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Unbundling Reddit - Mistakes and lessons from a first product iteration

I am Ben, currently working on Unbundling Reddit - an interesting way to get your user discovery to-do item checked. Whether you want to engage within a given subreddit, tweet viral content for this niche, or find new business opportunities - Unbundling Reddit reports help you do just this. However, I still have a lot to work on to provide the best value at a price.

Decision

When I started Unbundling Reddit, I used the framework Action, Motivation, Problem. It is a rather unbiased way to qualify Reddit submissions. Along the way, I started to complement these qualifications with topic tags and notes about the author. I wanted the qualifications to be objective.
My train of thought was: the more objective the qualification, the best signals the report's users can get.

Outcome

This is why in the first place, the report was a plain Google Sheet with a few pivot tables -- see below. 5 Unbundling Reddit reports had this Google sheet format.
Google Sheet format

Unsurprisingly, the feedback I got was, "this is too much information to process." So, I looked around about how I could make this information easier to grasp. I chose to go for a quick way to test this new format and selected Google Data Studio. No code. About 10 reports were handed out in this format.
Google Data Studio format

Mistake

I thought the format made it easier to understand, which is partly true. The top five format makes the information more digestible. But I missed the point. There are still too few recommendations. Too few places where I really express myself about what is going on in the subreddit. Too few places where I express things that are harder to get from numbers only. Too few places where I share my experience with my users. I already completed 15 analyses - which means that I read 1500 submissions thoroughly. And this is of incredible value for my users. With this current format, I always feel that somehow, I am only handing out half of the analysis that I have internalized. I failed at finding the right format - even after an iteration. But I am getting closer.

Lesson

The report started as too deep and now is too shallow. I tried to chase 2 rabbits at the same time. It is 2 different use cases between "Getting a quick grasp of the subreddit" and "Immersing into the subreddit content." I should opt for a more opinionated option instead of trying to serve both with the same format. I learned that my users first go for the quick grasp - and only if this fails, they want to immerse deeper in the data. And even if I consistently asked for feedback, this could not have been clearer without the help of user interviews - namely, with the help of Austin from OpsDrill.

Be eager to get your product challenged. Don't miss out on user interviews.

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