

Ask HN: Favorite product question during development - dustinlakin

I just started asking potential users questions about the product I am building.<p>What is your favorite and most useful question to ask?<p>Do you like to ask more open ended questions or specific questions?<p>About how long will you talk (or chat) with them?
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Gertig
I like to ask if "this" solves a big problem for them, if it makes their life
easier. Is it something they feel compelled to use once they have started
using. It can get dicey when you ask too many hyper focused questions as you
can get people who are way down in the weeds on certain features but then
again you don't want to miss out on a pearl of an idea. It truly is a
balancing act.

It really depends how long I talk to each person, some people you can tell
pretty early on are going to be very helpful and I try my best to get them to
talk to me as long as I can. One thing I always try to do is record those
conversations, with permission, in order to come back to later and take better
notes on what was said.

Watching people use your app can be illuminating too but it can also be a bit
misleading because people won't always act/interact with your site/app the way
they normally would because they are being watched.

Good luck with customer development, it's fun/rewarding/daunting.

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dustinlakin
Thanks for the response. I am excited to jump into more of it and will start
trying out things like seeing how people use my very early stage product.

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keenahn
What problem are you solving? What stage are you at in development? Are you
looking for basic validation of your idea or getting validation for potential
features/tweaks?

If you are still early on, I would start with "What do you use currently to
________?" Where the blank is the problem you're trying to solve better than
it is currently being solved.

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dustinlakin
Honestly my product is more of a vitamin that a pain killer. But I am striving
to make the it a product that enhances something that they already do. It is
mostly built out, but I am finding that this is going to be a great way to
find good beta users as well.

