Feeling a little stuck validating my idea
Hi Everyone!
So about two weeks ago I started my journey of building a prototype for a ticketing system. The idea came about as an aside from work as my manager is looking to move away from our existing ticketing system to a new one.
He has a large list of must haves, should haves and nice to haves. He tried around 10 existing systems and not a single one matched all the features he was looking for. Being a developer myself I jumped at the thought of maybe being able to build something myself meeting this very specific list of criteria and turning it into a sellable product.
Today I have mixed feelings about my approach. After stumbling across a post on here I noticed another product called "AirTable". This kinda made something click in my mind and I love how AirTable isn't very specific and puts the control into the users hand, givingthem to use tools to handle organise a project their way. For me at the minute I prototyped the application with a very specific use case in mind and due to people wanting to organise things in their own way it left me wondering if I should rethink my approach.
My prototype is pretty much done and I am waiting for some feedback on them. I have attached it below:
https://sketch.cloud/s/wM3pV/a/v2VJxe/play
I'd love to get any feedback and anyone's thoughts on this idea.
Thank you so much,
I think that a goal of jack-of-all-trades ticketing system may lead to being unable to prioritise where to spend development and marketing effort.
IMO your original approach of serving a specific user niche will lead to faster value creation for that niche. The product can be iterated on with your original user(s) providing priorities ... and you can look to scale out once you have satisfied customers.
[edit] minor changes for clarity.
This is solid advice. Thank you. I think it helps for me to share this as I have been prototyping in isolation.
Feedback of the actual prototype: I'm going to be biased, as I'm a ServiceNow developer :) the interface appears to have a heavy lean towards management users. This is OK but I'd still recommend some improvements that make life easier for the project team. If the project team don't keep it updated, the key features could have less value than the project status reports. Things like My Tasks and Favourites go a long way on this.
Happy to go into a little more depth if you're looking for it.
Thanks for taking a look at it! I can see what you mean actually I haven't been very sure about how the "Work" section should be organised. Being a developer I think it's very hard me seeing an application from a customers point of view and I just see it from a functional perspective.
It makes sense that the management section is a little more fleshed out and makes more sense as most of the requirement ideas came from someone in that role.
If you have the time to provide a little more in depth feedback, I'm very keen to hear it. I'm at that stage where it's very beneficial to get as much as I can.
Thank you!