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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