Super fast way to develop Product for startups
Ashwin Nandihalli
End-to-End. Design thinking, building creative solutions, promoting and marketing.
If you have identified a user need or problem, you just have six months to solve it
You have just 3 months to get your first solution and another 3 months to pivot or iteratively improve the solution
Yes you cant build complex and fancy solution in 3 months!
Interestingly user is not looking for a fancy and complex solution, even thought they described it that way in a user interview.
Learn Week 1
To Know: if there is any direct competition? is there any closest service or product solving the same problem?
How: Market research
Example: Emails are hard to manage, spams, other messages hide important messages
Learn Week 2
To Know: If user has the problem or need? And how they are solving it?
How: User survey
Example: It is problem. Manually select and delete unwanted messages. It takes More than hour to do it every day.
Learn Week 3
To Know: If user knows existing solutions? What they need more from it? are they ready to pay for?
How: User Interview - users selected from User survey
Example: Create filters. It can automatically group messages. It can automatically remove spams.
Chance to Pivot:
If individual users are okay with spending time on spam cleaning instead of paying 100/month on a service which can save 30 min of theirs.
Check if companies are interested in saving theirs employees time or rather increase productivity. If yes then you have B2B opportunity. Now you have to consider both Buyer - the company and user - the employees in future product development.
Example: Red bus started as B2B solution for managing ticketing inventory and sales. But Ticket booking Agents did not wanted to loose their advantage by making inventory online. Hence transport companies too did not need it.
Red bus became Online Ticket selling agent started selling last row seats which are typically not in high demand by traditional agents.
Now Red bus has converted ticket sales to online and it also sells it first B2B ticketing inventory tool to transporters.
Learn Week 4
To Know: If existing solutions are working? What they need more from it?
How: Dairy study - 30 min catch up with users on day end and ask then questions from above
Example: What is the procedure they are following to create filters and what are the problems with them. Are they expecting a semi automatic or fully automatic email management
Build basic solution
User doesn’t care how great it looks or stable it is before it has utility
IRTCTC: It's a very basic service that does job of train ticket booking.
领英推荐
Limitations: 30-40 sec window from seat availability to booking. If user does not fill form fast or payment does not happen in time the seat is lost.
Opportunity: Know users information in advance. Know their train preference, seat preference, timing and price and help user take decision faster, fill form automatically, make payment fast.
Use what is available
Don't invent the wheel unless user wheel design is your core competency
Use what is available 3rd party tech/services: You are inventing solution and not tech. First look for any existing tech pre service which does job you are looking out for. This will help in speed of development of solution. If solution is successful with user and the 3rd party tech is guzzling most of your profit then you can set our money to build your own.
UI: https://material.io/design, https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/
Chill users would not say aah it looks like google UI so i would not use this product
Don't invest in UI, LOGO
It is time and resource intensive to have unique UI and great logo. Which does very little impact on user recall till the service or product you offer is of high utility for them.
Example: Just list out the apps or sites that offer coupons and deals. Or list out all different payment options offered in amazon or flipkart. You may have come across many and you would not remember more than 4 or 5. And what ever you remember you kind of know advantage of them.
Choose right frame work and tech
What ever tech and framework you choose should be
Build quick dirty MVP
Minimum Viable product: Prioritise the features that are crucial for user to understand and use core minimum offering.
Put together your app check internally if the app does satisfy core offering.
Validate
Testing early with actual users in actual situation is critical for all to have high utility and value to user.
If your app is useless any way user will forget it. - so no shame
If useful they will ask for improvements - you profit
PIVOT
In just 2 months you are in a place to to pivot if user is not finding your app useful. Big small all companies fail. What is critical is if we learn from failure. It can lead to your next idea. Which may turn out be more closer to what user needs.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
IMPROVE
Listen to user: if user is finding basic utility with your app. They may ask you to improve speed, pre fill something, automate some part.
Observe user: User may something but do something else. Call checkout process problem because of a third partly payment failed. Need to see what is problem and why is it. They could also over praise something take it with pinch of salt.
Dairy study: The delight may compared to their past bad experience with other product or shear non existence of such product. So if they liked something then check if they can continue to use it on regular basis. Catch up with them post every use for next few uses and know how they are feeling and what can improve.
Images are taken from https://unsplash.com/, https://unsplash.com/@claybanks