How is the user requirement confirmed?

A new entrepreneur, in the reflection of their own entrepreneurial process, said: "How to make customers interested in using your product, the answer is only rigid requirements,". As for what is "strong demand" "Hard demand" and "weak demand" "soft demand" difference, you can participate in this article "How to distinguish between soft and hard demand?" The question of "How startups identify users ' needs" is a matter of what layers: (in the case of limited resources and data), if the target user is confirmed by , how to confirm the needs of the target users, and identify which requirements are ours (based on existing resources) Can be satisfied?

Let's be clear: questionnaires don't help you find the needs. Because all questionnaires are based on current technologies and current markets, this is appropriate for mature industries such as shampoo, and not for startups with most innovative businesses, especially disruptive innovations (disruptive innovation). Because customers are not familiar with your skills and ideas, they can't even understand your intentions. Before the invention of the ipod, the vast majority of users will never understand why to put one months of listening songs into his MP3 player, so the market survey will tell you that most users just have enough music to take a day's commute--if Joe really does this He obviously lost the chance to make today's apple.

Also be clear that the customer's needs are unlimited, your resources are limited, you have to do is not to investigate the needs of all target market customers, and make a selection. On the contrary, you need to use your limited resources to find a breakthrough and selling point quickly, to find a market worthy of deep.

The first step is to make a very rough prototype with the quickest way to start your business. This prototype is even an empty shell (software user interface, or cardboard hardware prototype), let your team use it, put yourself in a very demanding customer's perspective, and see if it will accept ( Not the interface itself, but the expressive function? Improved design with fast iterations. For example, on the Kickstarter on the Android very famous game platform Ouya, their game handles, is the first wood to do a quick prototype, in the internal trial. What is the purpose? At an early stage, the more expensive it is to find out the deficiencies of the product, the later the errors and deficiencies are found.

The second step is to find a few atypical customers who are creative and willing to play with you, and make a prototype with a simple core function and ask them to try it out. It is not easy to find such a customer, can have a variety of ways, such as the promise of the first batch of products out of free to them. But first of all these customers must be atypical, extreme customers. For example, Ouya will invite some game masters to play. For example, the founder of the following Ouya, with a game player to play together. These customers are extremely valuable, they will not only point out a lot of places you do not consider, to help you expand your ideas, and even help you knock out the original design! In this process you should observe the behavior of these extreme clients, not only listen to them, but also wonder why they do it. On this basis you can find a lot of new requirements, and even the unique selling point of the product, because many customer needs are not aware of customers themselves.

The third step, according to the above requirements analysis, and then feedback back, make new improvements, and further improve the product. That means repeating the first and second steps. Until it's pretty sure this is what the client wants, and the product can be tested in public. (You can see the extreme users you find to accompany you to go this journey, how valuable they are!) The basic functionality is stabilized, but there are a lot of bugs that don't matter, because the next thing you need to do is look for more customer verification requirements than debug.

In the fourth step, you can look for a broader group of friendly test users to learn more about the needs by watching and listening. At this time most of the requirements are more subtle, such as (the color of the remote I do not like) and so on, if there is a major change in demand, you need to make trade-offs, because it is very expensive to make improvements. Ask questions with open questions, why, what, where, abound, how, and so on, rather than just asking: do you like it? Such a retarded question.

The fifth step, is really the product to do stability, the arrangement of market promotion and so on routine process.

The whole idea of the process is to target a group of extreme users first, by looking at the prototype, gradually digging deep into the demand, to find the product selling point and new market demand, in the process as far as possible to put the major improvements early, rather than targeting the mass market, to do a product that everyone can think of. This is more challenging for Chinese start-ups because the Chinese don't like to express their ideas. Therefore, it is more necessary to understand the needs of customers through observation and open questions.

Hope to enlighten you.