Hey everyone, I keep a weekly video blog about the app I’m working on. This week, I decided to speak more generally about the act of talking to strangers in order to do research for a consumer product. Since this is useful and not just a video diary like usual, I figured I’d transcribe it, clean it up, and post it here for all of you!
The backstory: I’m building an app for live music fans. While I did talk to a ton of friends who are music fans and/or band members, I realized recently that I needed to go out and talk to complete strangers to get even more feedback and really try to find my audience so to speak. These are some insights I’ve gained in my brief experience.
Programmers, engineers, or generally technically-minded people are generally thought of as or consider themselves to be introverts and would consider talking to random strangers at an event really scary. To be honest, even though by many measures I am an extrovert (I don’t mind public speaking, I don’t mind hanging out with groups of people), approaching random people still freaks me out. The idea of going to a show by myself with the objective of talking to random people to get their opinions, that’s something that’s a little bit scary.
Before I started doing this I thought, “well of course I can do this, it’s easy, I’ve passed out flyers to people at shows before when I used to be in a band.” But as I was getting ready to actually do it, I started thinking about the expectations of concertgoers. Namely, they don’t expect that at a show, some random person is going to come up and start asking questions about how you found out about the show and whether or not you use various apps or something like that. It’s just weird. (Having someone hand you a flyer, on the other hand, is completely normal and expected!)
I can’t help but thinking about that when I’m approaching people. But the advice that I would give to someone in that position, and that I keep giving to myself, is that it’s important to remember the mission and the consequences if you fail to have a conversation with someone.
Let’s say you don’t gather that feedback: You’re missing out on valuable insights and if, like me, you’re building an app because you feel like it’s a mission, it’s something you have to do, it’s your baby, you’re going to feel kind of stupid if you don’t take this opportunity.
The other thing is, the consequences of trying to talk to somebody and getting some sort of rejection are essentially nothing. It’s only as much as we decide to care about when we feel that kind of rejection or shame or whatever it is.
But the truth is, the reaction that media leads you to expect when it comes to talking to random strangers in a situation like this, it doesn’t really happen. I’ve never gone up to talk to a random person when I was doing this kind of research, asking questions, or selling a product, and had them react in a way that was like, “Ew! Get away from me! You’re freaking me out!”
In this recent round of information gathering, everyone has been willing to talk to me. Even if they have no interest in the product after I tell them about it, even if they don’t think they’re in the target audience, they’re still happy for me in the general sense because I’m building something. “Oh, that’s cool, you’re building an app!” Or “You’re asking for my opinion, nobody asks me these questions so this is my opportunity to tell someone about it!” (Perhaps this is a Bay Area thing? One young woman commented to me, “Everyone’s building an app in this town!”)
Ultimately, I think that I’m discovering that people are way more willing to talk than you might assume. While you may not get a lot of insight from each person you talk to, you may have some conversations that don’t give you any information… but they actually still kind of do. When you find out someone isn’t in your target audience and you don’t gather any information about what your app needs, you’re still learning about how to segment your audience. You’re learning that there are some people who won’t need this, and hopefully why.
The point is, every conversation is useful and people are generally willing to talk, so don’t freak out about it too much!
Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful!
(Original video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028CxheZUQA)
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April 28, 2017 at 07:03AM
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