Article · 20 min read

A UX Research Crash Course for Founders

Jane Davis · First Round Review Free Beginner

A founder-friendly crash course on planning and running discovery interviews, with tactics from researchers at Zoom, Zapier, and Dropbox. It is especially good on picking the one or two things you must learn and writing questions that do not lead the answer. Concrete and skimmable.

  • Decide the two things you must learn before the call.
  • Reframe important questions from several angles.
  • Check your own bias before interpreting answers.
Open on review.firstround.com ↗

It answers 8 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without getting false positives?
  2. How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction?
  3. How do I get honest answers when the person I'm interviewing is a friend or someone in my network?
  4. How do I run a quick usability test on my app when I don't have a budget or a research team?
  5. Should I do customer interviews live over a call, or is survey data good enough at the start?
  6. How do I cold email my first ten customers when I have no logos, no traction, and no case studies?
  7. How do I turn vague feedback like "the app feels clunky" into specific design changes I can actually make?
  8. How do I keep learning from customers after launch instead of only doing research once at the start?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  3. A deep conversation on why direct questions fail and how story-based interviews surface real behaviour. Torres names the common... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · ~75 min Teresa Torres on how to interview customers Lenny Rachitsky and Teresa Torres
  4. A short, practical field guide to customer discovery: who to talk to, how to find them, and how many. Pairs perfectly with The... talkingtohumans.com Book · ~80 pages (free PDF available) Talking to Humans Giff Constable
  5. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  6. Most founders treat customer research as a one-time pre-launch exercise, then go quiet once the product ships. Torres makes the... Amazon Book · ~200 pages Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value Teresa Torres
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