1) Find an
opportunity: with all the new rage being fitness
and exercise trackers; my idea was for a similar ‘tracker’ that incentivized
people to perform day to day actions towards their longer term goals.
2)
Figure out who might have the unmet need. The reality anyone
can have the need for an application such as this. There are any number of ages and lifestyles
that have long term goals but do not have the fortitude to last through all of
the micro successes required to reach them.
3)
Come up with a list of questions.
a. What are the most common daily / weekly
tasks (chores) that you complete on a recurring basis?
b. Do you find it difficult to juggle your
day to day tasks (dry cleaning, laundry, bills, etc)?
c. Do you find that you’ll spend more time
than necessary performing routine chores (grocery shopping, bank trips, dry
cleaning)?
d. If you could guarantee that you would
complete a longer term goal (lose weight, finish school, etc.) what would it
be?
e. Do you (typically) find it difficult to be
motivated to complete long term goals?
f. Are you motivated by small successes
(crossing things off the list)?
g. How likely would you be to “outsource”
mundane chores (housekeeping, grocery shopping, etc.)?
h. How likely would you be to “outsource”
planning for longer term goals?
i. What applications; if any, do you use on a
consistent basis?
j. Are there application features that stand
out to you as exceptional?
4)
Go talk to customers!
5)
Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. There are actually
quite a few things that I learned from the opportunity. First; I ran into several people (even millennials?!?)
who couldn’t really articulate their favorite apps or what features they loved
about them. Also, only about 50% of people actually said that reaching longer
term goals was difficult for them.
6)
Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. Interviewing
customers wasn’t extremely difficult. I
met with many people that I interface with somewhat irregularly (admins at my daughter’s
karate class, our baby sitter, the lady at the whole food store…) I think that
I need to spend a lot more time on my questions and that it will take a long
time to really analyze the answers to turn them into a great idea.
The opportunity that you selected was one that there should be some people that would want to use it. On the positive side, ½ of the people that you interviewed had difficultly in reaching long term goals. Perhaps as time goes on you can revise your questions so that they will take less time to analyze and come to a conclusion. If you can come with an idea, so can someone else.
ReplyDeleteFell free to visit my blog at http://princeofentrepbyme.blogspot.com/
Hi Kenneth, I see where you're coming from with your interviews. You want to get ideas from the people as your opportunity which I don't think it's a bad thing at all. You have a great post so if you have the time check out mine http://hungtma.blogspot.com/2016/01/customer-interviews-no-1.html
ReplyDeleteHi Kenneth!
ReplyDeleteI found your questions very interesting and you could tell each person could respond in their own way. My tip for next time would be to follow Dr. Prior’s advice of potentially not having a set of questions and going more off their experiences to get more elaboration and longer responses. Your post was extremely easy to follow and it seems like a great idea going forward!
Here’s a link to my blog if you’re interested: http://michellekelleyuf.blogspot.it
Thanks for sharing!
Hey Kenneth! I thought your questions were really intuitive and worthy of more interviews. You did a great job on the interviews but it would also be nice to see you in them as well! I feel like there would be more interaction between the customer and you, rather than them being self conscious of the camera. Overall, I thought you did a great job and you made it seem effortless! You are welcome to check out my interviews as well! http://cindyblogs4u.blogspot.com/2016/01/customer-interviews-no-1.html
ReplyDelete