David - Musings of an SRE

LeanUX Week 2013 Day 3

Attended Lean UX Week 2013 Day 3 held at Microsoft’s offices today.

The following are just my notes for personal reference and are written as it is.

Quotes:

  1. Talking about your startup/pitch to others, is not customer development. It doesn't validate anything.
  2. "Relationships are important than being right"
  3. "Lean startup is not cheap startup"
  4. "If u can develop a metric, and if u can meet that metric, then you have developed an important muscle in your company." (quoted by @InterfaceAddict)
  5. Tear your ideas (on sticky notes). Hear that? That's the sound of focus!

Steps to start attempting to validate your idea as a product.

Build Assumptions (Hypothesis)

  1. On individual sticky notes, write down 3 assumptions about your customers that if you're wrong, your business will fail.
  2. Rank them according to importance. With the top one being the most important and critical.
  3. Take the least 2 important assumptions, and tear it up! That's right. That's the sound of focus!

Build a Persona. (Who is your user) (Best if done in a team. Get your co-founder!)

  1. Using a blank piece of paper, split it up into 4 sections.
  2. Persona drawing on the top left, "Behaviors" on the top right, "Demographics" on the bottom left, "Needs & Goals* on the bottom right. (See photo below)
    1. Demographics
      1. Come out with 10 individual sticky notes of what you think your persona's demographics are.
      2. Choose 5 of them and tear the other 5.
        3. Write the chosen 5 into the bottom left quadrant
    2. Behaviors:
      1. Come out with 10 individual sticky notes of what you think your persona's behavior are like
      2. Behaviors are actions. They should start with a verb. (ie. "Read technology blogs for news"
      3. Choose 5 of them and tear the other 5.
      4. Write the chosen 5 into the top right quadrant.
    3. Needs and Goals
      1. Come out with 10 individual sticky notes of what you think your persona's need and goals are.
      2. Needs and Goals are wants. Write about what this persona's wants and goals are. (ie. "Wants to spend time more efficiently")
      3. Choose 5 of them, and tear the other 5.
      4. Write the chosen 5 into the top right quadrant.
  3. When doing this exercise so far. Do not think so much. It is meant to be a persona. You don't know if the person exist. This will provide you with a baseline for you to go out there and validate your hypothesis. You can change the persona (and should) as you validate your idea.

    IMG_20130127_195902

Build the Use Case

  1. Take a blank piece of paper.
  2. In landscape mode, write, "In , can ......" in bold at the top of the page.
  3. Draw 6 individual squares, draw your persona and caption at the bottom of each square, some of the benefits that your persona will benefit from using your App/Service.
  4. If you're working in a group, come to a consensus as to which is the 1 Use Case that is important.

    IMG_20130127_200944

Build the Feature List

  1. Using your individual sticky notes, write down 5 features that would make your chosen Use Case work.
  2. Choose 1 out of the 5 features. If you're in a group, each individual should choose one.
  3. Tear the rest. That's right. That's the sound of Focus!
  4. And now you have your MVP!

Steps to start attempting to validate your idea from the Customer Development Point of View.

Prepare your Interview

  1. With your persona created above and your assumption, think of 5 keywords to describe. This is to remind you of what you should talk about when interviewing
    2. <li>Using prompt [attach slide when available], conduct your interviews.</li>

<li>As you gather data, you would find out if your Persona's behavior assumptions is right. You may also find out some new problems, goals, needs and wants that your audience has.</li>

<li>Adjust your Persona Sheet as needed.</li>

Build your Metrics

    <li>Using the features you've finalized as your MVP, for each feature, come out with 5 things (on sticky notes) that you would measure to validate with to find out if people would use them.</li>

<li>Rank according to importance with the top note being the most important.</li>

<li>Choose 1 out of the 5 metrics.</li>

<li>Tear the other 4. That's right. <strong>That's the sound of Focus!</strong></li>

Metrics should be built in quantitative form. ie. “# of users copying files from X to Y”

Monitor your metrics weekly/daily/monthly.

Rinse, repeat, recycle. Continue to do so until you find an idea that your users will certainly use. Keep refining it. Your Persona is never done.