Learnings from founding a Computer Vision startup: Chapter 6 Product Design

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision Startup

Goal: building a product customers want


But how to ﬁnd out what customers want?

Flickr:CLSB


Thirty thousand new consumer products
are launched each year. But over 90% of
them fail— and that’s after marketing
professionals have spent massive amounts
of money trying to understand what their
customers want.

Christensen et al.
Marketing Malpractice The Cause and the Cure
Harv. Bus Rev. 2005 Dec;83(12):74-83, 152.


"If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said
faster horses."

Henry Ford


If there's one thing every junior consultant
needs to have injected into their head with
a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it's
this: Customers Don't Know What They
Want. Stop Expecting Customers to
Know What They Want. It's just never
going to happen. Get over it.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html

Communicating with customers

Hold the Mayo

Ask people what they don't want
Most software surveys and research questions are
centered around what people want in a product. "What
feature do you think is missing?" "If you could add just
one thing, what would it be?" "What would make this
product more useful for you?"

What about the other side of the coin? Why not ask people
what they don't want? "If you could remove one feature,
what would it be?" "What don't you use?" "What gets in
your way the most?"

More isn't the answer. Sometimes the biggest favor you
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ can do for customers is to leave something out.

Innovation Comes From Saying No

[Innovation] comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't
get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about
new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can
concentrate on the things that are really important.

—Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple (from The Seed of Apple's Innovation


So, what to do then?
1) Build something you like

2) Ask customers - the right way

3) Measure

4) Iterate


1) Build something you like
You are the domain expert, others
- can’t imagine where (Vision) technology will lead to
- can’t discriminate what’s feasible, what’s not

Building something you like
- is a good start
- is a pre-condition to be successful (?)

Resource: Make Opinionated Software
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Make_Opinionated_Software.php


Approaches that seem to work

A) Asking for desired outcome

B) Integrating a product feedback loop


Asking for desired outcome

What job does the
user/customer want
to get done?

purpose brand

Hiring a milk shake do get a job done

Clayton Christensen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3fGwsrXuZw


Purpose Brand Example

Until 1960’s one single product

observational research showed:
some customers have creative uses for the product

- adding the product to laundry detergent
- mixing it into toothpaste
- sprinkling it on the carpet
- others placing open boxes in the refrigerator


Purpose Brand Example
Job focus may grow product categories

A purpose brand for each “job”

These products make now more than 90% of Arm & Hammers revenues
Christensen et al., Marketing Malpractice The Cause and the Cure, Harv. Bus Rev. 2005 Dec;83(12):74-83, 152.


Two approaches that seem to work

A) Asking for desired outcome

B) Product feedback loop


3) Measure
Hal R. Varian Keynote at IJCAI 2009

http://videolectures.net/ijcai09_varian_cmt/


3) Measure
Timothy Ferriss at LeWeb 2009

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/12/13/how-to-create-a-global-phenomenon-for-less-than-10000/

What is special about Vision?
In Terms of Product Design


Special challenges for Vision Startups
Technological limits
(e.g. object class recognition)

Novel usage concepts
-> user education

High costs for product development


How we did it: Paperboy Purpose Brand
Direct application of job-based product design
Before After

Job 1/ Product 1

Job 2 / Product 2

kooaba Visual Search Job 3 / Product 3


How we did it: Paperboy Purpose Brand

Paperboy
Delivers digital extras for print


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtCF8deqnFw


How we did it:
polarrose.com
usability tests with video recordings
user feedback

customer dialogues (packaging of technology)


Resources
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/
Joel on Software: Customers
fog0000000356.html

37 signals getting real http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
Getting real: make opinionated Software
ch04_Make_Opinionated_Software.php

Clayton Christensen: Milk Shake Job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3fGwsrXuZw
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/05/
Kathy Sierra: letting users get better at sth
kathy-sierra-at-business-of-software-2009.html
User Voice www.uservoice.com
Get Satisfaction www.getsatisfaction.com
Hal Varian at IJCAI 2009 http://videolectures.net/ijcai09_varian_cmt/
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/12/13/
Timothy Ferris at LeWeb 2009
how-to-create-a-global-phenomenon-for-less-

Learnings from founding a Computer Vision startup: Chapter 6 Product Design

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Learnings from founding a Computer Vision startup: Chapter 6 Product Design