You have 10 mins with your ideal user group. What questions would you ask?
Purpose of the 10 min conversation is to build the right product even before the MVP has been created.
Looking for questions beyond the Mom Test which is great btw.
Purpose of the 10 min conversation is to build the right product even before the MVP has been created.
Looking for questions beyond the Mom Test which is great btw.
What is your biggest pain when doing "xyz" or using current "abc" system ?
If a product solves that exact pain and provides everything else that you already have, will you pay for it right now ?
If you cannot decide definitively, what would be required for you to pay for this ideal product ?
Are you the decision maker or need inputs from your team ?
Great stuff. Really liking question 2 on getting the user to commit.
Re:4: Assuming you’re speaking to your ideal user group... Is your ideal user a decision maker?
Or maybe you don’t know who your ideal user group is, and this gives you the ability to discover who they are?
Assuming these folks are the decision makers, are there different questions you’d ask?
Assuming the person is the decision maker, in addition to the first 3 questions,
I’d want to try to squeeze as much out of him about his cohort as possible. So a question that will tell me where I can go to find more people like him. Is there some sort of community, online or offline, that he’s a part of (private facebook group invite😍? linkedin group? reddit? maybe I should create one?)? which trade shows are the ones to go to meet people like him? what’s the best way to approach people like him — what would catch their attention?
It’s a toss up between that market research question... and something along the lines of “after our great discussion today it looks like you’re really interested in this. You’re willing to pay to [have this problem solved] but nothing is really doing it for you. I’m working on providing a solution to this problem for people like you, and I want to make sure it’s perfect for you. Would you be willing to pre-order to become an insider, where you will get to directly influence the product as it is being built, and have first access to all the beta releases, and a discounted price on the final product?”
I would modify question 1 slightly to include "is there even a system to address this pain?"
In the same way no-one knew they "needed" social media until social media existed or that they needed the internet until that existed, people may have pain points for which no system - analogue or digital - exists.
Tell me about how you do [y].
What's the hardest/most time consuming part of doing [y]?
What sort of tricks and tips have you used/developed to do [#2 ans]?
If you had a magic wand, what [y] related problem would you solve?
Great questions. When having someone walk you through the current state - I've found they usually have spreadsheets, trello boards etc. that they hack together to get what they want. They've basically built the spec for your product. Always ask if you can get a copy of their files if they have them.
Completely agree. Those hacks are worth their weight in gold. Those users who've created good hacks make the best early adopters, as they've not only recognized the problem but attempted to solve it themselves.
For q2, I would go one step further and ask what’s the result of solving y?
Great question. I would ask her/him to describe how their usual day look like. And also what are the top 3 things she did almost every day last week.
Getting to know their workflow and the friction for each steps. Nice!
thx
I've never read "The Mom Test" to be honest (ironically, Rob gave me a copy the week it launched) So apologies if I'm repeating...
What spreadsheets do you have to update regularly and share with team members?
What is your daily routine?
What aspects of your work / process have to be reported to the person above you on a regular basis?
What aspects of your work / process have to be reported to another team member above you on a regular basis?
What emails come in regularly that are annoying to deal with but have to be promptly
How much is the average person who works on this paid an hour?
Who made the decision to purchase the software that you currently use?
I've found Dane Maxwell's work in this area to be really interesting...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dane+maxwell+idea+extraction
On a scale of 1 (Not important) to 5 (Extremely important), how important is it for you to be able to do X?
On a scale of 1 (Completely dissatisfied) to 7 (Completely satisfied), how satisfied are you with your current ability to do X?
At some point, it helps me to reduce things to straight numbers and cut out all the verbals, descriptions, interpretations etc. Each response goes straight into a customer scorecard that holds the responses for everyone else I've talked to. This'll give you a great birds eye view across your customers to help you figure out what matters to what types of people.
1- How do you describe the problem?
2- How are you currently getting around this problem?
3- If my product solved your problem in "this" way, how would you describe my product in one sentence?
I like how you’re getting the user to describe their preferred solution back in a way that they understand it. Shows whether there’s a disconnect or an understanding right away.
Hey Jonathan. First up congrats for getting your ideal group’s attention. That itself is hard. Cheers on that 👍🏻
Now, to the questions: I would like to ask what are they expecting in the product you are going to build and why do they want you to build that. This way they can’t say random things. Also I would like to know what are the alternative ways they are solving the problem.
Btw Mom Test is amazing. Anyways, all the best!
My ideal user group is people who have taken an online course related to software development in the past 12 months, completed or not. Questions are:
Why did you choose option A over options B-Z?
Did you complete the course? If not, why?
Did you have any interaction with other learners? If so, how did you interact? If not, why not?
This book is a great resource: https://www.talkingtohumans.com/
If you're into this kind of thing, be sure to check out Steve Blank and Customer Development (books: Four Steps to Epiphany, The Startup Owners Manual). Some of the content is overwhelming but there's a lot of good nuggets in there about this kind of customer discovery stuff.
Example questions to ask:
What else have you tried? Did you pay for any of the solutions?