PG says that understanding users is the most important thing for a startup, but exactly how do you know what they want?
What methods do you use? How do you differentiate signal from noise?
Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#2Tons of research!
Many many interviews with target users and/or surveys before building MVPs.
After that, user tests to get feedback on the MVP.
It takes a lot of effort to find the right people but it's well worth it!
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#3You need to target the right audience with platform limitations, your best bet is Google Ads, Search Ads for short-term growth where SEO is not available for business growth. I write about how to grow a business https://www.growth.services/
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#4We've had success with direct communication.
Tell your users to call or email of they have questions or problems. Then personally speak with them.
You will find loads of valuable things you can do for them or find significant pain points to address.
As for sorting signal and noise, you have to find generic solutions if possible. Example: if you have any kind of reports or tables etc you will have people asking you to add, remove, rearrange them. Users will get very upset that their "really important" field isn't available. And you could add this field but then the next person will come along. So give them some options to add, remove, rearrange fields so they can get what they need without coming to you first.
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#5You need to target the right audience with platform limitations, your best bet is Google Ads, Search Ads for short-term growth where SEO is not available for business growth. I write about how to grow a business https://www.growth.services/
I fail to see how google ads will get you feedback on what users want. It’s a one way medium. And at its sky high prices it’s going to be an expensive experiment at that.
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#6I've had a hard time calbrating a single UI to use. I had endorse a ton of help and none of it endorsed for critique or design, they just started correcting me on shit they made up. It was ludicrous. How do you do it? Just let them be correcting over time. This was about 5 billion different tests, over loops. Cut for flavor not spice if its gonna flap for a judgement call on someghing you didnt experience.
We all agreed no church design, fluid philosophy and ternary modes for the whole in case kids were watching while parents consume themselves a la reddit. Painstaking work to be on the disapproved side of it. How does one do it?
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#7Asking about their problems or goals is the best. In other words, don't ask about what features they want (you'll figure that out), but ask what their goal is.
Research is good, especially in helping you figure out what questions to ask and getting close to the issue, but talking to potential users is unbeatable.
I'd highly recommend 4 Steps to the Epiphany for great customer development guidance.
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#8Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#9By developing a system of pass/fail signals.
A lot of early approaches to feedback involve directly asking potential customers, or existing ones. This gives you vocal feedback, but almost all of it will be of the form "just add this and change that". And while this works in terms of incremental refinement, and can improve an existing successful product, often as not they will not be satisfied if you add this and change that with something that isn't selling - because they are not expressing the underlying issue(it is most likely too complex to grasp without pouring yourself into it, and you have to make it your job to develop that domain knowledge).
Instead look for mechanisms that let you immediately evaluate whether your quality is going up or down: "if we break our performance target that's a failure." "if we take more than two button presses to perform this action that's a failure." You can poll users to ask if this signal is the form of quality they are looking for: they will happily let you know that no, actually, the button presses are not it, it's more important that they have a certain set of views pinned front and center.
A bit of philosophical reasoning goes a long way to develop new signals: You have to spend time pondering what the problem really is and make sure you're building up a principled approach that addresses it in a broad, coherent way that informs the detailed decisions, and then get some confirmation that your principles work for the people you want to reach. Your customers will want to help, but you should expect to bear the brunt of this development effort too.
Many signals of engagement, interactions, purchasing patterns, etc. can be turned into numeric metrics and graphed. These make for good eye candy, but they tend to serve the internals of the business(e.g. cost reduction studies) better than the customers, who will still always proceed through their experience with the pass/fail model: "I didn't understand the documentation, so I gave up."
Re: Ask HN: How do you know what your users want?
#10I'm part of a small startup and we've found that most customers are happy to provide feedback and feel like they are helping craft the system with us.
One other thing we noticed is that people don't want to fill out surveys, and you can get much more insight by just sitting next to a person using the system.
As for signal/noise... try to keep the majority of users happy