✦Business · 13 records · for a shared workspaceTalk to customers

Customer research collapses into either nothing or a survey. This commits to a specific number of real conversations, keeps the questions consistent enough to compare, and makes writing up the findings a task rather than a hope.

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✦ Everything it creates

The whole plan, before you install it

Goal

Twelve real conversations, written up Month 2

A number, so it happens. Findings written where others can read them.

Set it up Week 3

Consistent questions, so the answers can be compared.

  • Write the question this research has to answerDo firstDay 3
  • Write the interview guide, about their past not their futureDo firstDay 10
  • Line up the first six peopleWeek 3

Talk and write up Month 2

The write-up is what makes it evidence rather than opinion.

  • Do the first six conversationsDo firstWeek 5
  • Do the second sixWeek 7
  • Write up the findings with quotes, and share themDo firstWeek 8

Routines

  • Two conversationsweekly
  • Write up notes the same dayweekly
Skills
  • User researchBeginner → Intermediate

    Interviewing is a skill and improves quickly with reps. Logged hours here are what stop the first six conversations being the practice ones every time.

✦ It comes with a note

Ask about what they did

People predict their own future behaviour badly and describe their past behaviour well. The difference between those two questions is most of the value in an interview.\n\nResearch that lives in one person's memory gets cited as opinion and argued with. Written up with quotes it is evidence, which is the only form in which it changes a decision.

✦ Questions

Talk to customers, answered.

Around a dozen for most questions, which is where the same answers start recurring. Fewer and you are generalising from anecdotes; many more and you are usually delaying a decision you could already make.
About what they did, not what they would do. People predict their own future behaviour badly and describe their past behaviour well, and the difference between those two questions is most of the value in an interview.
Because research that lives in one person's memory gets cited as opinion and argued with. Written up with quotes, it is evidence the whole team can use, which is the only form in which it changes decisions.
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