How to get good enough at user research in 10 minutes
A guide for founders who need answers to their most important questions
If you want to figure out:
what your value proposition should be
why people aren’t using your product or clicking your calls-to-action
which feature to build next
most early product problems
There’s a straightforward solution: deeply understanding your user and the problem your product is solving for them.
How do you do that? Talk to them.
User research is the strongest tool in your arsenal for understanding your users’ problems. It also takes a lot of training and practice to be really good at it.
But you don’t have to be really good at it – you only need to be good enough. Your founder superpower is being good enough at a lot of things, so let’s add one more to the list. Here’s a quick and dirty guide to having useful research calls.
1. Don’t talk about your product
People like to be agreeable. They like to tell you that your idea is good. They say “oh yeah I’d definitely try that” because they want to be nice to you. Those are all relatively low-signal responses that don’t help you much.
The ideal outcome of this call is you learn a lot about your customer and their problem, not that you make a sale or get glib feedback.
You get a half hour with this person – it is far more valuable to walk away with a deep understanding of their problems than with their acknowledgement your product seems like a good idea.
You’re not there to show your screens or try to make a sale; you’re there to learn.
2. Create a hypothesis
It’s best to go into these calls with an educated guess that you’ll either confirm or disprove.
You likely already have one. It should be why you’re building your product.
For example: “Heads of talent need better, easier ways of finding diverse and underrepresented talent.”
Your goal for this call is to figure out if this person has that problem, and how important it is to them to solve it.
3. Talk to the right person
You want to talk to the person who is experiencing the problem. For our example above, you want to talk to a head of talent.
Sure, you can talk to your cousin who is a recruiter at a large consulting firm, but you’ll need to include a big grain of salt with the results as they aren’t your ideal buyer. If you’re not sure that the head of talent is your ideal customer, then you should certainly talk to other types of people.
4. Make the conversation about all of their problems
People have all kinds of problems. Some are worth solving, but lots aren’t. You need to find out if your problem is worth solving, and how it relates to your user’s larger problem space.
You could start the call by asking “how important is it that you find diverse talent?” and they say “it’s one of my top priorities.” Problem confirmed!
Not so fast.
What you’ll miss is that they have 15 top priorities.
Instead of starting the conversation on your problem topic, start more broadly so you can contextualize your problem in their larger problem space.
Start with: “So, tell me what you’ve been working on lately.” They respond “I’ve been spending a lot of time with our department heads doing quarterly hiring planning. Looks like we’ll be doing a lot of hiring soon.”
If this is what’s top of mind for them, it’s a good indicator this is their main problem. You can ask follow ups to figure out if your assumption is correct. If your problem hypothesis doesn’t emerge naturally, you can gently introduce it. Try asking “How much are you thinking about diverse hiring for those upcoming roles?” They respond “It’s a big priority. Our CEO mandated we actively try to build a more diverse team. I’ve asked one of my recruiters to figure out how we can find more diverse talent while still hitting our hiring targets.”
By asking open-ended questions, you’ve contextualized your problem against everything they’re working on. Diverse hiring isn’t this person’s #1 problem, but it is something the CEO wants solved, and something that was delegated to them. That said, they delegated it further, and said it’s secondary to hitting hiring targets. This aligns with their top of mind problem: filling roles for the department heads.
The point is that you’re getting a lot more signal than if you just launched right into your problem space.
5. Learn how serious the problem is
You don’t just want to find any problem; you want to find problems where it is important and/or urgent they find a solution.
In our fictional example, we’ve already gotten some signal here. The CEO has mandated they solve this problem, but the head of talent has delegated finding a solution instead of taking it on themself. They also said that adding diversity is secondary to hitting hiring targets.
To continue probing, you should try asking questions around investment: how hard they’ve tried to solve this problem, and how much they’re willing to invest in finding the solution.
If they’ve invested (or plan to invest) a lot of time, money, and resources into finding a solution, that’s great news for you. If not, it’s a big signal that they don’t actually need to solve it, and that they won’t pay you for a solution.
6. Learn what a solved problem looks like
When you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Don’t jump to the conclusion that someone with your problem will view your product as the solution.
You want to ask questions about what their problem will look like when it’s solved. Questions like “Is there a set target for new diverse hires at the company?” or “How will you evaluate the success of your team’s efforts in expanding diverse hiring?”
If they respond with “We just want to make sure we stop hiring people from our own networks, so we’re going to end our employee referral program and call it a day,” then it’s pretty clear their solution doesn’t involve a tool that makes it easier to find diverse talent. Their solution state is pretty minimal, and it’s critical you know that.
On the other hand, if they respond with “We’re conducting a comprehensive diversity survey and want to boost our 3 least-represented racial & ethnic groups by 10% by end-of-year” then it’s pretty clear hiring will be a big part of the solution.
7. Tell them about your product
Let’s say you’ve confirmed they have your problem, it’s an important one, and you as a good entrepreneur are champing at the bit to show them your cool new product.
You can tell them about it. It’s okay. But the research portion of your call is now over.
If they whip out their credit card or otherwise show strong purchase intent, that’s a great signal for you.
If it’s pretty much anything else about how your product looks cool, they think it’s a great idea, or they’d definitely consider it for next quarter, it’s relatively meaningless from a research perspective.
Because you left this to the end, you can ignore the meaningless stuff and focus on all the rich insights you got about their problems and how they see the world.
8. You don’t need to have formal calls
Happen to run into a head of talent friend at the grocery store? If you manage to sneak in some of your research questions, that counts! You don’t need to wait until you’ve got someone on a zoom call to do research.