Interviewing Customers No. 2

1) Fine tune your opportunity. You began with an idea of what an opportunity might be. After your first round of interviews, what do you think, now? 

To be honest the idea sort of turned slightly to the left.  A motivational goals program (Streaks) is already available and I wonder if the idea of making it 'better' really fills a gap.  I do believe that the gap still exists and at the very least deserves some more white boarding.  

2) Fine tune the "who." Did you talk to the right customers last time? What did you do differently this time? How did you adjust your conceptualization of who your customers are?

Conceptually the customers would be everyday people; but probably geared more towards a younger market.  It seems that there is a bell curve of interest in longer term goals between college and retirement years and we would look to capitalize on the people that are headed up that curve. 

3) Tweaking your interview questions. You might need to ask different kinds of questions to get at a fuller, richer idea of what your opportunity is. What kind of changes did you make?

Some one gave em the feedback to ask more open ended questions and I took their advise to heart.  Some of the best interview questions are a trap; they ask for an open ended response and in turn provide the interviewer with multiple inferences of insight. 

4) Go talk to customers! This is the same deal as last time: 5 people, you can't know them, you must video record them.

Interview 1

Interview 2a

Interview 2b

Interview 3

Interview 4

Interview 5

5) Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. You now have 10 interviews under your belt. What do you think about your opportunity now that's different from where you started?  

It's actually harder to interview people for this product then I would have thought.  I have a ton of experience doing interviews at work but I've been seasoned into the questions I want to ask and the answers that I would expect.  This was much more challenging because of the amount of variation and the unfamiliarity with the responses. 

6) Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. You're practically an expert on interviewing customers. Please write three tips that you'd like to offer students in this class next semester about interviewing customers.

1. Be open ended! The best interview question I've ever come to ask (and have now asked over 200 times) is "Do you take enough time to make a decision?" You would be amazed at the answers I get to this question. 
2. Find a wide group to start and narrow it based on your responses.  You may have an idea of your customer base when you begin and then realize through the process of interviewing that some of the folks in your group are just the wrong people. 
3. Don't help with the answers.  I found my self a few times saying "you know like this" and the person would latch onto what I said and roll with it.  The less you interact in the answer the better and you don't want to corrupt your test.  If you find people getting confused as to how to answer you may want to rewrite the questions.