Editor's Notes

1. Open source presentationThis is not about UX designThis is about conceptualizing products and systematically testing whether or not it’s worth developing themI fully expect that there are people out there in the audience who have some awesome experience with this – feel absolutely free to interrupt.
2. Let’s begin with a reflexive exercisewho’s in this audience right now?Alright, let’s see how my assumptions panned out
3. Here’s the reality when it comes to designing applications people are fanatical about:it’s not easy – in fact it’s really, really hardIt requires a ton of trial and errorAnd there will be a lot of surprises along the way
4. You kick off the process with an idea, so let’s get one from the audience here.[get an idea from the audience]Ok, now that we’re set with an idea, let’s go about the business of figuring out who in the hell is going to actually use this thing
5. So what’s the first question you ask when it comes to building an audience? Any guesses?I’m suspecting that you guys probably went straight to “who” – “who” is going to use our application. And that’s only natural, but the right place to start is with “Why?”“Why?” would someone want to use our application. The reason we ask this question first is because it defines our initial value proposition – without a value proposition, aka “a reason for using your application,” we shouldn’t be having this conversation.So what’s the next question?
6. For some of you, this might be a better way of looking at the Onion process – as a funnel. The further you go down the funnel the closer you get to your target audience.
7. Now throughout those last couple of exercises, we made a bunch of assumptions and probably didn’t even realize it. The next thing we have to do is to go back and hunt them down.