I’ve been thinking about writing a book on this topic. I love running user studies!
Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
61–70 of 93 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#62You say you don't have any way to talk to them, but when I looked at your signup process, I noticed that you ask for their email so you can email them. So here are some questions and example emails you could send as conversation starters. Send it from an actual email address, not a no-reply, and allow them to email you back or contact you via chat or schedule a call. --- Hi, it's Abylay Keldibek from just-diary. It's…
If you do this, please please please include an unsubscribe option on the email that doesn't require a login to "manage email preferences".
As a user, I do not want to receive an email like this at all, but I will forgive one if I can permanently opt-out with a single-click.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#63You say you don't have any way to talk to them, but when I looked at your signup process, I noticed that you ask for their email so you can email them. So here are some questions and example emails you could send as conversation starters. Send it from an actual email address, not a no-reply, and allow them to email you back or contact you via chat or schedule a call. --- Hi, it's Abylay Keldibek from just-diary. It's…
If you do this, please please please include an unsubscribe option on the email that doesn't require a login to "manage email preferences". As a user, I do not want to receive an email like this at all, but I will forgive one if I can permanently opt-out with a single-click.
What advice can you give the OP?
What questions would you be willing to answer from someone trying to improve a service that you were using--or perhaps even paying for?
How would you like to see them phrased?
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
People really don't have any passion for talking about your solution because they don't really care about you and you should take any discussion of solutions with a large grain of salt because customers are not PMs. But people are passionate about talking about their problems and that's where you should orient your discussions on. Don't ask about your product at all during PM interviews, simply try to understand the…
Yeah they’d buy magic wands if they solved their problem. They don’t care about your solution. They care about their solution.
One frequent market research question starts with: if you had magic wand ...
I've see it at Lays, P&G, Google, Mars and others.
It seems a great trick to get humans to cast off the current status quo.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you do this, please please please include an unsubscribe option on the email that doesn't require a login to "manage email preferences". As a user, I do not want to receive an email like this at all, but I will forgive one if I can permanently opt-out with a single-click.
What advice can you give the OP? What questions would you be willing to answer from someone trying to improve a service that you were using--or perhaps even paying for? How would you like to see them phrased?
Some people are willing to give product feedback others aren't (like me). Recognise the latter quickly and don't bother them.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#66I know it sounds obvious. But if you want to talk to users, just build a little feedback mechanism to talk with users.
Write 10-30 random prompts: “what do you hate about this page”, “what do you love about this app”, “what do you wish you could do”, etc. show them the prompt and log a free form response. Simple as. We’re talking a few hours of work.
Also, find your most engaged users via your analytics and email them to do a video interview to understand how they use the product. Try to find overlaps between them that you can use to target new customers.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW I’ve had success just DMing tons of people on Discord. Asking people as a group might be tough.
People can be very relucatant to share feedback in groups for fear of their ideas being shot down publicly. I don’t understand the appeal of Discord for feedback. As a user I have to sign up, figure out your channel structure and rules and then publicly post with no context on whether what I am asking has been asked before (and there is no way I’ll spend time searching endless posts to see if it has). It’s possibly t…
There is a search field, and you can pin posts. Also about half the time people just click on my name and message me directly.
I'm on there because all of the different communities from developers to creators in this ecosystem are on there.
You are kind of implying that something like a forum or FAQ would be better. A forum would be nice but the search feature would end up making it about the same as searching a forum. But the thing is, 90% of the questions they ask are self-evident from the UI or explained in the Help section that is right on the form.
I think a lot of the people that message directly or in the chat are looking to interact with a live person as much as they are interested in the answers. They want to make sure there is someone available to help in case they run into a problem. And/or they feel like asking questions is going to be easier than having to search or read instructions that are in the web app already.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#68It is a common problem.
I think it comes from you, the builder, having spent thousands of hours on a problem (here making an electronic diary) trying to get insights from someone who have just spent a short minute thinking about the same problem.
Instead of thinking about it as "talking to your users", try to think about it as observing how your product is used, and how they work in general within the domain.
Observe them directly if you can (sit next to them and just watch them do their stuff), or indirectly e.g. by extensive application logging or maybe a screen recording tool (like hotjar).
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#69If I talk regular it is over their heads, I have to dumb it down and do some hand holding when things break. In the company I worked, I visited the users and asked them what they wanted in a wish list when I fixed their PC problems working with the help desk. Most wanted a faster program with fewer errors.
Re: Ask HN: Do you find it challenging to talk to your users?
#70As a sysadmin I do not find challenging talking to users, while sometimes I'm asking myself how can they live in our society seeing their reasoning...
However to communicate with the whole world:
- potential public it's too vast to be handled, that's the classic problem of big companies after-sale services;
- spam will be veeery abundant
IMVHO the best solution is just offer an email contact, with a good enough antispam and a large enough pool of people who read the incoming messages. Some users who do not know how to make disposable emails will probably avoid contacting you but that's a minority. Offering to register, without demanding mail/phones etc, again with aggressive policing in pruning if they prefer a personal form to communicate and still being able to read answers. Clearly state that basic accounts are created on the spot and do not demand ANY personal data, mail including, they are just ways to communicate with the public,
Those who do not want to write a real email or to sign up are not interested anyway. If your business is about scraping such cohort of users than an optional login-with-Big&Powerful (GAFAM) suffice.
Offer a VoIP/phone support for paid users might be a good idea, and a complicated one.