10 things we've learned from customer development interviews.

  1. Whatever people say they will pay for, it is wrong!
  2. If someone says, "I wouldn't personally use it, but I bet other people would", no one will use it.
  3. The answer to any question that starts with "do you want" or "are you concerned about" will always be yes.
  4. If someone says "maybe its just me, but..." - it's not. Especially if it pertains to your product being hard to use or your marketing being unclear.
  5. If you want to charge money for your product, don't talk to people who try to get everything for free. (They might eventually be customers, but not until your product goes more mainstream or becomes a defacto standard.)
  6. What features your customers ask for is never as interesting as why they want them.
  7. Almost anyone will do almost anything for you as long as: the request is short, you are enthusiastic and they don't have to make any decisions that require more than 1 minute of thought.
  8. The two driving forces of purchase and usage behaviour are apathy and the desire to avoid looking/feeling stupid.
  9. You can't build a good product if you don't genuinely like the people who will be using it. You don't have to be like them, but you have to like them.
  10. Whenever you start thinking "this isa lot more complicated than I originally thought", you should immediately stop and find a sounding board. You are probably either wrong or over thinking things, and an external brain will see it much faster than you.

There’s nothing worse than building on wrong assumptions, so before product development, we can help you quickly validate your concept. By preparing user interviews to verify your personas and usability testing to improve the UX of your product our team will increase your chance of success.

If you want to learn more about how we can help you, you can reach out to us for a conversation and assessment of your unique digital context.

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