It’s easy to think you already do continuous product discovery. Most of the teams that I work with come into coaching thinking that they don’t need help. They’ve read the industry books, they attend the popular product conferences, and they follow all the leading blogs. They’ve got this. And they aren’t wrong. Most product teams […]
The Ladder of Evidence: Get More Value From Your Customer Interviews and Product Experiments
One of the best signs of an effective product team is a regular cadence of customer interviews and product experiments. But it’s not enough to simply check the box on these activities; we need to make sure that we do them effectively. Without a strong background in research methods, it’s hard to know how you […]
Why You Are Asking the Wrong Customer Interview Questions
I recently asked a woman what factors she considered when buying a new pair of jeans. She didn’t hesitate in her answer. She said, “Fit is my number one factor.” That seems reasonable. It’s hard to find a pair of jeans that fit well. I then asked her to tell me about the last time […]
How to Take Notes During Customer Research Interviews
For those of you following along, I’ve been conducting interviews to understand the life of a product manager. If you need to catch up, you can see my initial call for participants here and my breakdown of how I am selecting participants here. I’ll be blogging about both how I conduct the research and the […]
Why You Are Probably Interviewing the Wrong People (And How to Fix It)
Last Wednesday I put out this call to product managers to participate in a research study about the life of a product manager. I am overwhelmed by the response. In the first 48 hours, I have 90 responses. I was initially thinking that I would interview 9–12 people. But now, I’m excited to make this […]
Ask About the Past Rather Than the Future
At SXSW this year, I met a startup founder, a former fitness trainer, who was about to launch an online business offering personalized gym workouts. I liked that he had first-hand experience as a personal trainer and wasn’t just a gym rat. But I was surprised when he struggled with my first question. I asked […]
How To Develop Your Active Listening Skills
Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with someone about what was said? Perhaps you and one of your coworkers watched a user interview and you walked away with two different interpretations. Why does this happen? We’ve already been introduced to the ladder of inference when we discussed finding common ground with engineers. It’s relevant here as […]
5 Steps For How To Develop Empathy
Empathy made my list of Top 7 Traits of a Good Product Manager. So let’s take a look at what it is and how to develop it. As we learned in that article, empathy is the ability to feel another person’s feelings. It is often confused with sympathy. If you injure yourself and I feel […]
