What's the most interesting you've learned talking to your users ?

Sydney Cohen
7 replies
While building Axolo we are talking to CTO and developers. Some of the things I learned that were super interesting: Polaris Methodology: One CTO told me this one: They have 6 weeks sprint (Q&A included) + 2 weeks of rest. The rest is a time for them to go back to what hasn't been completely finished 'smelling code' he calls it. Those two weeks is an opportunity for them to refactor and rethink their architecture.

Replies

Rashmi Gupta
They are smart, and they know what they are talking about. If you hear them carefully (really carefully) you can take your product to places. A lot of time they are helpful too, they wait for the fix patiently, says encouraging things too :).
Lakshmi
My experience is very different to yours.. But here we go... Users want the problem solved but they are not prepared to make an effort. Its like they'd rather put up with the pain than do something about it.. The measure of collective inertia/laziness and the lack of independent self belief is disturbing.. We have been trained to buy into whatever is marketed widely. Unless the scientific studies are broadcasted everyday and shoved down our throats, we won't buy into it.. Maybe I did a mistake posting this :|
Lakshmi
@misha_mirzai yes I agree to that.. thats the reason for my decision to further go into this rabbit hole to figure out what my customer 'thinks' about their problem.. They may just want a bandaid solution..
Misha Mirzai
@gogloballakshmi I wanna add that actually, they don't know the real problem. They see the first thing and say "that's my problem! solve this". One book that I really liked (The Mom Test) and explain why most companies have the wrong approach. Usually product teams or entrepreneurs ask wrong questions and do not understand the real problem. If the customer is not ready to make an effort to buy the product, this means that the problem is not the real problem
Erin McCune
@gogloballakshmi Inertia is a very strong force, which is great once people are using your solution but not great when you're working to bring on new customers.
Martin Bickford
Most interesting items are when I've purposely made a decision in product decision to address what i think is a user concern... but they tell me they need what i tried to fix. For example... i'm currently building online educational materials for founders (https://academy.bossstartupscien...). I've purposely not included a bunch of talking heads with long stories. My assumption was that can be a frustrating waste of time. But early feedback is that they want the stories to connect to, but short and sweet is enough.