Customer Discovery & Interviews
He did not ask people whether they would use it. He created a situation where they had to act.
The business case
The Product That Did Not Exist — Drew Houston, Dropbox · United States · 2007–2008. Drew Houston had an idea for a file-syncing service. Building it properly meant deep operating-system work across Windows and Mac — many months of engineering before anyone could try it.
Why it matters
He did not ask people whether they would use it. He created a situation where they had to act. A survey asking "would you use a file-syncing tool?" would have produced polite agreement and no useful information. Asking someone to enter an email address to get access is a small but real commitment. The principle underneath is simple: opinions are free, so people give them generously and inaccurately. Behaviour costs something, so it tells the truth. Every technique in this chapter is designed to get you closer to observed behaviour and further from polite opinion.
What you will be able to do afterwards
- What customer discovery is, and what it is not
- Why surveys mislead beginners — and what to do instead
- Interview design: the five questions that matter
37 screens, audio-narrated, with a quiz at the end.