Book · ~120 pages

Just Enough Research

Erika Hall · A Book Apart / Erika Hall Paid Intermediate

Hall's book gives you the research discipline behind good interviewing: how to avoid leading a witness, how to write a discussion guide, and how to separate what you observed from what you interpreted. It's aimed at product teams generally, so it's broader than customer development books, but the interviewing chapters translate directly to founder conversations. It's a fast read and cuts the fluff other research books carry.

  • Write your questions down in advance, improvising under pressure tends to lead the witness.
  • Separate your notes into said, did, and your interpretation, don't blend them.
  • A clear purpose statement and informed consent make people more honest, not less.
Open on abookapart.com ↗

It answers 7 questions

  1. How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear?
  2. What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview?
  3. How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal?
  4. Should I do customer interviews live over a call, or is survey data good enough at the start?
  5. I've done 20 interviews and every person described a slightly different problem. How do I know if there's a real pattern or just noise?
  6. How do I do user research when I'm building something nobody has seen before and can't describe what they want?
  7. How do I recruit and interview my competitor's customers without it getting weird or them shutting down?

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. 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
  3. A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test... YC Startup Library Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble)
  4. A step-by-step guide to running discovery when you have almost no data, aimed squarely at first-time founders. It is practical... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Founder's Guide for Successful Early-Stage Customer Discovery Jeanette Mellinger
  5. To say no to the right requests you need feedback you can trust, and this shows how to get it by watching customers rather than... First Round Review Article · 12 min read Get in the Van and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback Michael Sippey
  6. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
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