How to understand if your idea works?

How do we know if our idea is going to be successful?

After we spend our nights, weekends and put it out. Will it actually be something that people find valuable and that they will find easy to use. What are the patterns in the things that are successful?

Can we tell on the way we are building it that something would be successful? Are there ways to tell something if it is going to work or not?

Julie Zhuo describes a fantastic framework used in Facebook which consists of three questions.

Q1: What people problem are we trying to solve?

The core thing is the people while we start to think in the mentality of the company we work where we start to say things like

"The problem we are trying to solve is we are trying to optimise the click-through rate of our page "

Would this how a normal human on the street would articulate? ? 

1. It needs to be human and straight forward (No words like optimise, integrate, CTR)
2. It is solution agnostic (I am going to build an app ____ - This already has a solution in the statement) - What if the app is not the right way?
3. Our service going to be the best at ____ ( not about winning, it's about how well their problem is solved nobody cares where we are best at)
4. Gets at the "Why"

• Ex: People aren't discovering this page (doesn't go into the why) ? 
• Why people are not discovering? Is it hidden for them? confusing to find? Not about what is happening but why it is happening ??

1. Functional, Emotional Or Social

?? Problem 1:

"I want to talk to people about an interest with other people who are also interested but we dont know where to find them"

Usecase: Women who are new moms may not be able to find that community

?? Problem 2:

?? Why there is no 'dislike' button despite being the top request?

Because it is not a people problem ?

While the real problem is :

Because not everything in the news feed is likeable, I want to be able to easily express. ??

?? Problem 3:

I have a desire to share spontaneously or authentically

Cool experience shared after an hour onto Facebook, how cool is to have this experience at that moment?

Q2: How do we know if this is a real problem?

Having Quantitative evidence, Qualitative evidence and knowing if it is worth solving.

With limited time, money, resources - why should I solve this out of 10 million problems ou there.

?? Understanding Problem 1

How would you be invited to a group?

If you start a book club, you would go ahead and invite your friends to join. (Normal invite process)

Experimenting with this feature you should join - based on what your friends, community and based on recommendations you are interested in. You can decide to join or not to. (Small Feature)

One-third of the people are joining this way which validated there are a need and desire that people wanted to find things which they aren't invited too. Just that they aren't connected to any other way.

Good evidence to build a groups feature. ??

Examples :

• Physician moms group - one out of four moms of doctors in the US are a part of this group.
• Community groups - product managers, designers.
• Class reunion groups.

With research taking focus groups, it is discovered that people need help discovering groups. This led to the building of the discover feature where you can browse by category, photography, or join sports over the weekend.

?? Understanding Problem 2

Not for everything is likeable.

Speaking to a lot of users, asking them to go through the feeds and tell what is going through the mind. There should be more ways to say something.

Like button is so simple, in one gesture can scroll and say 'I like it'. There should be other ways to express other emotions.

Looking at the stickers people are using,how frequently people are leaving. What are the short comments which are dropped looking like

'Awesome', 'That Sucks'.

Something which could be done with one hand with most universal reactions lead to build the emoticons.

??Understanding Problem 3

I want to share spontaneously and authentically at the moment. This has first been built for celebrities as they live the life on the spotlight being able to broadcast live would enable to connect to fans a bit more.

Will normal users be interested in this?

First, this was launched within the Facebook office to see how people use it.

People broadcasted the team meetings with a benefit is the video is available after the broadcast.

One other thing is people have taken it for brunch on Saturday, people would chime in for a conversation.

Colleague runs and people wanted to cheer for them. This could be something that other people wanted. This was launched for some users as a test and then launched on android.

Lots of creative uses were seen like tattoo artist going 'live' in the process of tattooing.

A wedding was 'live' as family members couldn't travel a long distance and they had a feeling as they were with them.

Q3: How will we know if we have solved the problem?

Setting measurable goals

We have an idea, we built it and put it on the world. Then we have tons of data points to interpret, we read a lot of comments.

It is hard to be objective as our natural inclination is to read the good things and see that our efforts are worth it.

Better to have it before with what constitutes success for you.

Measurable doesn't always mean numbers and data it means criteria to solve.

?? Success For Facebook Groups

More people are discovering groups they are interested in through the 'discover' feature.

This could be done by flashing a button on their face and making them discover but that doesn't really count.

Success here is they engage with the group, fast forward three months they are actively using the group - reading, sharing, liking or commenting content.

?? Success For Emoticons

Not good enough to see people using emoji or leaving short comments using these.

If reactions are really lightweight we should see more people than previously using all the other set.

It was important to test in different markets to nail down a small set which is universal.

• If you are selecting from a grid of 20 it doesn't feel lightweight.
• People in certain countries won't use some reaction more.

The experience should be good for a receiver without confusion or a negative experience after a user posts something and gets reactions on his post.

That was one of the reasons they did not put the dislike button - not agreeing with point of view or with the person. People would be confused by a research.

Emotions are being understood by the people who post is important as well.

I want to spontaneously or authentically share at the moment

?? Success For Facebook Live

• People who broadcast live have a good experience and broadcast again.
• Time spent watching live video increases.

Is it really a good product if people are not watching it?

Broadcasters won't do it if people don't watch. So it is important to measure time spent on videos going up as well and surveys were launched to research.

?? Conclusion

Finally not building for our team or company is important, the second thing is knowing if it is a real problem to understand and a good problem to solve. Clearly looking at what success looks like.

Hearing "Julie Zhuo" it haunted me to write this down. I'm grateful for her for helping me with this perspective. Take a moment to thank Julie if you got some value :)

I truly wish I could interview her one-day.

? #DreamsDoComeTrue