What's the next step after prototype and feedbacks?
Hey everyone!
I'm building Apparent, an online service providing <5min listenings about parenting & child psychology.
I launched a prototype (10 listenings and a simple player) a few weeks ago. I let people in one by one to receive feedback. Now I'm confused about the next steps.
I wanna build more. But I refrain from doing it.
What is the right next step to take? My problems are:
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Some feedbacks are in opposite directions.
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In interviews people say they love the idea and the prototype but don't use it fully & don't come back (it's an audio content platform).
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I have a dream, a vision, a finished product in mind but I just can't go there because I'm crippled by the "MVP and assumption-testing" mindset.
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I need more users (still under 100), or do I? Do I need more test users in this phase? I feel like I've just had enough of "I like this, keep building" response.
What should I do? Anyone experienced the same thing? How did you overcome this phase?
PS: My product is at https://apparent.today.
Apparent is an online service providing <5min listenings about parenting & child psychology. I aim to become the top knowledge distributor in psychology, neuroscience and mindfulness topics concerning parenthood. My passion is to equip parents with actionable tools and ideas to become less stressful and more aware of their relationship with their children.
Thanks for any help!
Listen to your users for problems, but not solutions. If you’re getting feedback consistently going in opposite directions, figure out why this is happening. That’s a problem worth solving.
Thanks so much for your answer. I have the "listen for the problems" mindset all the time. But still when one person finds a feature helpful and the other wants it gone, it becomes very confusing. The problems are there. But which way to go to solve them is a mystery. And I'm getting sick of the obligation to stick to a method. I just want to build whatever the hell I want :) But cannot.
People often provide feedback that is more positive than their honest opinion. They want to be nice in general. The critical feedback you are receiving is that they don't use it. That is something you will have to dig into. What are their alternatives to using your product? What do they do without it? Did watching any of your videos give them anything they immediately used? Did they feel the value of your videos or did they just think "This is cool!"? I think there is value in digging into your existing users usage first before you try to acquire more. At the very least, you will learn to improve the questions you ask.
My personal opinion from looking at your home page is that you are really generating content rather than building a service. People are not likely to go to Apparent for all their child psychology needs. They are going to have a problem and search for a specific solution to that problem. You probably need some search features on the site and/or post videos on other platforms like Youtube.
Hey, thanks for your answer. Yes, I'm aware of the politeness bias and try to filter it all the time :) I've gotten feedback that said the ideas in there would improve the challenges they have in their parenting (specific problems such as anger that arise in intense moments, such as putting the child to sleep, or when a child is not open to communication etc.). They said that my content summarized ideas quite well and that it made them reflect on their parenting. But they don't come back for more. I'm not sending any emails or notifications btw. So yes, I agree that this is the most important thing to investigate. I guess books, podcasts and parenting experts' own social accounts are my competitors and they serve as general learning tools rather than solving an acute problem. Parenting forums, communities, blog posts solves acute problems, but they are very distributed and lack credibility.
As per the second half of your comment, I guess meditation apps like Headspace and Calm are content platforms as well. But they offer a service that solves a problem: that is, to decrease stress. I'm not aiming to build something that remedies everything in parenting but rather helps against parental stress and anger. Are you suggesting to post videos on Youtube as a marketing funnel or the product itself should be on Youtube?
Thanks again for your input, very valuable.
So Calm does provide content, but there's a reason for going to Calm every day. It is almost like going to the gym. People don't go to Calm for an education, they go to exercise mental health.
Educational content is used once, maybe twice as a refresher. So once someone learns something from you, there's little reason to watch that exact content again. If they don't have a problem that your other videos solve, there is little reason to watch those either.
You could try something similar as Calm though. You could have other content that steps through daily practice. That gives people a reason to come back. I'm not sure how you would do this, but I'm not the domain expert that you are.
Great point! I do have exercises that's based on mindful parenting (a subbranchof mindfulness that's proven to decrease parental stress). They're basically meditation exercises specialized for parenting use cases. So, yes! Balancing the learning and the exercises in a way that'll have the users coming back is definitely worth a try. Also stressing the exercises in the landing page. Thanks a bunch!
So much truth in what you said here