Recitation 1 - User Discovery
Step 1: Choose a Focus/Idea
- What problems are you suited to solve?
Step 2: Design a Set of Questions
- Their life story >>> Your idea
- Past >>> Future
Step 3: Ask People Questions
- Find 4 people in your target demographic, talk to them:
- Friends
- Strangers on the street
- LinkedIn
- Don’t use people in the class for homework.
- GPT is not a person.
Exercise: Choose a Focus (5 minutes)
- What problem do you want to solve?
Could be a pain point for you or someone you know.
Exercise: Write Down a Set of Questions (5 minutes)
- Collect as much concrete, relevant information about pain points as possible.
- If the other person is clearly not a member of your target demographic:
- Try to collect insights anyway (though at a certain point, you may have to give up).
Avoid:
- Asking unhelpful questions:
- Too much assumption.
- Questions that lead to biased answers.
- Wrong target audience.
- Design questions to gather information efficiently.
Exercise: Ask People Questions (10 minutes)
- Practice with classmates (2 people per group).
- Allow space for general conversation, since the idea is early-stage.
Retrospective
- What you learned from these discovery conversations:
- What problems did they have?
- How did they solve them?
- What wasn’t a problem?
- What does this mean to your:
- Product
- Focus area
- Problem of choice