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Ask HN: Do you conduct product/user research before writing code for a product?
When I have a new idea, I usually start hacking on it right away in order to develop a minimally viable first version and get it out the door. Doing so allows me to get feedback from potential users and also use it myself to intuitively gauge how it can be improved further.
I just started working with a friend on a new idea. He works as a product manager in his day job, and he insists that we need to create "personas", come up with a "lean canvas", conduct user studies and interviews etc. before we can determine a set of features and start coding. This feels like massive overkill but I haven't said anything in order to avoid coming across as close-minded.
So I wanted to ask you folks: when you have a new product idea, do you conduct product/user research first to flesh it out, or do you open your favorite code editor and start the development process right away? Or a mix of both?
- sharemywin 10y agoI try to come up with a landing page first. Top benefit, 3 supporting features, an action button to click. \ then I add a survey to see if people a generally into the idea. I use adwords to get it in front off people. will it work for all businesses no, but it works for me.
- sharemywin 10y agoThink of it as apple versus microsoft. If your building a "cool" product you should build it and then show it off. if your building business software your better off going his route.
- jetti 10y agoI do not...but I have 0 sales (many trials though...perhaps, spam bots may be screwing up my event tracking in google analytics). My product solves a pain-point that I know developers have and there is already a market for it so I didn't bother doing research and just built an MVP.