9. Outlining Our Assumptions Assumptions are bad. What assumptions did we make about: Why people will use our app? What people will use our app? How people will use our app? When / where people will use our app? Who will actually use our app?
12. Talking to Potential Users Get user input before we build anything Use our time with users to test our assumptions
13. Finding Potential Users to Interview Friends and family Co-workers Online communities Should be specific to your audience LinkedIn InMail / Introductions
14. What Do We Ask Potential Users? Ask about everything in our assumption map Introduce our product idea Mock-ups are a plus Get their gut-feedback Ask about similar products and services What do they like? What don't they like?
15. User Feedback IRL The users we interview are not always right And they may not always be the best representatives Take everything with a grain of salt
16. When Our Assumptions Are Mostly Wrong... Start over with the onion process Do a post-mortem What assumptions lead you astray? What did you learn? What will you do different next time?
17. When Our Assumptions Are in the Ballpark Time for an MVP Use RAD methodologies if you can get away with it
18. Prototypes, MVPs, and Alpha Testing Prototype vs. MVP? Implement core features only Alpha testing Find a small, talkative group Test usefulness of experience Qualitative analysis We want to know if a real product is viable
19. What Happens Next? If our application idea has survived thus far: People like our idea / application Find the experience to be useful Our assumptions have been reasonably tested It might be time to start: Business planning Formal UX design Beta testing
22. Maintain Relationships with Potential Users Throughout the Cycle Feedback a consistent group over the lifecycle of your app = super valuable It'll be that much easier to launch
23. Don't Drink the Kool-Aid Always be skeptical of both praise and criticism of your applications But always listen
24. Prepare for Surprises Honda Element Targeted towards younger consumers Sold in massive numbers to...
25. Prepare for Surprises Your grandparents! Average age of Element owner: 45 years old Still a success
26. Maintain the 30,000 Foot View Does your app make your users happy? And do they think it's worth more than what they invested into it? If you can't answer "yes," to both of these questions, then nothing else matters
27. Thanks for Listening! Aaron Stannard Twitter: @Aaronontheweb Blog: http://www.aaronstannard.com/ My works in progress: http://stannardlabs.com/
Editor's Notes
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.
Let’s begin with a reflexive exercisewho’s in this audience right now?Alright, let’s see how my assumptions panned out
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
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
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?
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.
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.
