Better Product Managers, and Product Management

You know you have to do user testing, but how exactly do you get started?

I’ve run enough user testing sessions on a shoestring budget to know a lot of the gory little details, and yesterday I shared a bunch of them with the startups over at the fbFund incubator.

Why Not Online Testing?

Online user testing tools are cheap, and it’s tempting to think that you can get insight without having to figure out what to say to people face-to-face.  But the numbers can hide a lot – if a user successfully completes your face, but they have their face scrunched up in tension the whole time, or they’re cursing you under their breath – that’s critical detail that you’re missing.

The Crazy Guy

You usually get one “crazy person” per 7-8 person group.  You probably want to write that in your notes – “crazy guy” – so you can keep that in mind when reviewing his comments.  On the other hand, if three other people agree with the crazy guy, they probably all have a valid point.

“I Just Don’t Know What to Do Next”

If a user “freezes” and says they don’t know what to do next, resist the temptation to jump in and help.  Remember, you’re playing the neutral moderator, so you don’t take it personally.  Instead, ask what they would expect to do next.  It’s surprising how often you’ll hear something like “Well, I was expecting to see a button that said Pay Now, but all there is here is a link that says Enter Credit Card Information.  I don’t want to click it because I’m not sure…”

1. BackType Connect I’ve been using the BackType Connect plug-in for the last couple of weeks to aggregate comments about blog entries (including tweets and comments posted on other blogs) and show them here.  I’ve been very happy with the results – showing a comment or two right away has really served to break the ice and get more people talking here.

      I really admire their general model of “don’t try to change the user behavior, work with it.”  I know my readers won’t spend all of their time here when there’s Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, and other sites – but we can all still benefit from pulling those conversations together in one place.

2. Guest Posting I wrote my first guest post last week for SearchEnginePeople, and will definitely do that again.   Writing for a new audience was a nice change, and it forced me to be more clear with my thinking.  Add to that exposure to a brand-new audience and new interesting people to follow on Twitter, and it was a big win.

3. Do Follow On As of today, links in my comments do not have the “nofollow” attribute enabled.   Nofollow means that Google ignores the presence of links on my site if they appear in my blog comments.   Search engines assume that the blog author doesn’t necessarily “endorse” the links placed in the comments, so No follow is the default for comments on WordPress blogs.

     However, the vast majority of my comments come from the Product Management and User Experience communities, from smart people that I do endorse.  So I’ve installed the NoFollow-Free plug-in which means that the readers who comment will be rewarded with some extra SEO love.  My spam filters have done a pretty good job so far, so I’m hopeful that I won’t have to disable this due to comment spam abuse.

These are not books that tell you how to do product management. Rather, these books are full of ideas that will challenge you to work smarter, communicate better, and get in the heads of your users. Read them, share them with your cross-functional teams, and put them into practice.

1. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Consumers by Geoffrey Moore

   
   Realization: You can get early customers to love your product, but you can’t use those same methods to convert enough more people into customers to build a business.

   Things to remember: As a startup, you can’t do multiple things well. As a business, you need to focus on the most desperate needs of your customer (which means you must choose your the customers who have desperate needs.)

2. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

   Realization: You don’t need to compete on the same features and benefits that your competitors value.

   Things to remember: Don’t take the vectors you compete on for granted. Map yourself against the competition. Explore what would happen if you changed things.

3. Four Steps to the Epiphany by Stephen G. Blank

   
   Realization: This is your job: First, reduce risk. Next, prove value. Continuously validate. Don’t try to skip any of these steps.

   Things to use: Clear checklists for how to create a market, and a product and get customers. If any of your plans require outlaying tons of money and resources up-front, you’re probably wrong.

4. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper

   Realization: Technology products need someone advocating for the user, and that someone is not going to be the engineers who build them.

   Things to use: If you’re in an organization where user experience design is nonexistent or under-empowered, this book lays out examples to help the product manager to step in as user experience advocate until the permanent resource is in place.(Can be heavy-handed and most of the examples are outdated, but still a great read.)

5. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton Christensen

   Realization: Listening to your customers works great for releasing new product versions… until it doesn’t. You can’t predict where markets will emerge.

   Things to remember:The key to your success will, in the short term, be incredibly destructive. In short: stay on your toes and be ready to experiment on barely-formed ideas rather than waiting for them to fully form.

6. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Bruce M. Patton, William L. Ury, and Roger Fisher

   Realization: Negotiating instead of giving in doesn’t make you mean, it makes you effective.

   Things to remember: People want to feel heard and understood more than they need to ‘win’ in most situations.

7. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Stephen J. Dubner OR Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions by Dan Ariely

   
   Realization: People generally don’t understand cause-and-effect, don’t behave rationally, and worry about the wrong things.

   Things to remember: You (and your coworkers fall prey to the same competitive traps that your users do, but knowing this can help you avoid them.(Both books are good, but you probably don’t need to read both unless you’re a psych/socio hobbyist.)

8. Why Decisions Fail by Paul Nutt

   Realization: Really smart companies and people make decisions that seem ridiculous in hindsight.

   Things to remember: Recognizing potential problems can help you avoid them. If it’s too late for that, a more informed postmortem leads to better learning for next time.

9. Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres

   Realization: Nothing measures user behavior better than … measuring user behavior. Online, everything is measurable.

   Things to remember: Make sure what you’re measuring is as close as possible to the results you want. As I’ve said before, make sure you I your KP. Remember that your competitors probably have more data than you do and be appropriately concerned about that.

10. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp

    
    Realization: Creativity doesn’t just happen, it requires hard work and tons of practice.

    Things to remember: Staying out of bad habits and ruts is a constant process.