We run hack days every now and then. Each one has a hypothesis that we want to build a quick solution for.
We thought that there was need for a service to help people organise going to music events together.
There are lots of club night and gigs in London and we’re always missing out due to poor planning. People are flakey and don’t commit.
Could we improve this and bring everyone together using some sort of digital tool?
Hold up…shouldn’t we research this first?
We talked to friends and people in our network to practice what we preach.
After lots of conversations about people’s gig-going habits and social lives the resounding result was that no one (well, only one person) wanted a service like this.
Ouch!
You might think that we were disappointed by this… we were absolutely over the moon.
We learned that real customers didn’t share our problem. Building it would have been a waste of time and the product would have failed.
The question is what to do next when you learn of your idea’s flaws?
Ultimately we ditched this one but other ideas may just need a slight tweak to make them relevant to your customer and solve a problem that they actually have.
Running through this process is essential. Always test and learn as much as you can.
Product success is just around the corner if you do.