Design Event 2: CX/UX Mixer: Achieving Product-Market Fit

I attended an event hosted by General Assembly Singapore and invited speakers to share about how product-market fit is one of the most important goals for a startup and how it is one of the least understood concepts. Adrian Pica, a principal product Manager from Grab shared with us his experiences and focused mainly on the minimum viable product.

A minimum viable product (MVP) is defined as the version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. The first step is to figure out the problem that needs to be solved and then start developing the MVP. The idea of the MVP is that you do not actually need to have the final product. You just need to have a method of proving that your product is highly demanded by the public. MVP is very crucial because it products do not work if creators just jump into a solution without getting users or demand for it.

MVP development is linked to the business model canvas, specifically the customer segments and value proposition. The product to be created has to have a proven value which different customer segments showing interest in the product.

Adrian shared about how Dropbox managed to capture investments through MVP. Initially Dropbox went through many pitching but were unable to get much attention from investors. However, the CEO realised that continuous pitching did not work if they could not show that people wanted their product. He did a demonstration video online about a version of the product that was not released to the public yet (Not fully working). The product proved to be useful as it gathered many viewers, and it gave him and investors confidence that the product is valued by customers.

Another way of proving product value without having the actual product itself is by using a landing page to test the value proposition. When a product is not available, it can still be “Faked” to be working. Imagine having a website that offer some services, the website gathers information and tracks the number of users entering their website. When users click sign up, and try to log in. They meet a “Sorry the product is not up yet, however, when it is up, you may use this discount code to enjoy some benefits as an early supporter!” message. It is a very smart way to test a product’s value and to check if its worth the effort to follow through and to build up the final product, at the same time, retaining possible future customers.

I feel that this is related to prototyping. A UI designer can create a prototype to prove that people need their application, without having to code up the final product. If the product is proven to not work, the company can just think of another solution without suffering much losses from hiring coders or technical people to build the product. Therefore MVP is very important in product designing and should be carried out to test if a product is worth making.

(Pictures of the event)

Design Event 1: UX and Bagels 7, User Personas

I attended a UX talk regarding user personas on the 27th of September. It was an eye opening experience for me as I learnt the importance of personas and how it helps with the design process tremendously. Personas are very controversial, where there are debates saying that they are not real or coherent (characteristics or needs of 5 people are summed up together). However, usually in the user research phase, there will be so many reasons and frustrations each user face that it seems very difficult to piece together a solution that fits all problems, therefore having a persona makes it much easier and guides you in answering the right problems.

The important parts of a persona are the needs/goals and behaviours. A persona helps designers in objectivising decisions, so instead of “What I think works”, personas will help to ask “What might work for Bob?”. The solutions that designers come up with will thus be unbiased and without influence from their own thoughts.

We had a short practice session about going to the supermarket to purchase groceries. The attendants were all split into groups and we all chipped in. We wrote our reasons for going to the supermarket, what groceries we bought, how frequently do we go to the supermarket, our behaviours while at the supermarket, what we disliked and many more. We realised that we had very similar reasons and we can group all these ideas together into specific categories, such as by convenience, preference of physical store rather than online, what we wanted to buy and by visiting frequency. We spotted that all the points we gave falls under the big categorisation of prioritisation. Some of us go because of convenience, while others go because they wanted to physically see the quality of the food before making a purchase. From the short session, I learnt that it is very productive to use sticky notes to conduct research as you can group them together easily and see where the main issues we need to address are at.

At the end of the talk, there was a networking session. I talked to a UX consultant and shared with him the problems I faced in conducting user research for assignment 2, and was curious about how they actually conducted research for their clients. He offered very helpful advice and shared that it is actually better to physically interview someone rather than doing survey as many people dread survey and may fill in falsified data just to get through the survey quickly.

A proper interview is way better in achieving quality data, however the interview must be made to be casual and comfortable for the interviewee, to allow a natural process of probing to occur. Sometimes when the interviewee is very comfortable, he or she may share things which you did not account for and might help in the design of the solution. Another thing the UX consultant advised is to have someone with you while you carry out the interview. Focus on asking the right questions while the other person should be helping you take down the important information.

He also strongly emphasised that I should prepare a list of questions which are suited for different scenarios. For example, “Have you used this functionality of the application before?” If the interviewee has never used even the application before, there should be countermeasure questions like “Why did you not use the application, tell me more. But have you heard of it? Will you consider using it now that I tell you it exist?”.

Overall the event has given me a clearer view of how the user research phase should look like and I hope to practice them in the near future.

(Some photos from the event)