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Product Management
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Gallery
Product Management
Pillars of Product Management
LinkedIn Courses
Product Management First Steps
Building a Product Strategy
Building a Product Roadmap
Customer Development
Project Ideas
Picky - The CRM Tailored To You
Nomadic - The Virtual Coworking Space
Random.ly - The Speed Networking App
Arjuna Coles Resume
Arjuna Coles Resume
Case Studies
Spotify Analysis & Suggestions
Inspired Notes
Chapter 6 - The Root Causes of Failed Product Efforts
Chapter 7 - Beyond Lean and Agile
Chapter 8 - Key Concepts
Chapter 9 - Principles of Strong Product Teams
Chapter 10 - The Product Manager
Arjuna Coles DRAFT
LinkedIn Courses
Customer Development
Customer Development
Introduction to customer development
Many companies fail because they did not exercise customer development and gain product-market fit
Customer Development:
Understand customer problems and needs
Develop a repeatable sales model
Deliver on customer demand
Product-Market Fit
- identifying a compelling value hypothesis
Features you build
Audience who cares
Valuable business model
Create a
product
that solves a
need
at a
price point
the customer will pay.
Customer development helps you quickly find product-market fit
Customer development lets you
save money
and time while deciding the market need.
Four stages of customer development
Good customer development
=
constant contact with your customers
Phases of Customer Development
Customer Discovery
Who are your customers
Is the problem you’re solving important to them?
Secondary research
Primary Research - surveys & interviews
Customer Validation
Build a repeatable sales process
Sell the product to early customers
Customer Creation
Increases demand for a product
Company Building
Transitions into a more formalized structure
Identifying a Problem
Where product ideas come from
Great products solve painful problems
Product Ideas:
Both internal and external origins
Sales questions
Customer service calls
Data scientist observe use trends
Customers share their needs
How to cultivate leads:
Look at industry trends
Observe your competition
Product manager:
Look at product ideas critically
Determine market opportunities
Overview of customer discovery
Goal of customer discovery:
Who are
your customers?
Is the
problem you’re solving important
to then?
Will customers
pay
for your solution?
Four aspects of
Customer Discovery
State problem hypothesis
Test problem hypothesis
Test solution
Verify the hypothesis or pivot
Assumptions
Who are our users?
What are their problems?
Why would they buy our product?
Customer Discovery
Generate measurable data to confirm or deny your hypothesis
Assumptions are hypotheses
Creating Hypotheses
Who are your users?
What are their problems?
How will you solve them?
Listen and learn about your target audience and their problems
What is a problem hypothesis?
Problem hypotheses is not the same as a product hypotheses
Create a
Problem Hypothesis
Define who are your users
What are their needs, goals, or desires?
User Story Template
As a
[user type]
I want
[behavior]
so that
[outcome or benefit]
.
Example (
Twitter
):
As a
user
I want t
o be able to share short ideas with my friends
so that
I can stay connected without spending a ton of time writing
.
Example (
Salesforce
):
As a
sales professional
, I want to
be able to manage my leads in one place so I can close more deals
.
User story
=
hypothesis
Create your own problem hypothesis
This is not for demographics or marketing personas
Form a hypothesis
>
user needs
See below worksheet:
02_04 Hypothesis Worksheet.
pdf
112.9 kB
User Research
Performing User Research
Avoid guessing at what a user needs
Products start as a ideas, but they are all assumptions
Questions to answer:
Have you identified a problem the customer wants to solve?
Does your product solve the customers needs?
Is your business model viable?
Have you learned enough to begin selling it?
Primary & Secondary Research
Research can come from both primary and secondary sources
Secondary Research:
Academic research
Private research firms
Consumer reports
Expert interviews
Primary Research:
Acquiring information by talking to users directly
Direct feedback
from your
users
is the most valuable
Define Your Target Market
Get feedback from
target users
about their
problems
and your
proposed solution
Psychographics
- How people are classified by their attitudes, aspirations, and psychological criteria.
Target Audience
Use demographic information or job title
Look for patterns in the responses during customer research
Defining Your Target Users
Start with
demographic profile
Gender
Age
Job
Location
Discover
psychographic profile
Secondary research techniques
Secondary Research:
Academic research
Private research firms
Consumer reports
Expert interviews
Use research that already exist
Secondary Sources
Google Scholar
Pew Research Center
Consumer Reports
Expert interviews
Seek expert advice
Avoiding pitfalls
Refining your hypothesis
Defining your target user
Primary research techniques
There is no replacement for speaking directly to customers
Primary Research:
Acquiring information by talking to users directly
Direct feedback
from your
users
is the most valuable
Two most common forms of primary research are
surveys
and
interviews
Surveys
Measure attitudes
Collecting quantitative feedback
Understand the degree of user beliefs
Reveal how user feelings change
Open-ended questions are not good for surveys. For example:
Do
ask how they like a product on a scale of 1-10
Don’t
prompt them to answer a long-form field asking if they like their job. Leave these kinds of questions for interviews.
Open-ended questions in interviews
Allow the user to speak freely
Watch the user’s body language
Tailor the conversation
Interviews
Dive more deeply with questions
How to create a screener
Screener
- determines if someone would be a good candidate for user feedback
Screener
List of user characteristics
Job title
Behavior
Product used
Determine who you
do not
want to talk to as well
Create a user-friendly online form
Identify the channels where your users spend their time
Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and dedicated forums are good places to screen
03_05 Screener Worksheet.
pdf
111.5 kB
User Surveys
What makes a good survey?
When to use surveys?
Measure attitude, intent, or task success
Tracking changes over time?
Quantify user problems
Don’t use surveys to:
Discover the reasons behind your users’ cares and needs
Learn if your product can be used effectively
Understand user behaviour in your product
Problem Discovery & Product Discovery > Interviews
Survey Characteristics
Short
Specific purpose or insight
Questions are grouped together
Broad questions come before specific questions
What to avoid on surveys
Double-barreled questions (two questions in one)
Opened-ended questions (why questions)
How to create a survey
04_02 Survey Example.
pdf
94.3 kB
How to analyze survey results
Look at how many responses you have received
04_03 Analyzing Survey Results Example.
pdf
104.2 kB
User Interviews
What makes a good user interview?
Customer interviews:
Free flowing
Enjoyable conversation
One-sided (build rapport and keep them talking)
Effective Interviews
Open-ended and non-leading questions
Categories:
Who
What
When
Where
Why
How
Instead of, “Do you like you current cable provider?” ask, “What do you think about your current cable provider?”
Intensity arc
Start with easy questions like small talk or demographic information
As the user becomes more comfortable you can ask more intense questions
Once you’ve gotten to the core, ask more simple questions
Don’t feel confined to your prepared questions
Free-flow questions
Can you give me an example?
Can you say that in another way?
Keep your interview focused on
discovery
How to create an interview template
Learning objective
What are you trying to learn by talking to this person?
Introduction
Share expectations
Lay ground rules
Questions
Start with
low-intensity
questions
“How long have you lived in this city?”
“Who is your current employer?”
Higher-intensity questions?
“What are your three biggest headaches on a daily basis?”
“What are your three biggest problems?”
“If you could wave a magic wand and change anything, what would it be?” (helps when interview gets stuck)
Keep them open-ended
Start with who, what, when, where, why, and how
Seek clarity?
Can you repeat that?
Can you say that in another way?
Can you give me an example?
Don’t be afraid to go off topic
Ended with low-intesity questions
Weekend plans
Personal interest
Contact information
05_02 Interview Template.
pdf
110.2 kB
How to conduct a user interview
Before starting the interview, you want to get into the right headspace
Prepping for the interview
Get into researcher mode
Friendly
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