MediaBox

As mentioned in a previous post, MediaBox is an experimentation platform for us. We use it to gain experience in areas of product design in which we haven’t previously dabbled. One such area, is Customer Driven Development (CDD). To us, CDD means that we work closely with prospective customers of the product and collaborate toward a more finely tuned solution. They drive the vision of what we build.

It works! Turns out this approach was quite successful for a number of reasons.

Problem Spots. Customers helped us redefine the user interface by observing where they got stuck. There was nothing more valuable than seeing a pattern in which different people got hung up on the same issue. Often times, they’d even have common suggestions for how to fix it, making our job even easier.

Suggestions. Wow, just a flurry of great suggestions from every user we interviewed. Many of which we included in the final product. Some were colour suggestions and other user interface refinements and many were fantastic feature requests. After just a few minutes with the app, users could immediately tell us what they felt was missing from the experience. Many more of these customer-driven ideas sit on the MediaBox backlog today, just waiting to be built.

Iterate with New and Experienced Customers. Each time we did a set of interviews, we’d iterate the product and then test again. Ensuring that problem spots were cleared up and the experience was improved. Adding new people to each iteration is a smart idea, because otherwise you run the risk of the previous users being biased by earlier versions of the app. Not a bad thing entirely, but you don’t get the truly critical feedback that you do from a fresh set of eyes. Next time, I think we’d perform each beta test with a planned mix of new and experienced users. This will give us a nice blend of feedback that is representative of how App Store updates would be used in practice.

Built in advocates. Everyone you test with, provided you treat them well and listen to their feedback, will be built in advocates for your application (hopefully). Don’t forget to reward them for their work, because they’re an important part of the team! We gave out $10 Starbucks gift cards to our beta testers… a little light on the reward side, but a little something to say thanks!

Who else practices Customer Driven Development? All of the triple-A mobile shops practice this sort of development approach. Facebook and Twitter do this, although a lot of their product feedback can be gathered at scale, which is even more powerful.

Why not Data Driven Development? I love driving product decisions based on data usage collected (via Google Analytics, for example). However, these early product stages don’t really offer that kind of analysis because of the small number of customers. Instead, talking to each customer one on one provides more valuable info to an early stage product. Later, we’ll use this technique alongside big’ish data to drive our important product decisions. I believe the best product managers use a blend of instinct, team feedback, customer interviews and usage data, to drive each and every product decision.

After the experience with MediaBox, I’m completely sold on the value of customer driven development. The customer can’t always tell you exactly what to build, but they can often tell you what’s wrong with what you have so far. I recommend giving this a try. Talk to your customers, it’s never too late to get started.

Next Week: “Why is MediaBox free?”