product definition
You understand your product, but do you understand your users?
You probably have a very clear idea about what your product is (or will be) and how people will use it. But have you really talked to potential paying customers?
The first people to start using your new product (the "early adopters") can be hugely helpful in defining what the product does, how it will be used in practice and most importantly how a user will value it.
We can help you hear the voices of your early adopters and work out what the implications should be for you. Once your product is established you will have to listen to a wider group of customers and we can help you spot when that is the case as well.
Customer stories that get your team into the mind of the customer
The phone rang as soon as I sat down at my workstation that morning.
“Hi, it’s Puck. I’ve got a problem”
Puck, I thought, recalling a giant of a visual effects artist. Isn’t he in California? And it’s just before 10am here in London. He went on to describe the problem that he was having in Matador and why it was so urgent that the job he was working on was finished in the morning. Morning? I thought. It’s already 2am there.
“Listen, I’m going home to bed, ring me at home when you fix it and I’ll come back into the office”. He concluded, after I’d promised to try to fix the problem immediately.
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Is our increasingly sophisticated and smart software products making our users more stupid?
Driving cross country the other day I decided to use my new Garmin Colorado to test its ability to find a good route from Oxford to Cambridge. (Those of you outside the UK will be amazed that it is almost impossible to complete the 90 mile journey in less than 2½ hours). I used the Garmin’s incredibly annoying user interface to find my destination, saw it calculate the route, and set off on my journey. Less than 5 minutes later I was stuck in traffic. Why? Because I’d not thought where I was going and blindly followed the G** D*** Garmin along a route I would normally always have avoided, just minutes from my home.
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By Chris | January 22, 2009
Giving up is hard to do, even in product development.
I asked a good friend of mine, Richard, if he had any ideas of topics for my website. He’s been in software product development for many years and I really respect his abilities.
“… I’m thinking about knowing when to stop. There are some terrible products out there where I find myself saying “man, I could have done that so much better”. But there is something really interesting about the ones that have been successful anyway and I begin to wonder about the conscious decisions of the producer and the unconscious acceptance of the consumer.”
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By Chris | January 19, 2009
Do you really think about the ways in which your user interact with your products?
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