Product Design
Of three and half month long ‘startup and business incubation’ session I attended in Antarprerana, one idea that instantly Eureka-momented me was that of ‘End Persona Screening’ because it greatly simplified process of product development as our opinions we hold and communicate to other, many times just to show our inteligence and sophistication rather than actual problem solving do not matter. What our average end user persona is, how he spends his day, which economic situation he lives, his buying preference and his buying biases matter at the end of day.
And having accurate or trying to have accurate picture of this one persona solves the case of product design dilemma most simply and accurately.
This one Persona makes our target customer unambiguous and tangible so that all members of the founding team, and all employees, (I mean all - Financial, Legal, Research & Development, Design, Sales) are all focused on the same goal of making our target customer successful and happy. Rather than guessing what potential customers might want, we focus on what this one end user wants because we know the person well, and the person represents our target customer.
By choosing an actual end user as our this Persona, our Persona is concrete, with no room for second guessing.
Did our target customer go to college? Would our target customer be interested in a perfume or faster delivery of his retail shop goods?
Does our target customer prefer a closed software ecosystem like what AppleNs iPhone provides, or an open ecosystem like the Android mobile operating system,
or does our target customer simply want to check email reliably on the go?
We can debate these questions internally, but if our Persona is a real person, there is only one right answer.
No one end user represents 100 percent of the characteristics of every end user in our End User Profile. But as we work toward choosing our customer Persona, we will find someone who matches the profile quite well. We will then focus our product development around this individual, rather than the more general End User Profile.
How to accurately draw end user persona?
If we already have sales, an analysis of the most successful customers to date would be very valuable data. If we have not sold any product yet, then we should look at the primary market research you have done, and analyze some of the customers who showed the most interest in our potential offering.
Make sure they would actually pay for it and are not just interested. That is a BIG BIG difference- small it may seem in board room pipedreams.
The Persona is More Than Just an Exercise. The value of the Persona persists well beyond the completion of this step. The Persona should become a touch point as we think about decisions going forward.
What features should we prioritize? Drop?
How should we allocate resources?
Who should we hire to sell the product? What should our message be?
Who should we partner with? Where do we go to meet our customers?
Who is influencing our customers mindset on our product?
All of this can and should be guided by our specific understanding of the target market which is very effectively done through this Persona.
We may also find that we made errors while developing our Persona fact sheet, or that our this Persona does not adequately represent the End User Profile, so we may need to go back and revise our this Persona in an iterative fashion. The point is that the Persona build is not a one time event but rather should be visible or at least accessible to all members of the team as we move forward with our business.
But sometimes, just one end user is not enough in cases like for example , we are building client side and vendor side app. C and V might be same person but they are different personality side. So, in that case, building two end persona is enough. That gets the brain wheels running when we are designing.
Now that we are thru above process, I have found below summary graph very helpful as it sums up what actual boardroom design process looks like:
Product Launch Time
I and CTO wondered when should we exactly launch our product as there’s always some room for improvement no matter how much we slogg our brains and time in it. Then, we realized it’s not we to keep slogging our brains after having had designed workable functionality and ensuring there’s no fundamental flaws in product. It’s ultimately end users to decide as it happens often - even masterpiece painter finds his own masterpiece painting full of flaws as he knows that he has skipped finely mixing his paint that one day when he has to rush to his child’s birthday. But it may or may not come even to notice as long as painting seems good from viewer’s pov. So, ultimately, it’s user to decide.
So, we find that reddit was launched - be it beta - to among few hundred users in 2004 before even public announcment in 2005. Even facebook was brewed that way as it was launched to university students and friends of Mark Zucker. That way, even if bugs or complains/ feedbacks appear, its easy to pick up pieces again as money stakes are also less. Imagine, if we release product after 2 years of building at once to ten thousand users and bugs appear, then word of mouth bad publicity at once kills product.
Now imagine, if we release product after 1 year of building to few 500 inner circles and community and bugs appear, then we can immediately work towards feedback loop ,and then after having satisfied that 500 circles, releasing publicly to ten thousand makes it less staky because we have known and fixed where leakholes are likely to hit, where complains are likely to come.
And whenever even Facebook ambitiously launch product - recent being Thread - at once to large mass, then bad word of mouth at once kills it because they did not get to see product from end user perspective and only from boardroom genius eyes.
COCA - Number 1 Biting Factor to pre-think
MOAT - Whats yours?
PS- But it is mainly for established castles but for new castle-on-building, its mainly value proposition which others havent yet.
Hundreds of soft drinks have come and gone but Coke has still preserved it’s dominance. Other than brand identity it has carefully reinvented and reinvented since 30s, one thing is - they have not leaked that secret ingredient that gives Coke its unique flavor. So, that way, Secrecy of that unique ingredient is one of its moat.