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Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#61

Post by linkjuice4all »

You’re at the end of a long and well-monied line of people (read: pharma companies) that want to get the attention of health care professionals. Lifetime customer value of patients can be extremely high so healthcare companies will spend (within legal limits) a lot of money to influence doctors.

Doctors know this - and they do take advantage of it from time to time. But you’re competing with a lot of money for highly valuable time. Maybe consider going where doctors go (e.g. conferences) and bothering them there?

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#62

Post by notatoad »

>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn

put another way, you're asking people to take some of their time to teach you. I'm assuming that if you were offering compensation for this time you'd have mentioned it.

getting a 1% interview rate for an ask like that is exceptional. especially considering the people you're asking are known for being extremely busy, and you're asking from outside their industry.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#64

Post by UltimateFloofy »

physicians only have 10 minutes with their patients. How much time are you taking from them? On the rare chance they are looking to learn more about tech, they'll probably be going to health events where they're practically wined and dined to be there.

What city are you in? There must be a health tech meeting of some sort near you. I live in Austin and I run one with 400 members, but there are 5 others programming meetups all the time. pharma, billers, techs, and nurses shouldn't be forgotten either!

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#65

Post by neom »

I found the 20 people I needed to talk to.

I found out where they worked.

I called the public number.

I asked to talk to them.

I explained I was thinking about starting a startup and I needed some help thinking through some ideas.

2 of them told me they couldn't give me the time. 15 gave me a longer than 1 hour call at a later date, 3 of them let me fly out to them and spend a day with them.

Took me about 5/6 months.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#66

Post by vosper »

neom wrote: post #65

I found the 20 people I needed to talk to. I found out where they worked. I called the public number. I asked to talk to them. I explained I was thinking about starting a startup and I needed some help thinking through some ideas. 2 of them told me they couldn't give me the time. 15 gave me a longer than 1 hour call at a later date, 3 of them let me fly out to them and spend a day with them. Took me about 5/6 months.

How did it work out? Did you get useful information and start a successful business?

Of so is the business still doing what you thought it would be doing after you’d done those interviews?

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#67

Post by CodeWriter23 »

yr1337 wrote: post #54
KingOfCoders wrote: post #21

Don't. Watch them do their work, or let them describe their work. From my coaching practice, people are not very good identifying there real pain point. My back hurts, but my back isn't broken, I just sit too much.

It's something I used to do internally at my previous employer, and I know it's very useful. In this case I would have to convince a doc to let me follow them around and that's an immense ask. It's also going to miss systemic, intangible issues that are not task related. It's a great thing to do for an already-established product.

You must have a doctor somewhere in your network 1 degree of separation away. Get a friend to ask for a favor to invite the doctor to a meal at a nice place, your treat. Be up front about your intent. At the right time, pitch to the doctor the idea of interacting on the job with doctor and/or staff. And don't promise the doctor any equity. Maybe free access to the product.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#68

Post by disposition2 »

WWLink wrote: post #63

Really dumb foolish suggestion? Check volunteer opportunities at your local hospital or health clinics.

I don’t find this at all foolish. I agree and while OP is looking for doctor input, a better avenue might be leveraging nurses as a seed point and growing from there. As (and this isn’t meant as a slight) grunt workers can be more open to sharing hardships and a good entry point for moving up the chain if they find your argument/solution as valid.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#69

Post by obmelvin »

yr1337 wrote: post #51
jcims wrote: post #35

>I'm pretty clear I'm just looking to learn/listen and not pitch. They have no reason to trust you. I would think you're just looking for an angle to sell me on no matter what you say. You might try attending/crashing medical conferences in the area. You could also talk to folks on the periphery of the healthcare industry to look for opportunities. One that I experienced personally is the difficulty in matching a spe…

You hit the nail on the head on BOTH points. They do not trust me (why would they) and they think it's a sales tactic. I couldn't be purer in my intentions, but people are on the defensive. And your pain point is actually one I've heard firsthand. Got a few ideas and connections in this area.

Whether you can see this POV or not, I'd consider that from their perspective you are trying to sell them something. You are trying to sell them on the notion that they should give their time to you for free and they should give you insight to start a company that would be lucrative for yourself. The value trade is actually even less equal than being sold something.

I'm not trying to be rude or insulting, but thinking you have pure intentions doesn't change this.

Some people might have the time or interest in the hope that you can one day make their work easier. So overall I understand why you are asking this question and I'm sure the advice people have given here will help you make some stronger connections to people in this cohort.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ask users about their pain point?

#70

Post by anu7df »

I am sure you are already doing this and the "what their pain point is" phrasing of this post is only for succinctness. In my experience, asking a practitioner about their pain point is seldom the starting point for an unbiased conversation. It can often lead to a freezing of ideas while they try to look and find such pain points, but more importantly here, you are asking them to have identified the problem in a way. Far more effective would be to completely eliminate the word pain point and focus on descriptives like longest or most error prone task, only as confirmation ,after observing for a while. Again I am quite sure from the later description of your question that you are doing something like this, but putting this out there to emphasize the importance of it.
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