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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?

#91

Post by wanderingmind »

mikesabat wrote: post #75

While the hustle is admirable, I think you could use more creativity on the outreach plan. Doctors are likely one of the most harried professions in the world. Cold emails to these folks are not going to work well. You have to find a way to network. Look at how pharma reps do it. Attractive people, coming into the office and bring lunch. Where can you put yourself in a spot to meet and talk to a high percentage of do…

Volunteer at a hospital seems like an amazing win-win. While doing something useful for society they can get to meet potential customers (doctors). Do you know of any resources that talk about such creative outreaches done by different entrepreneurs. I would love to read something like this.

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

#93

Post by COMPOSITION »

1. Pay the professional board (by specialty) for access to their listserv. They will send out the email for you. Can be pricey.

2. You can host a booth at/attend a medical conference, and hand out or display QR code links to a survey with the interview questions.

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

#95

Post by dewey »

yr1337 wrote: post #11
codingdave wrote: post #2

You might have incorrect expectations - if you are scraping contact info from LinkedIn and getting any responses at all, you are doing well. 25% connections and 1% interview rates sounds like you are doing great.

Could be that as well. Maybe someone else will chime in with their numbers so I can get a reality check. I'm doing everything almost manually right now so it's not efficient.

"Do things that don't scale" (https://paulgraham.com/ds.html) is probably also fine in the idea finding stage. At least then you are quicker to pivot than if you spend a lot of time optimizing the process and it still allows you to do a more personal approach instead of a copy paste outreach.

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

#96

Post by datascienced »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #37
esafak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's he going to watch doctors do their work? Have you ever seen vendors sit in on your appointments?

Personally not in appointments, but I have seen vendors observe doctors in hospitals. But you can always role play for example.

A pain point I noticed recently just visiting a hospital as a patient was not being able to find stuff! ECG pad thingies in this case. But they handled it so jovailly maybe it was a positive lol for a dreary night shift.

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

#97

Post by datascienced »

recursive4 wrote: post #81

Skip hospital doctors because they don't make purchasing decisions. Doctors who own their own practice either outright or as a group partner are actually very easy to interview: in the US (assuming where you're located) there are at least a dozen within each county. Have you tried door-to-door? I helped a friend with healthcare customer discovery interviews for a few months, and it's surprisingly effective.

Hold on! It is hard for me (not in US) to get a walk in appointment when actually sick. And they will have reception staff that wont take BS, so what is the play? Is it literally lobby at closing time and catch them on the way to the car?

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

#98

Post by ativzzz »

datascienced wrote: post #97
recursive4 wrote: post #81

Skip hospital doctors because they don't make purchasing decisions. Doctors who own their own practice either outright or as a group partner are actually very easy to interview: in the US (assuming where you're located) there are at least a dozen within each county. Have you tried door-to-door? I helped a friend with healthcare customer discovery interviews for a few months, and it's surprisingly effective.

Hold on! It is hard for me (not in US) to get a walk in appointment when actually sick. And they will have reception staff that wont take BS, so what is the play? Is it literally lobby at closing time and catch them on the way to the car?

Not quite, they are small business owners. Small businesses need revenue to stay afloat, so they like to make and save money. You can target them like any other small business. Ask for the person around with the most authority (doc is probably with patients), tell them you can save them money and how you can do it or to see if they can set up a meeting of some kind with their business manager (whoever that is), hopefully they pass it on to their boss.

At least this is my naive understanding

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

#99

Post by collingreen »

ametrau wrote: post #44
umvi wrote: post #38

Get an actual job in the domain and you'll quickly discover all the pain points. For example, become a medical physicist or dosimetrist and try working in a cancer clinic. Asking to shadow random medical professionals won't work well unless you have a friend on the inside greasing the wheels.

This is great advice because it works for so many professions. Want to make a product for lawyers? Go to law school and be a lawyer for 10 years. Bam. Next question.

This response is kind of funny but it actually really highlights the wrong way to think about these things as well. The suggestion isn't to have a career in medicine it is to get your boots on the ground. You have to find a clever way to get a vast amount of hands on experience quickly. For lawyers the equivalent won't be going to law school it might be doing transcription or office tasks or secure courier work or being an EA or volunteering at the DA office or some other clever hack.

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

#100

Post by irridiance »

We’ve been developing niche medical software successfully for some decades.

First, it helps that it’s niche—it avoids the “make healthcare better with electronic healthcare records” space, which can only but descend into making a much of text boxes available on a screen and promising that AI will do… something…

Second, we will listen to our clients, and probe their needs. But we’re most successful when we observe our clients. When we’re not in the thick of it, we have more space to ask “does it have to be this way?” We work very hard to formulate the problem so that a piece of software is not the default solution.

Few of the pain points are “exciting” or “glamorous”. But anything that means the practitioner is spending more time with the patient is a big win, even if it means applying some very boring technology.

Best of luck.

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