.
That’s it! You’ve conducted your first user interviews but the “egg” still hasn’t fully hatched. In some cases you may see hints of what the “chicken may look like” and it may look good or bad. Quite often, the user’s feedback will run counter to core features you plan to offer. The intervewee will slowly crush your spirits as they answer your questions in these cases but stay strong. Do not fret, the next post is about how data validates their perceptions. [Coming up next: User research through prototypes]
For now, your goal is to study the insights you’ve received and analyse what the key differentiators are to your hypothesis. What will you change? What will you double down on? Pairing these insights with a prototype or wireframe will help you get a clear picture on how to run your product strategy.
A startup with a good research strategy is a foundation to your product and business strategy. You cut through hard lessons post launch with a shortcut to better understand the needs of your user. It illuminates environmental factors you need to consider, the market you intend to dominate, and focus on the right users to target before launch.
Next up here are the planned posts in this series…
- User research through prototypes.
- Validated product design for n00bs
- Journey to my first 50 users
