Читать книгу Build Better Products - Laura Klein - Страница 40

TIME TO RUN

1 hour

MATERIALS NEEDED

Sticky notes, Sharpies, paper

PEOPLE INVOLVED

Product managers, designers, researchers, engineers

EXERCISE GOAL

Create a theoretical vision of your product’s ideal user.

If you have an existing product rather than a new one, you may already have different types of people using your product for many different reasons. This does naturally happen with products that have been around for a while.

PRO TIP

One of the reasons it’s fine to hyperfocus on a specific group of people when developing a new product or feature is that you’re not going to stay with that group of people for the entire life of your product. You’re not limiting your market forever just because you’re limiting it for the first few iterations. Once you’ve made something really great for one group of people, you’ll eventually start to branch out into adjacent markets and add features that are great for them as well (hopefully without destroying your old market). This is why existing products almost always have more than one persona.

For this particular exercise, focus on one user type. If you’re planning on making a change to your product—and you wouldn’t be reading this book if your product were perfect—then you need to get used to focusing on one specific type of user. Eventually, you’ll want to do this exercise multiple times until you’ve got a good understanding of all your personas, but focus on one for now.

Each team member should get a pack of sticky notes and a regular sheet of paper. First, they’ll take their piece of paper, turn it sideways, and divide it into four quadrants (see Figure 2.3). The team should do this part of the exercise silently and independently. You’ll compare your work later, but it’s important that everybody participates in this first part alone so that you can understand how you each think about your key user without influence.

FIGURE 2.3 Divide your paper into four quadrants.