The document discusses the importance of customer development in building products that customers will buy. It emphasizes understanding customer behaviors, gaining empathy, and building relationships. This is done by forming hypotheses about customer needs and problems and trying to disprove them through neutral observation, open-ended questions, and understanding problems before solutions. Following this process can help avoid issues like overbuilding products, identifying new opportunities, and building the wrong solutions to address customer needs.

1. Building Products that Customers Will Buy
CindyAlvarez
UXatMicrosoft&Author,LeanCustomerDevelopment
2016

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Product development =
building product

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Customer development =
building customers
(people who want to buy your product)
understanding
customer behaviors
gaining
customer empathy
building
customer relationships

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Why?
understanding
customer behaviors
gaining
customer empathy
building
customer relationships
If we know what they’re already
doing, we can build a product
that helps them do it better
If we know their frustrations and
constraints, we can build a
product that doesn’t run into
those walls
If we know how they are
rewarded, we can build a
product that rewards them
If we’ve offered value, we can
ask for favors in return:
- Beta testing
- Referrals
- Case studies
= more sales

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How?
1)Form a hypothesis
2)Try to disprove it
(you may remember this from school as “the scientific method”)

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What’s a hypothesis?
Why do you think this new product/feature will be successful?
A hypothesis is NOT “I believe we need to support syntax
highlighting on our mobile apps”. That is a feature, not a
hypothesis.
A hypothesis involves people – problems they have and value they
accrue. All parts of the hypothesis are assumptions. You must be
able to invalidate any/all parts of it.

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A good hypothesis template
I believe ____________________________________
Needs to solve ______________________________________________
Which happens while ________________________________
Which will allow them to ____________________________________
Problem, i.e. “takes too much time to manually book appointments”
Type of person, i.e. ”busy small business owner”
Situation, i.e. “reception is answering phones”
Get value, i.e. “book more customers, make more $”

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Try to disprove ourselves by…
• Practicing neutral observation
• Asking open-ended questions
• ”5 Whys” style pursuit of truth beyond surface answers
• Understanding problem before solution

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Avoided Overbuilding an MVP

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Real Reason for Attrition

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Identified New Product Opportunity

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Avoided Building Wrong Solution

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Misleading Quantitative Data

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What can we do
starting tomorrow
to start learning?

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We can…
• Observe
• Ask why
• Follow up
• Take a step back