“Talk to your users” is pretty standard advice for startups of almost any size¹. Having heard this from many startup elders, I was clear on the why but not on the how. A few hundred user interviews later and I think I have a better understanding of the process. I found that the goal isn’t so much to talk to your users about your product but to understand how you can empower them to reach their goals.²
My general aim when trying to understand a product’s viability is to start with a broad domain, like academic publishing, and then find 10 people who have experience in that space. I usually email about 5X as many people as I need to account for funnel effects. From there I set up Skype calls, record the conversations, transcribe them and then annotate the text.
In the conversation I try to optimize for open ended exploratory questions then whittle my way down to specifics. I go in with a script and return to it when I’ve exhausted a tangent. Questions like “Would you use this?” almost never return good signal.³ By focusing on questions of process and motive I can better understand what the user is trying to do and how the product can help her. An example would be
Adnan: “What do you do with your paper after it’s published?” Ayesha: We usually send out the link and PDF to our department’s mailing list. Adnan: Why’s that? Ayesha: Well, it’s important to show your colleagues and people in the field that you’re doing cool things. Adnan: Is it important to get replies to your emails? Ayesha: Yeah, it’s very helpful to hear how it was received. To me it sounds like Ayesha is interested in the impact her research has in the field. She’s trying to get the word out about her work and she’s also looking for feedback. These are all user goals that we try to turn into features.
So here’s the stack I use for all this:
MixMax (mixmax.com) to send emails and coordinate scheduling. MixMax makes it easy to send up to 300 emails in one go and has great scheduling features. Skype for calls. Everyone has Skype, it sucks but it’s the easiest thing to use when you’re trying to connect with a stranger and talk face to face. Ecamm’s call recorder (ecamm.com). Does what it says on the tin. It integrates with Skype so you can just record the entirety of your Skype chat. Make sure to ask users before recording them. Jotengine (jotengine.com). Send them an audio clip, get a word for word transcription within 4 hours. This part is magical because it means I can focus on the interview without worrying about taking notes or asking someone else to take notes. Quip/Google Docs: I like both of these for reviewing and commenting on the transcript. Quip is more geared towards annotating (it has a separate section for annotations) but everyone has Google Docs. Footnotes
https://segment.com/academy/archives/talk-to-your-users-or-else/ http://blog.kippt.com/2012/08/07/go-out-talk-to-your-users/ https://twitter.com/paulg/status/706883322215989248 Probably worth noting I’m talking about when you’re still in a exploratory stage looking to build something great. If you have traction and things are moving, then yes, talking about the specific product will help you find optimizations in your flow (i.e “I can’t see where all my customers are in one place”). People are often agreeable with strangers. In general there’s too much downside for being disagreeable with strangers, most people I’ve interacted with play it safe. The answer to “would you use this?” is almost always “sure, I can see myself doing that.” It’s then very hard to separate the sincere validation from the agreeability.