Article

Identify your bullseye customer in one day

Michael Margolis · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

Testing with the wrong five people teaches you nothing, so this piece helps you decide who your five should actually be. Margolis lays out a one-day approach to find the specific customer most likely to adopt now. It sharpens the recruiting side of your usability test so the feedback is worth acting on.

  • Narrow to the subset of users most likely to adopt today.
  • A tight bullseye makes five sessions far more decisive.
  • You can find and interview them in a single focused day.
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It answers 3 questions

  1. How do I keep talking to users while I'm heads-down building?
  2. How do I show a prototype to users without biasing their reaction?
  3. How do I run a quick usability test on my app when I don't have a budget or a research team?

Read with it

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  2. The most accessible, practical intro to usability ever written, you can read it in a weekend and immediately fix your product.... sensible.com Book · ~200 pages Don't Make Me Think, Revisited Steve Krug
  3. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  4. This is the piece that gives you permission to stop waiting for a big study. Nielsen shows that just five people uncover... Nielsen Norman Group Article · About a 10 minute read Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users Jakob Nielsen
  5. This is the short, practical manual for actually doing a test yourself, no training required. Krug walks you through running a... Steve Krug (New Riders) Book · About 168 pages Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems Steve Krug
  6. A founder-friendly crash course on planning and running discovery interviews, with tactics from researchers at Zoom, Zapier,... First Round Review Article · 20 min read A UX Research Crash Course for Founders Jane Davis
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