Going through the videos for Entrepreneurial Design this week, the theme that consistently stood out is customer development.  (Which I guess is part of the point.)  The finer point underneath it though I found particularly interesting.  Steve Blank encapsulates it this way, “There are no facts inside the start-up building, only opinions.”  Thus, the follow up is, “Go outside and talk to customers.”

My thoughts at this point quickly reached back to last term’s user research class.  That’s kind of what Nate was getting at.  Although the methodology Nate taught us is often more about testing and refining existing projects, the resonating point is this.

“You (as a designer or developer) don’t know anything about your customers.  Go sit next to them, and find out.”

Nate adds a point here saying, “but don’t just listen to them.  Often even they don’t know what they want.  Watch their behaviour.”

The methodology of Nate’s class do not fit exactly in the start-up world.  Often there isn’t anything to put in front of customers to test.  (Sidebar: maybe the idea is to build a minimal viable product, and then do Nate-style user research?  Thoughts?)  The spirit of Nate’s teaching still stands though.  Go out there and talk to people.

As a relatively introverted developer though, I can see why this is difficult.  The world of people is messy.  They don’t respect your assumptions!  And when you’re assumptions are trashed, it hurts!  It makes you feel really stupid.  But really, that’s the point.  You can either feel stupid now, when there’s only a couple thousand dollars on the line, and change course, or wait until you have a built product coming off the machinery, and feel stupid then.

The other point to note from the Steve Blank slides is the loop in his customer development process model.  The immediate thought upon see that diagram is Pangaro’s lessons about cybernetic feedback loops.  It’s clear that the customer development process must be (at its simplest) a self-regulating feedback loop, whose goal is to find a product offering that resonates with customers.  Let me speculate a bit about how the cybernetic model of customer development might actually work.  

What’s the goal?  Creating a product offering that resonates with customers.  

What’s the environment?  The environment is - actually, I am not quite sure what the environment should be.  Perhaps the pool of customers?  

What’s the sensor?  The sensor (in broad strokes) is the team when they are listening as they meet with potential customers.  So this is Nate’s class, user research.  

What’s the actuator?  The actuator is the team when they are prototyping.  Hey, we have a prototyping class too!  

Pulling in yet another IxD class, we can say the following: If prototyping is a start-up’s actuator, then prototypes are useless unless potential customers/users can interact with them.  (Cybernetics: Actuators must act upon the environment the sensors are measuring.)  Coincidentally, that is exactly what our prototyping class professors are telling us.

Last thought: The Eric Ries lecture talked about minimizing the time it takes to go through the loop, in order to maximize the chance of finding the right product/market fit.  To cast this in Cybernetic terms, the start-up must maximize the frequency at which it senses and acts.

Kind of nice to see how the different courses are coming together.