083: Unfolding ideas over ideating features

It's a rain-soaked chat this time as Tom and Corissa wander through Bournemouth in a downpour.

We tackle a thought-provoking LinkedIn question from WP Engine's Jason Cohen – a question about how to listen to customers when they ask for features.

00:29 LinkedIn inspiration and the big question we're tackling today

02:28 Customer feedback creates an apparent puzzle

03:40 Mistakes we've made by asking people what they want

05:14 Secret 1: what do people already do?

07:37 Secret 2: imagine your company is a big metal box

10:50 You're always limited by your own internal perspective, and that's OK

16:51 Secret 3: there's no such thing as a feature

19:48 The story in your customer's head is different from the story in your head

20:18 Don't make things look simpler than they are

20:48 "Feature" is just a label to make your own life easier

21:41 Secret 4: build as little software as possible to enable the most behaviours that create value

23:32 When customers are reduced to a metric

24:18 Why an Impact/Effort Matrix to decide on features will fool you

27:32 Real-world example: a Calendly integration project

33:33 Unfolding ideas by soaking in rich customer context

36:25 SenseMaker for generating insights in a very different way

38:30 When you try to make too much explicit, you get in trouble

Jason's original post

"Ask a customer if they’ll use a feature…

They say “yes” but don’t use it.

Ask them to name a feature they actually want and there’s the “faster horse” problem of incremental improvement instead of vision.

What’s the answer? Just “gut feel” and sometimes you’re right?"

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