Users Know

Very helpful, Laura - tks

2012-05-04T18:16:07.021-07:00

Very helpful, Laura - tks

Nice read! More about "What Feature Should I...

2012-05-03T14:41:04.536-07:00

Nice read!

More about "What Feature Should I Build Next?". I'm used to prioritize things by frequency of use. When someone tells me something that runs daily or more often, I end up prioritizing this need.

Great article on the key issue in design - underst...

2012-04-05T22:45:27.273-07:00

Great article on the key issue in design - understanding who your customers are. I have often heard this comment 'the big customer X wants Y and so we need to build that' without any discussion on who the target customer is.

I loved your Civic - Mini Cooper analogy. In enterprise software world, many customers expect a Cadillac and then you are surprised by their feedback on your Smart! Even worse, you are forced to drop the idea, since your 'great customer' did not like it.

One thing I have realized from my experience is th...

2012-04-04T21:19:21.691-07:00

One thing I have realized from my experience is that you can get so many valuable insight from users by directly asking them what you need to know. Open ended questions work really well. For exmaple, I had a free tool, which became quite popular in a niche domain. I was thinking about launching a paid version of that product, but was not really sure what I should be charging for! So, I put out a simple pop-up micro survey, asking users what features they would be willing to pay for. And I was totally blown away by the kind of answers and suggestions I received.

I found that technique so effective I used it for a few of my products, and also for a few clients. I loved it, so I went ahead and built a simple tool out of it: http://frelay.com

Don't want to hijack this thread for promoting Frelay, but the gist is this: you can find out a lot by just asking users directly. Of course, as you mentioned, the question should not be vague like what feature one should be building next.

Glad you liked it. I don't really have more ...

2012-02-19T12:00:43.155-08:00

Glad you liked it.

I don't really have more thoughts on bootstrap. In general, I'm for anything that helps a designer focus on the flow and usability before starting to stress about pixels and gradients and fonts. Those things are all useful, but they're too easy to get obsessed with before you actually have a product that people can use. Fabulous visual design can't make an unusable product usable, but a very basic, clean visual design, like what you get from Bootstrap or Blueprint or a few others, are fine for an MVP.

Although, if you've got a designer who's thinking about button size before flow, you've honestly got a bigger problem. Honestly, they should be working out the flows and usability in whatever tool is easiest for them to move quickly.

Laura, just found your blog and have enjoyed your ...

2012-02-19T09:34:39.338-08:00

Laura, just found your blog and have enjoyed your writing so far. Do you have more thoughts on the value of Bootstrap? I've used it on several projects (including a pretty big app) and I'm considering integrating it into the design process of my firm (we partner with founders to build web startups). Only a few tools deserve mention in the same sentence as process, but I think Bootstrap may be one of them. Early in a product's life, it helps a designer focus on what's important, not things like button size and whether h1 is 46 or 48px. What do you think?

Great post. I like the examples given (Amazon, Goo...

2012-02-16T07:52:17.120-08:00

Great post. I like the examples given (Amazon, Google, Facebook). What about some counter examples? Boo.com, Color.com, ... others? They are hard to think of because they don't succeed.

Good text!! Excellent insights. I am going to use ...

2012-02-16T04:31:46.273-08:00

Good text!! Excellent insights. I am going to use this approach with my team and customers.

Thank you for the info. It sounds pretty user frie...

2012-02-16T00:00:19.173-08:00

Thank you for the info. It sounds pretty user friendly. I guess I’ll pick one up for fun. thank u

Agile Coaching

Sometimes if you are unable to do the prototyping ...

2012-02-15T20:23:22.708-08:00

Sometimes if you are unable to do the prototyping because of time "constraints", at least one should at a bare minimum try to review the mockups with the users of the product whenever a major design change is mooted. A case study here talks about the same: https://productmantra.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/case-study-product-launch-gone-awry/

I always use homebuilding analogies with people as...

2012-02-15T20:03:10.028-08:00

I always use homebuilding analogies with people as no one would ever build a house or do a significant remodel without ever more detailed prototypes.

After all if your architect came back to you with a 100-page requirements document you'd fire him/her on the spot! So if most software is primarily just interactive pictures with workflow/business logic why in the heck do people still rely primarily on text documents?

Thanks Laura - that's a great start. I knew o...

2012-02-15T05:34:46.492-08:00

Thanks Laura - that's a great start. I knew of some of the tools (like colour palette generators) but Smashing Magazine and Bootstrap are great suggestions. Cheers, Ashley (MrHatken).

Oh, Trevor. Trevor, Trevor, Trevor. HOW DARE YOU D...

2012-02-13T13:16:30.436-08:00

Oh, Trevor. Trevor, Trevor, Trevor. HOW DARE YOU DISAGREE?? I kid. It's a good point.

I would argue that having a "guiding vision" is not necessarily incompatible with doing cust dev before you have an idea for a product. You can have a vision for a problem you want to solve without deciding how you're going to solve it. That's that first "validate a problem" thing. You can hypothesize that people have a particular problem and then go out and learn more about the problem before deciding how you're going to solve that problem.

You might even have some vague idea when you start about how you think you might solve that problem, but the trick is not to get married to it before you've validated that the problem a) exists, b) is exactly what you think it is (hint: It isn't), and c) is a problem that people are likely to be happy to have solved.

So fine, have a vision. Just be totally ready to change it when you find out it doesn't actually solve a problem. OR, don't create the vision until after you're sure you've got a problem to solve in a market that needs it. Then feel free to have as many visions as you want.

2012-02-13T11:25:47.035-08:00

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Great post, but I disagree that it is easier to do...

2012-02-13T11:17:07.530-08:00

Great post, but I disagree that it is easier to do Customer Development before you had an idea for a product. It may be easier for newbies to actually listen to what their customers are saying, but I think it's important to have a guiding vision. At LSM we see both sides of the spectrum-- teams without an idea that pivot endlessly only to end up back where they started and teams with an idea and the inability to admit that their baby is ugly. The sweet spot is in the middle, probably closer to the vision end.

Hi MrHatken, Yes. Try something like Bootstrap. h...

2012-02-10T15:51:08.232-08:00

Hi MrHatken,

Yes. Try something like Bootstrap. https://github.com/explore/forever
It actually establishes a lot of those patterns for you.

Alternatively, check out things like PatternTap to get inspiration from other great sites.

Or google "color palette generator" for ways to pick a nice palette.

There are also thousands of free icon sets that you can search for at Smashing Magazine.

Hi - thanks for the post and suggested approach. W...

2012-02-09T20:10:05.202-08:00

Hi - thanks for the post and suggested approach. Would you have any links (even just keywords) to resources for engineers wanting to get a basic but standard visual design up and running (without a visual designer)?

Hi desipreneur, I'm sure Laura can elaborate o...

2012-02-08T08:25:39.190-08:00

Hi desipreneur, I'm sure Laura can elaborate on this but you can follow the same process if not the same approach. We complimented the above with emails to a portion of our customer base, posts on forums for target customers seeking feedback. It's significantly more beneficial to meet people though, you get a lot more information from them. Why not use family members and friends, who in turn can point you in the direction or others, or visit colleges or other academic institutions who, generally speaking, are more forthcoming in the desire to assist with all things knowledgeable!

I need some simple answers. Being a software devel...

2012-02-01T05:47:35.478-08:00

I need some simple answers. Being a software developer, research about market or validation/invalidation of it makes me confused.

1 - You say to reach out to market and observe and find their problem. This is not different than Steve Blank Mantra of "Getting out of the building" but the issue is that not every one is in Valley or in US in particular. Being someone living in Pakistan, how can you suggest some step by step methods to find out real problem of people using technology?

Is there any tool available for it?
Thanks

Excellent article, very logical yet I'd fallen...

2012-01-31T03:21:38.793-08:00

Excellent article, very logical yet I'd fallen into the same trap and would invariably start discussing features (in my instance we created a service beforehand and are now retrospectively applying Lean Startup).

Thanks, Giles! It's true. Real life Customer D...

2012-01-30T15:19:49.046-08:00

Thanks, Giles! It's true. Real life Customer Development is anything but neat and tidy. It's really hard to get right. I'm totally on board with having a hypothesis and testing it, but it's so much easier to start with a smaller hypothesis than a fully fledged product.

Excellent article. Having read Lean Startup and C...

2012-01-30T15:16:37.664-08:00

Excellent article.

Having read Lean Startup and Customer Development it all sounds very neat and tidy. You have a hypothesis go test it. But in the real-world interviewing customers is messy, people are complex.

Your approach seems both logical and practical

Nice, thanks Laura. I've found it's usuall...

2012-01-18T18:44:39.399-08:00

Nice, thanks Laura. I've found it's usually awkward (at first) to ask such simple questions to users that uncover some of these points. But you have to do it.

I'd add that the same rules apply when doing usability testing on a website.

Thanks for telling it straight Laura (as per usual...

2011-12-14T17:10:02.085-08:00

Thanks for telling it straight Laura (as per usual!). I am shocked that the gender inequality in tech seems to have gotten more pronounced since we worked together (at a startup) in 1999 instead of less (as I would have predicted then). I have noticed a lot of people harping on the open source contributor statistic and I think that part of the reason this gap might be wider than the general engineering gap is that women might be more likely to spend non-work-time on friends/family than on, uh, working more for free. And that doesn't mean I don't "love" programming (although I am getting a bit sick of some of the more tedious aspects of it after 15 years web dev work at startups). I recruited a second woman to join my startup who has just finished maternity leave and she is kicking some serious ass (on the business side) so the kids thing should not be a barrier. Choosing balance in life (even at a startup) is completely possible and we shouldn't propagate the myth that working at a startup is akin to joining some monastic order. It's closer to joining a co-op, where it's just in your own best interest to work hard & do a good job b/c in the end you're (hopefully) helping to make your investment pay off. I don't see why everyone doesn't want to work at startups. Job security at a big "stable" company is a thing of the past.

Hi Laura, I think you've made some really grea...

2011-12-14T13:42:00.690-08:00

Hi Laura, I think you've made some really great points here but also made some pretty serious mistakes.

I ask you to read this and see what you think:
http://danielmiessler.com/blog/disambiguation-of-the-women-in-technology-problem