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Transcript of Create a product vision - Transcripts.pdf
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START AUDIO
Devin: Before we can jump in to actually designing the product we want to
create, we need to set up what we call the product vision. The
product vision is a way that we capture basically the goal of the
exercise we’re embarking on. This could be creating a whole new
app from scratch or maybe taking a really well established piece of
software and adding some new functionality to it.
It’s really important that either you or everyone you’re working with
has the same goal. That’s what the product vision does. A product
vision is made up of a lot of different components but we’ll be
discussing three main ones: a problem statement, which helps you
focus on what problem you’re trying to solve. Personas, which help
you capture the types of people you’re trying to help. Finally,
feature lists, which help you start brainstorming what the app needs
to do.
Throughout this section we’re going to be looking at collecting
information from our own minds and from the people that we’re
trying to help.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision - Introduction
Duration: 0:00:56
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/course/view.php?id=5§ion=3
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START AUDIO
Devin: You might be wondering, we’re learning all the product
development but am I going to be building a product myself. The
answer is yes. Throughout this course you’re going to be creating
your own little product along with all the learnings. What you’re
going to be creating is a mobile app that helps people buy coffee
online.
Now, you might be curious, what kind of customers will use an app
like that or what kind of influences or knowledge do I need to know
to create an app that’s useful? Well thankfully, you’re now going to
watch a case study, an interview, with Stephen Rapoport, the
founder and CEO of Pact Coffee. Stephen started this company to
help people easily buy coffee for their home.
In this interview he’s going to explain his motivations behind this
company, what they had to build to make it work, what the first
version of his product was like so pay attention. All this information
will be excellent to help you frame your work. In a nutshell you’re
going to be stepping into the shoes of a product manager at Pact
Coffee so pay attention.
Stephen: I’m Stephen Rapoport and I’m the founder of pactcoffee.com. We
stop you from running out of coffee that you love so we’ll send you
packs of coffee, roasted and ground to suit your brew method in
letter box friendly packaging on a subscription. We find out the
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Problem Statement – Interview: Pact Coffee
Duration: 0:05:31
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=442
CREATED BY
kinds of coffee you love, we’ve got a recommendation algorithm
that learns your pallet and how often you need a bag and we’ll send
it to you that often.
It’s really varied actually, we’ve got a few different groups that
we’ve noticed really, really love us. Broadly speaking, it’s coffee
drinkers who have drunk awesome fresh third wave, as it’s called,
bought awesome coffee in a café but are still make themselves
slightly shitty supermarket coffee at home. So sometimes that’s
students, young professionals, people my age and even the older
demographics. We’ve got a few Saga type customers out there as
well. Coffee is quite a universal product so I guess we don’t have
that one tight demographic right now.
I had recently sold my previous business which was called
Crashpadder and I decided to do something in coffee. I didn’t know
what but I followed some good friend’s excellent advice. In fact,
Paul Graham, I love his idea of solve your own problem perfectly
and then go and find out if anyone else has the same problem. That
was this business.
On day one it was your grind. We sold coffee by post, it was a rigid
subscription either a bag every seven days or a bag every 14. The
reason for that was my wife travels a lot for work. When she’s in the
country we get through a bag a week and when she’s not we get
through a bag a fortnight. Obviously shortly after launching I
realised that that was far too rigid and that really was just me and a
small handful of other people.
We built a lot of flexibility around the delivery, introduced a wider
range of coffees and actually changed the positioning quite a lot so
that it was targeting not just speciality coffee drinkers but the mass
market as well. It was really good fun. I’m non-technical as a
founder. I’m that guy. I worked with a couple of freelancers that I
know, Namit & Barnaby, who are absolutely awesome MVP
prototypers.
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We sat together in my flat. It took 48 hours to build and launch the
first site. We wrote all of the copy, took the photos, mainly on
iPhone, wireframed the whole thing and got some really basic
functionality and super basic, to the extent that actually if you
requested additional bags, it was so basic we didn’t even increase
the amount that we charged you. If you skipped a bag we still
charged you anyway and then we had to figure it out, apologise by
email and refund it.
Yes, we got together and we came up with two broad hypotheses,
one that people would be really turned on by the idea that they
could drink coffee that was better than they’d ever had before, the
other was that they’d never run out again. Two versions of the
home page with different copy on, launched both to see which
would resonate better and just started signing people up.
From concept to first 695 of revenue was 48 hours, which I’m really
proud of. One of the earliest surprises was that people didn’t want a
weekly delivery, they wanted to skip a bag or request one
straightaway. It was either 7, 14 or 30 days at the time and I
thought, “That’s going to cover 90% of people’s coffee habits,” and
it doesn’t at all. It covers about 5 because the difference between a
bag every 14 days and every 15 days is actually really significant
for a customer.
It’s the difference between having one bag of coffee in your
cupboard and two. Two is a pain in the ass. The other huge one
was that I wasn’t stopping speciality coffee drinkers from running
out of coffee. I mean if we’d launched that business and stuck with
that goal, I think we probably would have hit our addressable
market at this stage, whereas instead I realised that whilst everyone
loves this coffee when they make it for themselves for the first time,
most people aren’t going to try it.
CREATED BY
The major opportunity for Pact is introducing this coffee to
everyone else, not selling this coffee to people who are
drinking it already. If I could give myself one piece of advice
on day one of starting the business, it would be to not look for
data to inform the product development decisions but rather
let customers drive those decisions and use KPIs to measure
how well you solve what customers are asking for.
Devin: Perfect, thanks very much, Stephen.
Stephen: Pleasure.
END AUDIO
CREATED BY
START AUDIO
Devin: The first thing to do when you’re starting on a new product idea is to
create what we call the problem statement. The problem statement
is just a simple sentence that sums up what the whole purpose of
this exercise is. Why are we trying to make this product in the first
place? A problem statement is made up of three parts: the goal of
the product, the problem the product is trying to address and a
specific but ambiguous request towards a solution.
To make sense of this, let’s look at this as an example. If we were
product designers at Instagram in the early days, our problem
statement might look something like this: Instagram is designed to
allow people to share snapshots of their life online. Current
solutions are meeting this by not allowing people to share just little
micro photos but everything they take at once. How might we
improve photo sharing online to allow for a more social experience?
This problem statement takes these three major parts into account.
It talks about what product you’re trying to create. It talks about
what problem you’re trying to solve and it mentions why the current
solutions are not meeting people’s goals.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Problem statements – Create a problem statement
Duration: 0:01:04
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=442&pageid=333
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START AUDIO
Devin: Now that we’ve created our problem statement, we’re going to
create what we call personas. Personas are sketches, not so much
of our product, but of the customers we’re trying to help. Personas
are great tools because a pitfall that many young product designers
often fall into it that they design a product for themselves rather
than for the actual people they want to help.
Persons are great tools that capture information about potential
customers, helping get the assumptions you have about your
customers on to a piece of paper so other people can see it and
basically help you make design decisions less abstract. Instead of
arguing about, “I think we should do this,” it’s more so, “I think this
customer wants to do this”. That makes it an easier conversation for
anyone involved.
There is a big warning label though attached to personas that you
must heed. Personas are not about inventing a perfect person to
make a product for. Personas are about capturing real people.
When we start creating personas in the following assignments, it’s
not about making up somebody, it’s about taking data that you have
from your experiences, from interviews or from market research
and translating that into an easy to consume format. Personas are
sketches but they’re sketches of real life.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Introduction to personas
Duration: 0:01:11
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=444
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START AUDIO
Devin: Creating a persona is easy even in ultra-professional settings like a
digital agency or really mature start-up. They’re still made with just
a simple marker and a piece of paper. To create a persona, we
want to capture factual information about our customer and things
that they do in their day to day life that relate back to the product
we’re trying to create.
All we have to do to do this is simply draw two lines on the piece of
paper to divide it into four sections. On this half we’re going to
capture facts about their life, who they are, how old they are, how
much money they make, what kind of mobile phone they use,
things like that.
On this half we’re going to capture their behaviours and goals. The
behaviours are things they do in their day-to-day life that relate
back to a product. Their goals are things that they want to be able
to do that maybe our product can help them with.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Anatomy of a persona – Video 1
Duration: 0:00:48
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=444&pageid=335
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START AUDIO
Devin: Let’s create a persona together real quick. Let’s go back to the
Instagram example we used in the problem statement and let’s look
at a customer that a young Instagram might want to have. Come
and meet Carl. Now, Carl is a made up person in the sense that he
doesn’t exist, but all the points on Carl’s persona came from
interviews with real people.
Who is Carl? Well Carl is this guy in a cool hat. Carl is 29 years old,
he works at a digital agency. He makes £29,000 a year and he has
an iPhone but he works on a PC. We can then go over to
behaviours and goals which is the more interesting section of the
persona.
Behaviours are things that he already does in his day to day life.
These are bits of information that you could glean from interviews
or your own experience or observing other people in the real world.
It turns out that Carl snaps a lot of photos on his phone and he
often shares those photos via email with his boss at the agency, his
creative director or just with friends.
He also uses photos a mood board. As an employee at a digital
agency, he often sees stuff that he likes, snaps a photo and saves it
for later. His goals are things that he wants to be able to do, or
something you should glean from interviews that seems like it
would help them in his life. In this case, because he shares photos
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Creating personas
– Video 2
Duration: 0:01:59
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=444&pageid=335
CREATED BY
often via email, we think he wants to be able to share photos with
friends and with colleagues.
We also found that he likes to follow thought leaders, he gets lots of
design magazines and he reads lots of news boards so following
what’s happening in the design world is really important. You might
notice that as a snapshot, this doesn’t talk at all about having a
mobile app that takes photos or anything like that, but it does
capture the wants and desires of a customer really well. That’s the
power of a persona.
This persona only took about a minute to sketch up but it took a
couple of days of research to build. In the upcoming assignment
you’re going to see interviews with three real people talking about
their experiences around coffee. From that you’re going to create a
persona from each one. Good luck.
END AUDIO
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START AUDIO
Customer 1: I work at a start-up in London. I’m in design, so I do creative things.
I have an iMac and an iPhone, so I tend to be glued to my phone all
the time. At about 10 o’clock this morning. I got it at work.
Devin: Did you make it yourself or…?
Customer 1: I did make it myself, yes.
Devin: Fantastic. What kind of coffee was it?
Customer 1: It was a V60.
Devin: So that filter coffee?
Customer 1: Filter coffee, yes.
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Assignment:
Personas – Customer Interview 1
Duration: 0:01:04
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/page/view.php?id=445
CREATED BY
Devin: Perfect.
Customer 1: I tend to make cafetiere at home. I tend to mostly just drink it on the
weekend, really. I live with a shared house so I tend to make a big
cafetiere and we all drink coffee together. I get it delivered to my
house.
I love coffee, I like the emotions that come with it. It’s kind of like my
moment, I can make my coffee and just give myself five minutes off.
I quite enjoy my coffee moments. It’s just my five minutes to just
chill out and have a good cup of coffee. It’s definitely a necessity.
Devin: Perfect, thank you.
END AUDIO
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START AUDIO
Customer 2: I’m Tom, 22, and I work up at a startup as a digital marketer in
online growth. iPhone 5, MacBook Pro, and that’s pretty much it,
day to day.
It must have been last Friday at work. I don’t drink over the
weekends. I rarely make coffee at home, so it’s mainly just in the
workplace. I get it from the [pacts] online website, shipped through
the post. It’s usually through a V60 so it’s the drip method, just
because it’s so easy. It’s a quick thing in the morning, always
before lunchtime, just to get me in the mood, to get working.
Nothing more than that. It’s never a craving, it’s just a habit that I’ve
got into. Probably to have it with a few more people, rather than just
on my own at the kitchen desk. To actually make it and have a chat
with other people about it.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Assignment:
Personas – Customer Interview 2
Duration: 0:00:54
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/page/view.php?id=445
CREATED BY
START AUDIO
Customer 3: Hi, I’m Gary Nice and I work in film. I produce videos for early stage
start-ups. Technology-wise, I have everything because technology
is basically my life. I have an iPhone, an iPad, an iMac, a MacBook
Pro.
I’ve genuinely never had a coffee, I don’t like coffee. Every now and
again, say once a year, I’ll try coffee again to see if I like it, and I
just reconfirm that it’s still something I find unpleasant.
Not really, no. I’ve tried drinking tea because people tell me that
caffeine is important (Laughter) to wake up in the morning, but
again I’m not really a fan of that either.
I think for me it’s the bitterness of coffee that I don’t particularly like,
so maybe if someone could tell me there was a blend that wasn’t
too bitter, or something that made it in a way- Even if I make it
sweet I still don’t really like it, so I don’t know.
We have an espresso machine at home, so when we’ve got a box,
a selection of different capsules, you just go up and I go, “Which
one do you want?” and then they tell me which one is their
preferred option.
My housemates drink coffee, so I just use their machine. I don’t
mind making coffee, I just don’t ever drink it myself.
Yes, I do think it’s quite amazing how coffee has become such an
integral part of everyone’s lives. It’s still not persuading me that it’s
something I need to do, and I’m pretty much fine with that.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Personas – Assignment:
Personas – Customer Interview 3
Duration: 0:01:27
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/page/view.php?id=445
CREATED BY
START AUDIO
Devin: Now that you’ve created your problem statement which describes
what you want to create and you’ve created your personas which
describe who you want to create it for, it’s time to start jotting down
ideas on what you actually want to make. That’s where a tool called
feature lists comes into play.
Feature lists have two different stages. The first stage is
brainstorming and getting all your ideas on to the table. The second
section involves curating them and making them a little more
accurate. The first phase is simple: simply grab a stack of paper or
some post-it notes and start brain dumping all your ideas on to it.
If we take the Instagram example, we would put things down like
take a photo, or like a comment, or snap a photo to a feed, or share
the photo with friends on Facebook, literally anything that pops to
mind. It doesn’t really matter right now whether or not it’s accurate.
The second phase is more important, which is the curation phase
where we translate those simple ideas into much more structured
ideas that we call features. Features have three main parts: what
the feature is, who the feature is for and why we need the feature in
the first place. The “what” is easy enough. It’s literally what it can
do, so take a photo for example or like a photo.
“Who”, is who the feature is for. This is usually a persona so, for
example, Carl could go there. Finally, why describes why the
feature exists in the first place, what purpose does it have in the
system.
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Feature Lists – Introduction
Duration: 0:02:15
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/mod/lesson/view.php?id=446
CREATED BY
Let’s take a quick example of liking a photo on Instagram. The
feature would be to like a photo. Who this would be for would be for
one of our personas, like Carl for example. The big question is why
does Carl do this? The simple answer in this case is to show that
he appreciates the photo from a friend. When you combine these
altogether you get a feature.
The really key part here is the why section. If you can’t come up
with a real why on why this should exist, it probably doesn’t deserve
to be in the feature list in the first place. In the section below you’ll
find a worked example for most of the Instagram features. In an
upcoming assignment you’re going to translate your problem
statement and your personas into a large feature list.
END AUDIO
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START AUDIO
Devin: That’s it, you’ve just created your first product’s vision. You’ve
made a problem statement. You’ve collected your personas and
you’ve even started making a feature list which is going to really
help you in the next stages of designing and building your products.
All these things together form the little ball of knowledge that will
help you guide the mission and purpose of your product.
It’s important to note though that is isn’t a one-off exercise. Every
time you want to add something new to your product or do a new
version, this is something you should do. You should update your
personas with real information from your customers. You should
make sure your problem statement still reflects what you’re trying to
do. If you have new feature ideas, definitely make a new feature
list.
This kind of data is useful for not only you, the product designer, but
also marketers, business owners and even customers. They’re
great things to have around.
END AUDIO
Course 3: Develop and manage a digital product
Course provider: Founder Centric
Section: Create a product vision – Product vision wrap-up
Duration: 0:00:50
http://learning.digitalbusinessacademyuk.com/course/view.php?id=5§ion=3