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A Product Manager would probably try talking to some of these users. Surprisingly often a bunch of conversations will already give a rough idea what might be go

by janpio 1y ago

A Product Manager would probably try talking to some of these users. Surprisingly often a bunch of conversations will already give a rough idea what might be going on - which then could be confirmed with another look at the session recordings or other existing data. Or is that now what you are asking?

helicone 1y ago
Well I'm asking if people have found ways to get the data of (how bad a given product is, what makes it bad, where these problems are, & how to fix them) more quickly and more broadly than can be achieved by a single person's work day and if this is even a useful exercise given that the default (talking to your users, watching a random selection of user sessions, using the product yourself to find problems) is proven to work over a long enough time horizon.
- janpio 1y ago
  Ok, then I underestimated your question a bit. Sorry. In my personal experience (as a PM and working in software development), there are loads of ways to get data already. The bottleneck is processing and understanding that data to come to hypotheses and conclusions. (Recently with AI there are some product that promise to help with that, but I have no personal revolutionary positive experiences with them.)
  - helicone 1y ago
    No worries! I've seen the same trend with the new AI products in this space, having researched it briefly for this problem. They seem bolted-on and built as afterthoughts. I've been watching a lot of user sessions recently and I've noticed that it's basically impossible to get AI to accurately and consistently classify a problem in a user session by itself. Honestly it seems like AI hurts more than it helps here. Even so, I'm curious if you would personally find value in something that helps with this bottleneck?
    - verdverm 1y ago
      > Even so, I'm curious if you would personally find value in something that helps with this bottleneck? So are you probing HN for a problem you can try to solve, or are you actually trying to help some friends? If it's the latter, I would have expected YC to have taught them the path to answer, talk to your users
      - helicone 1y ago
        why can't I do both? if nobody else has the same problem I'm just gonna hack together some scripts, call it a day, and charge them like a contractor. if the problem is more generalizable then it's worth hunkering down and building something more robust, and charging them like a vendor. at any rate, part of their problem is people are leaving before they get a chance to talk, and not enough people are talking to them. bit of a catch-22 for them. why not see if the well runs deep?
        verdverm 1y ago
        It's not that you can't do both, but that your post and sequence of comments comes off as misleading. Seeking clarification, because it now sounds like you are more interested in finding a problem to work on Can you share a link to your friends product? HN could look at it and perhaps give some indication of things that stand out
        helicone 1y ago
        I didn't mean for it to be misleading, I apologize. In the post I mentioned my concern over the economic viability of solving this problem for them, I intended that to be a clear signal of profit motive on my part. That's true, I am more interested in gauging if this problem is worth solving in the first place than I am interested in finding a specific solution. I am nonetheless interested in helping my friends. No, sorry, I can't share a link.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

by janpio 1y ago

helicone 1y ago

Well I'm asking if people have found ways to get the data of (how bad a given product is, what makes it bad, where these problems are, & how to fix them) more quickly and more broadly than can be achieved by a single person's work day and if this is even a useful exercise given that the default (talking to your users, watching a random selection of user sessions, using the product yourself to find problems) is proven to work over a long enough time horizon.

janpio 1y ago
Ok, then I underestimated your question a bit. Sorry. In my personal experience (as a PM and working in software development), there are loads of ways to get data already. The bottleneck is processing and understanding that data to come to hypotheses and conclusions. (Recently with AI there are some product that promise to help with that, but I have no personal revolutionary positive experiences with them.)
- helicone 1y ago
  No worries! I've seen the same trend with the new AI products in this space, having researched it briefly for this problem. They seem bolted-on and built as afterthoughts. I've been watching a lot of user sessions recently and I've noticed that it's basically impossible to get AI to accurately and consistently classify a problem in a user session by itself. Honestly it seems like AI hurts more than it helps here. Even so, I'm curious if you would personally find value in something that helps with this bottleneck?
  - verdverm 1y ago
    > Even so, I'm curious if you would personally find value in something that helps with this bottleneck? So are you probing HN for a problem you can try to solve, or are you actually trying to help some friends? If it's the latter, I would have expected YC to have taught them the path to answer, talk to your users
    - helicone 1y ago
      why can't I do both? if nobody else has the same problem I'm just gonna hack together some scripts, call it a day, and charge them like a contractor. if the problem is more generalizable then it's worth hunkering down and building something more robust, and charging them like a vendor. at any rate, part of their problem is people are leaving before they get a chance to talk, and not enough people are talking to them. bit of a catch-22 for them. why not see if the well runs deep?
      - verdverm 1y ago
        It's not that you can't do both, but that your post and sequence of comments comes off as misleading. Seeking clarification, because it now sounds like you are more interested in finding a problem to work on Can you share a link to your friends product? HN could look at it and perhaps give some indication of things that stand out
        helicone 1y ago
        I didn't mean for it to be misleading, I apologize. In the post I mentioned my concern over the economic viability of solving this problem for them, I intended that to be a clear signal of profit motive on my part. That's true, I am more interested in gauging if this problem is worth solving in the first place than I am interested in finding a specific solution. I am nonetheless interested in helping my friends. No, sorry, I can't share a link.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]