PASO UNO: Entrevistas de descubrimiento de clientes

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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La mejor manera de comenzar el viaje de descubrimiento de productos es hablar con clientes potenciales. En el descubrimiento de productos utilizamos una técnica muy específica llamada entrevistas de descubrimiento de clientes para aprovechar al máximo estos encuentros. Lo que hace que este enfoque sea único es que evita preguntar directamente al cliente qué piensa de nuestra solución. En lugar de eso, hacemos preguntas abiertas para descubrir oportunidades y comprender comportamientos, creencias y motivaciones. Para obtener más información sobre cómo hacer preguntas abiertas, utilice los siguientes recursos:

• Jarra caliente: https://www.hotjar.com/blog/open-ended-questions/
• Punto central: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/the-art-of-asking-open-ended-questions

Incluso si ya cree que conoce a su cliente, este tipo de entrevistas pueden resultar reveladoras. Incluso puede descubrir que se dirige al cliente equivocado. Las entrevistas también dan vida a sus clientes de una manera que los informes de investigación nunca podrán igualar.

Cómo entrevistar

Even though customer discovery interviews follow an open ended approach, this doesn’t mean they aren’t structured. You will create a script beforehand to make sure you don’t forget any important questions. For a B2B product, these might include:

• ¿Cuéntame sobre tu rol en la empresa?
• What’s a typical day like?
• ¿Cuál es el problema más difícil al que se enfrenta actualmente?
• ¿Qué soluciones has probado para solucionar ese problema?
• ¿Qué le gusta y qué no le gusta de esas soluciones?

Hemos incluido enlaces a continuación para ejemplos de preguntas e instrucciones sobre cómo crear sus propias preguntas.

A quién entrevistar

Como se mencionó, una filosofía subyacente de las entrevistas de descubrimiento de clientes es evitar hacer suposiciones sobre su cliente objetivo. Por tanto, debes empezar por formular una hipótesis sobre el perfil de tu cliente objetivo. Luego, realiza algunas entrevistas con ese perfil de cliente para probar tu hipótesis. Si resulta que estaba equivocado, formule una nueva hipótesis y comience el proceso de nuevo. Con el tiempo, descubrirás el perfil correcto o te darás cuenta de que has llegado a un callejón sin salida, momento en el que puede que sea el momento de empezar a trabajar en una nueva idea. Otro desafío al que puede enfrentarse es el reclutamiento de sujetos para entrevistas. Esto puede llevar mucho tiempo y requiere pensamiento creativo. Estos son algunos de los enfoques de contratación más comunes:

• Networking – Ask friends and colleagues for introductions. Use Linkedin and other social media sites to recruit candidates.
• Introductions from interviewee – Each person you interview provides an opportunity for further introductions. For example, if you are interviewing B2B subjects, your script should include questions like “Is there anyone else in your department you think I should speak to about this problem.”
• Meetups – Attend a meet-up focused on your target industry or start one yourself.

Puntos a considerar

• Practice makes perfect – The customer discovery interview approach is unnatural for most people. We are used to asking for feedback, not asking open ended questions, and listening carefully for nuggets of insight. Therefore, your first few interviews may not be very productive. Instead of wasting the opportunity, do some practice interviews with friends or colleagues first. You can also hire an experienced researcher to conduct the interviews for you.
• The goal is learning, not selling – Whatever you do, resist the temptation to ask for specific feedback about your idea. This is likely to bias your data because most interviewees will try to please you. If you feel the need to ask for direct feedback, wait until the end of the interview until after you have received sufficient unbiased information from the interviewee.
• Invite your team – As discussed, discovery is a collaborative process. If at all possible bring along your designer and engineer. This will enable them to more effectively extract insights from the interviewee’s responses by observing body language and facial expressions. It will also give everyone on the team a shared reference point during later discussions about product features. That said, make sure your interviewee is comfortable with multiple observers. You also minimize discomfort by conducting the interview so that you are the only one speaking with your teammates remaining silent observers.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Crear un guión de entrevista
• Formule una hipótesis sobre a quién dirigirse y cree una lista de reclutamiento.
• Practica con varios amigos o compañeros.
• Cuando esté listo, realice varias entrevistas reales.
• Comenta los resultados con tu equipo.
• Si necesita dirigirse a un perfil de cliente diferente, comience el proceso nuevamente

PASO DOS: Mapa del recorrido del cliente

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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Un mapa del recorrido del cliente es un diagrama que muestra cómo los clientes interactúan con un producto a medida que avanza por las diferentes etapas de uso. Crear un mapa de viaje tiene varios beneficios:

• Uncovers problems and opportunities – Journey maps are a great way to identify pain points that your product can potentially address. Conversely, they help you identify parts of the journey where customers are satisfied with their existing solution and may not be interested in yours.
• Empathy – Journey maps help bring your customer’s experience to life and create shared empathy among your team.
• Inspires system-level thinking – The process of creating a journey map forces you to break down how the customer experiences your sales process, marketing and product into discrete touchpoints that work in unison to influence customer behavior.

Diseño de mapas de viaje

The type of data displayed on journey maps vary widely but the basic format is the same: a horizontal diagram divided into columns representing stages or touchpoints. Each touchpoint represents an interaction with a company or its product. The diagram’s rows are used to communicate various aspects of the customer’s experience at each stage. The possibilities here are nearly endless, but you will probably want your map to answer the following questions at each stage:

• ¿Qué objetivo intenta alcanzar el cliente?
• ¿Están satisfechos o insatisfechos?
• ¿Qué problemas están encontrando?

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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Creando tu mapa

Prior to launching your product you will be using the journey map to diagram your customer’s interactions with existing solutions. After you launch, you can use journey maps to analyze customer interactions with your own product. Here’s how to create your first journey map:

1. Choose a customer profile – What type of customer will your map focus on? For maximum accuracy, you should base your map on the experiences of your interview subjects. You can even combine multiple subjects into a single profile. You can also bring these profiles to life with a technique called personas. If you haven’t yet created personas, we provide more information about them aquí.
2. Define a scenario – What overall goal is the customer is trying to achieve? For example, if they are buying a car, the map should be confined to activities related to that scenario.
3. Define your touchpoints – What stages does the customer go through as they complete the scenario?
4. Decide what to analyze – For each stage in the journey, you will be analyzing some aspect of the customer’s experience. Create horizontal rows for each type of experience you wish to analyze.
5. Map the customer journey – Fill out the horizontal rows on your map with the data you are analyzing at each stage. If you have insufficient knowledge to complete this step, you can conduct additional entrevistas o encuestas.

Puntos a considerar

• Validate your assumptions – When you first create your map it’s acceptable to leave gaps or make assumptions when you don’t have enough data. The process of creating the map is valuable in and of itself because it forces you to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. However, it is risky to continue the product discovery process for too long without closing these gaps because over time you and your team are likely to accept these assumptions as facts. Therefore it’s important to have a plan in place to validate your map by asking actual customers about their journey.
• Start with the pre-purchase experience – Even though you are focused on product discovery, it’s important to map the parts of the journey that take place before the customer encounters your product, such as your sales and marketing efforts. These can provide valuable insights about how to design a better product. By the same token, don’t forget about the post-purchase experience. How do customers get support if they have problems, or refunds if so desired?

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Construye tu mapa de viaje
• Comparte con tu equipo para recibir comentarios
• Validar los supuestos clave según sea necesario

PASO TRES: Encuestas

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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Si bien las entrevistas le permiten profundizar en un cliente en particular, requieren mucho tiempo. Por el contrario, las encuestas le permiten recopilar rápidamente datos de un gran número de clientes potenciales. A diferencia de las entrevistas, los datos no serán tan ricos. Sin embargo, las encuestas pueden ser herramientas excelentes para enriquecer los perfiles de los clientes a partir de sus entrevistas e incluso probar la demanda.

Objetivos de la encuesta

El primer paso es decidir sus objetivos para la encuesta. Tienes dos opciones básicas:

1. Gathering additional data about your target customer – You can use surveys to answer questions that weren’t adequately answered during your interviews or that you didn’t have time to ask. Since surveys can be anonymous, you can also ask questions that would have been awkward to ask during an interview, such as the customer’s income. Surveys can also provide statistical validation for the answers you received during interviews, This is especially useful if you received conflicting answers from multiple interview subjects.
2. Testing demand – Unlike discovery interviews, surveys can be a useful tool for determining whether customers are actually interested in your product. You can do this by describing the product in words or images and asking a series of questions to gauge interest (e.g. “How much would you pay for this product,” or “Would you recommend this product to a friend?”). However, you should not rely solely on such data to validate your hypotheses. This is because such a survey is only a weak simulation of real life. No matter how vivid your description, it’s unlikely to match the customers real-world experience once they are faced with a buying decision.

Tipos de preguntas

A continuación, deberá decidir qué tipos de preguntas formular. La primera decisión que tendrás que tomar es si tus preguntas serán cuantitativas o cualitativas. Las preguntas cuantitativas restringen al encuestado a un conjunto finito de opciones, mientras que las preguntas cualitativas permiten respuestas escritas. Puedes combinar ambos enfoques, pero para una encuesta a gran escala querrás enfatizar lo cuantitativo. Esto se debe a que lleva mucho tiempo y, a menudo, es imposible resumir los datos cualitativos de una manera que sea estadísticamente útil. Sin embargo, si encuesta a un número reducido de clientes, una encuesta cualitativa puede resultar muy eficaz.

Reclutamiento

Reclutar encuestados puede ser un desafío, especialmente para encuestas a gran escala. Si está planeando una encuesta cuantitativa, querrá que los resultados sean estadísticamente válidos. Esto puede significar cientos de respuestas. También deberá asumir que no todas las personas a las que invite a participar en la encuesta realmente la completarán, y es posible que algunos de los que sí la completen no sean en realidad su cliente objetivo. Entonces, ¿cómo se recluta suficiente gente para garantizar una cantidad suficiente de respuestas válidas? Eso depende de tu presupuesto. Es probable que la mejor opción gratuita sean las redes sociales. Las opciones pagas incluyen ejecutar búsquedas de anuncios o sitios de redes sociales, comprar una lista de correo o usar un panel de investigación como Encuesta a la audiencia de monos.

Puntos a considerar

• Make sure you are surveying the right customer – No matter how well-targeted your recruiting effort, some of the people who take your survey will fall outside of your target profile. Therefore you should start your survey with a series of qualifying questions to make sure the person is a potential customer.
• Keep it short – The longer your survey, the lower your completion rate will be. Therefore it’s important to trim your list of questions to the absolute essentials.
• Ask for permission to follow up – Your survey doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation with a respondent. You can use the survey to capture their email and ask if they would be willing to answer follow up questions

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Decide los objetivos de tu encuesta
• Defina su público objetivo y el tamaño de muestra deseado
• Diseña y lanza tu encuesta
• Analizar los resultados

PASO CUATRO: Creación de prototipos

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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A estas alturas ya debería tener una idea clara del problema del cliente que desea resolver. En esta etapa, la creación de prototipos es un excelente siguiente paso porque acelerará su capacidad para encontrar la solución adecuada. Un prototipo es una versión cruda de su producto (o parte de su producto) que puede usarse para obtener comentarios de su cliente objetivo o de una parte interesada interna. Los prototipos se pueden crear y probar de forma muy rápida y económica, por lo que el proceso típico de creación de prototipos es iterativo. Crearás prototipos, obtendrás retroalimentación, los perfeccionarás y repetirás el ciclo hasta tener confianza en la solución.

Tipos de prototipos

Prototypes take many different forms, each of which can be used to test different types of risk. However, they are best for assessing either value risk and usability risk. It is possible to assess feasibility risk with a prototype but this is less common and requires writing code. Another key distinction is a prototype’s level of fidelity. This is the degree of polish or realism that the prototype exhibits. Prototypes can either be low or high fidelity. These differ as follows:

• Low fidelity – These prototypes are primitive and easier to create. They are used earlier in the design process to rapidly test and iterate ideas until the team has enough confidence to consider building a high fidelity prototype. Low fidelity prototypes are better suited for internal feedback and ideation since they may be hard for customers to understand without extensive explanation. Examples include bocetos, prototipos de papel, estructuras alámbricas y maquetas.
• High fidelity – These take longer to create but enable more accurate feedback and are better suited for testing with actual customers. High fidelity prototypes are typically created later in the process, and due to their detailed nature, they can be very effective at assessing usability risk. Examples include prototipos interactivos, prototipos de vídeo y prototipos de datos en vivo.

Pruebas de prototipos

Puede probar sus prototipos internamente con su equipo o externamente con los clientes. Las pruebas internas son más rápidas pero los resultados son menos confiables. Por lo tanto, las pruebas internas son ideales en las primeras etapas del proceso de diseño, cuando se busca una dirección general. También es una excelente manera de obtener comentarios rápidos sobre un diseño antes de probarlo externamente. A medida que su diseño evolucione y gane más confianza en él, deberá realizar pruebas externas.

There are no hard and fast rules about how to test prototypes. For internal testing, the process can be as informal as walking into a teammate’s office and showing them a sketch and asking for their thoughts. With external customers, you will want to provide more structure. In either case, you should observe the following best practices:

• Set goals – Know in advance what you are trying to learn from the test. For example, if you are assessing value risk, structure your questions around this topic by asking questions like “Whom do you think would be interested in this product?” or “How often do you think you would use this product?.” If your goals include testing specific hypotheses, make a list of these and tailor your questions accordingly.
• Remain neutral – As with customer discovery interviews, your goal is to learn, not to sell. Avoid biasing your subject by keeping your feelings to yourself whether the feedback is positive or negative. If the subject is confused about the design, it’s acceptable to provide an explanation, but by no means should you defend it.
• Collaborate with your subject – Make it clear to your subject that you are there to learn and are seeking their help to solve any problems they identify. Invite contributions that build on your prototype. If you receive negative feedback ask for their suggestions about how to improve the product.

Puntos a considerar

• Focus on high risk areas first – Throughout the product discovery process you should test your riskiest hypothesis at each stage. This is especially important for prototypes because they can take considerable time to create. This way you minimize the chances of high risk issues going unnoticed and cropping up later in the design process.
• Consider testing multiple versions simultaneously – If you have the time and resources, testing multiple versions of the same prototype can produce more actionable and accurate results. This is because it frees your subjects from feeling like they have to say something positive about the first version they are presented. It also gives them the opportunity to contrast the two prototypes and provide more detailed feedback.
• Include your team – Even more so than other stages of product discovery, prototyping should be collaborative. Make sure to include your design and engineering colleagues during prototype creation. Try to include them during testing, or at least debrief with them after every round of testing.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Crear un prototipo de baja fidelidad
• Pruébelo con un cliente objetivo o con alguien de su equipo
• Utilice sus comentarios para mejorar su prototipo
• Pruebe nuevamente con la misma persona o con otra diferente.

Producto mínimo viable

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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By now, your answers to the questions “what should we build and for whom?” should be coming into focus. But remember, until you launch an actual product with real customers, these are just assumptions and you are likely still facing significant risks. The good news is that you can measurably reduce these risks with a minimum viable product or MVP.

¿Qué es un MVP?

An MVP is simply a prototype with a distinct difference: as the name implies, it is “viable.” We define viability as follows:

1. El cliente objetivo puede experimentar el MVP sin el tipo de ayuda o explicación que se requiere para un prototipo.
2. El MVP está diseñado de tal manera que sea capaz de probar de manera confiable al menos una hipótesis.

And of course, MVPs are minimal. How minimal? As minimal as you can make them and still test at least one hypothesis. In fact, some of the best MVPs don’t involve writing a single line of code. How can this be? Let’s take an example. Suppose you want to test the following hypothesis: “Twitter users would be interested in a product that enables them to queue up tweets for later posting.” This is exactly the hypothesis that Buffer.com started with when they designed su MVP, which consisted of two static web pages. The first page described the product and displayed a link to pricing information. When users clicked on the pricing link, a second page explained that the product wasn’t ready yet and displayed a field for the user to add their email to a waiting list. These two simple pages were enough to validate Buffer’s hypothesis and convince them to build a second MVP to test pricing. Ultimately the company went on to launch a very successful product. This type of MVP is known as a landing page MVP. Here are some other popular types:

• Wizard of Oz – This approach combines minimal amounts of software on the front end with humans on the backend to fulfil customer requests. Customers interact with the software without realizing that most of the functionality is being performed by people. A famous example is the MVP de Zappos.
• Concierge MVP – This approach is identical to a Wizard of Oz MVP, except it uses little or no software and the customer is fully aware they are interacting with a human.
• Piecemeal MVP – In this approach, existing software products are used to simulate the experience of the final product. For example, if you are planning to build a group dieting app, you might create a Facebook group to test hypotheses about peer to peer interactions. With piecemeal MVPs, you can also combine multiple software products to create an even more realistic simulation.

Definición de hipótesis

Un MVP es un experimento. Su propósito es probar hipótesis sobre el problema al que se dirige, la solución propuesta o ambos. Para definir tus hipótesis, sigue estos pasos:

1. Determine which risks areas to focus on – Decide which of the four risk areas your MVP will assess. While you can assess any type of risk with an MVP, they are best for assessing value risk and business viability risk. Unless your MVP has a high degree of fidelity or is designed to solve complex technical problems, you should not use it for assessing usability or feasibility risk.
2. Define your hypotheses – Define at least one hypothesis to test. You can test as many you like but we recommend a limit of five to keep things manageable. Each hypothesis should target at least one of the risk areas you chose. As discussed, you should test your riskiest hypotheses first to avoid major risks from cropping up later on.
3. Define your validation criteria – This is how you will determine whether a hypothesis was valid or not. For example, with the Buffer MVP, the percent of visitors who sign up for the wait list could be one of our validation criteria.
4. Define your target values – This is the threshold for each validation criteria that you feel will validate your hypothesis. In the Buffer example, we might decide that a 25% conversion rate is necessary to validate the hypothesis.

A continuación se muestran ejemplos de hipótesis de un MVP real que fue diseñado para probar una solución de capacitación de empleados:

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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Pruebas de MVP

Una vez que hayas diseñado tu MVP y definido tus hipótesis, el siguiente paso es invitar a los clientes a utilizarlo. A menos que necesite una muestra grande y estadísticamente válida, probablemente unas pocas docenas de clientes sean suficientes. Aquí hay algunas sugerencias sobre el reclutamiento:

• Invite your interview subjects – If you performed customer discovery interviews, you probably already have a list of potential customers who fit your target profile.
• Use social media – Tell friends, family and colleague know about your MVP on social media.
• Facebook ads – Facebook is an excellent way to affordably target specific market segments. In addition to recruiting, you can also experiment with potential marketing tactics by varying ad copy and design. By tracking ad spend and conversions, you may even be able to forecast your customer acquisition cost.
• Search marketing – If you envision users someday finding your product through search, recruiting MVP users through search ads can be very effective and affordable.

Lastly, before launching, test your MVP with teammates, friends and family to make sure the user experience is as expected and you are able to capture the necessary data to validate your hypotheses.  Even then, you may want to invite customers slowly to make sure everything is working and you have time to pay adequate attention to the incoming data.

Puntos a considerar

• Multiple MVPs are common – Your first MVP may not give you the confidence to start building your product. In that case, feel free to keep experimenting. You can iterate on an existing MVP by making design changes or changing the recruiting criteria. Or you can launch an entirely new MVP.
• Maintain a minimal mindset – The goal of any MVP is to maximize learning at the lowest possible cost. As you design your MVP, always ask “Is there a way to make this even simpler?”
• Don’t get hung up on definitions – You will find lots of debate about the definition of an MVP and the different types of MVPs. Don’t let this stop you from forming hypotheses and finding creative ways to validate them.

Recursos útiles

STEP ONE: Define Your Product’s Goals

The first step in defining your product strategy is to set measurable, time-bound goals. These can range from competitive in nature (e.g. “become the number one selling app in our market within 24 months”) to the financial (e.g. “achieve 30% gross margins by Q3).

Por encima de todo, los objetivos de su producto deberían:

1. Map to your company’s overall goals and mission
2. Align with your target customers’ necesidades
3. Ser comprendido y aceptado por sus partes interesadas internas.

Puntos a considerar

• Don’t overdo it – Having too many goals makes them harder for your team to track, communicate and internalize.
• Be open to change – Goals often change when a product reaches the market and you obtain feedback from customers that you did not expect.
• Data availability isn’t always a given – Before proposing any goal, make sure you’ll be able to capture the necessary data to measure your progress. You can learn more about this topic in our Medición módulo.
• Considere cómo las diversas áreas funcionales de su organización se benefician de su producto. ¿Están sus métricas representadas en los objetivos de su producto?
• El éxito de cualquier negocio depende de la adquisición y retención de clientes, por lo que siempre compare sus objetivos comerciales con estas necesidades.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Cree una hoja de cálculo o una presentación de diapositivas especificando los objetivos de su producto.
• Compártelo con tu equipo para recibir comentarios.

Paso dos: defina su(s) cliente(s) objetivo

Una estrategia de producto sólida requiere una definición muy clara y específica de su cliente objetivo. Todos los miembros de su equipo deberían poder visualizar claramente para quién están diseñando el producto. Este entendimiento común también es crucial para funciones como ventas y marketing. El enfoque más utilizado se llama segmentación del mercado. Esto le permite definir a su cliente según tres ejes principales:

1. Demographic – This approach focuses on attributes like age, location, gender and religion. An example of a demographic segmentation would be “28-34 year old suburban women.”
2. Psychographic – Use this approach to identify customers based on their motivations, lifestyle or psychological profile. For example you may want to target people who are motivated by business success, or moms who are concerned about the health of their families.
3. Behavioral – With this approach you can identify customers who engage in specific activities or purchase certain products. For example, “people who use Microsoft Word” or “owners of luxury vehicles.”

A menos que sea un experto en el cliente al que se dirige, la mejor manera de identificar a su cliente objetivo es utilizar el entrevista y encuesta técnicas que comentamos anteriormente.

Puntos a considerar

• Combine multiple segments for more specific targeting – Don’t hesitate to combine multiple segmentation approaches to increase the specificity of your targets. For example, Tesla might describe its target customer as a “32-42 year old man who owns a luxury car and likes to be seen as a technology expert.”
• Bring your targets to life – Create personas for each of your targets. This approach enables you to depict your customer with photos, a backstory and detail about their preferences, jobs, family and other relatable attributes.
• Don’t boil the ocean – It’s tempting to target the broadest possible market, but try to limit yourself to four targets at most. Focusing on a single target can also be a good strategy. Successful products are often designed for a passionate niche and spread quickly from there.
• Be open to change – Targets often change as a product gains adoption among different segments. You may be surprised by the types of customers who adopt your product and the ways they use it.
• Be ready to prioritize – Sometimes delays or other unforeseen challenges will force product teams to narrow their focus. If necessary, would you be able to prioritize your targets based on revenue potential or other attributes?
• Don’t forget customer acquisition cost – Make sure it is economically feasible to acquire each target as a customer. If you have doubts, consider other targets that are easier to acquire. Sometimes this can be as simple as narrowing your segmentation to identify a sub-segment that has a greater need for your product.
• Consider targeting influencers – Consider targets that can help market your product through influence and word of mouth, or by acting as reference customers. These early adopters often prove more lucrative in the long run than those that are more lucrative from a short term revenue standpoint.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Una lista de objetivos para compartir con su equipo.
• Si es posible, da vida a tus objetivos con personas.

STEP THREE: Identify Your Customers’ Needs

Su producto no tiene valor a menos que resuelva un problema para el cliente. Para tener éxito en el mercado, su producto también debe resolver estos problemas mejor que lo que se utiliza actualmente (según una estimación, un producto exitoso debe ser 10 veces mejor than the status quo in order to break through). Therefore, you need to identify which “pain points” your product can address. If you know the customer well, these may be obvious. If not, you will need to uncover them through research, analysis and experimentation, a process known as “discovery,” which is discussed in further detail here <<link to Discovery course>>.

Puntos a considerar

• Get out of the building – If you don’t already know your customer, learn more about them through the descubrimiento de producto técnicas como encuestas, entrevistas y creación de prototipos.
• Visualize their journey – Create a mapa del recorrido del cliente para identificar los puntos débiles actuales. También puedes realizar un Análisis del día en la vida. para visualizar cómo avanza su cliente durante su día.
• Think big – Look for opportunities to create a 10x better experience for your customer compared to the products or methods they currently use.
• Practice empathy – Adopt a mindset that puts you in the customer’s shoes when making decisions about how to design your product. This may be challenging at first, but after a while it will become second nature.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Una lista de problemas que enfrentan sus clientes objetivo y que su producto puede resolver.

PASO CUATRO: Analizar el panorama competitivo

Su estrategia de producto también debe tener en cuenta el entorno en el que competirá su producto. A esto lo llamamos el panorama competitivo. A grandes rasgos tiene tres componentes:

1. Productos que compiten directamente con el tuyo
2. Substitutes that fill some or all of your customer’s needs
3. Factores que afectan la dinámica competitiva de su industria, como la regulación gubernamental, el costo de la mano de obra y la economía en general.

Analizar a los competidores y sustitutos le ayudará a decidir en qué problemas y características centrarse. También le ayudará a anticipar su estrategia y mantener su liderazgo. Para usar una metáfora deportiva, esto es como prepararse para un juego estudiando a los jugadores. Analizar la dinámica competitiva le ayudará a comprender las fuerzas subyacentes que dan lugar a la competencia. Esto es similar a estudiar el clima y las condiciones del campo antes de un juego.

Start by creating a grid or matrix with your product in the left hand column. List your product’s key features or the pain points it solves for your target customer. Then add columns for each competitor and substitute.

Fuente: Laboratorio de lanzamiento

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Ahora, estudia la cuadrícula resultante. ¿Dónde supera su producto? ¿Dónde se queda atrás? Resalte estas áreas y considere dónde podría necesitar agregar funciones y dónde puede recortarlas para ahorrar tiempo y dinero.

A continuación, tómate un tiempo para estudiar las fuerzas competitivas que pueden estar influyendo en el comportamiento de cada jugador. Hay una variedad de marcos para ayudarle a hacer esto. Los más populares son el análisis FODA, el análisis de las cinco fuerzas y el análisis PESTL. Haga clic en los enlaces a continuación para obtener más información sobre estos.

Puntos a considerar

• Get out of the building – Use entrevistas de descubrimiento de clientes y encuestas para saber qué productos utilizan sus clientes objetivo y qué les gusta y qué no les gusta de ellos.
• Use vertical industry databases to find competitors – Unless you have extensive experience in the market you are entering, creating an exhaustive list of competitors can be challenging. A series of Google searches should uncover most, but you can build a more exhaustive list by searching software-specific databases like Crunchbase, Capterra, G2 y Lista de ángeles. También es común pasar por alto a algunos competidores potenciales. Su lista se volverá más completa con el tiempo.
• Make a habit of competitive analysis – For highly competitive or fast-changing industries, competitive analysis can be time consuming. To stay abreast of the market, dedicate an hour or two each month to updating your list, but don’t feel compelled to track the every move of each competitor. It’s far more important to focus on your product and your customers than the competition.
• Share your analysis – Your competitive landscape analysis is also a valuable tool for your sales and marketing teams. Make sure to get their input and keep them updated regarding any major changes.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Una matriz que contiene sus principales competidores y sustitutos.
• Un análisis de dónde su producto tiene un rendimiento superior y inferior
• Un análisis de la dinámica competitiva utilizando uno de los marcos enumerados anteriormente.

PASO CINCO: Defina su ventaja competitiva

To achieve your product vision and create long-term success, you will need to build one or more competitive advantages into your product. Sometimes these are referred to as a “moat” or “barriers to entry.”  Being first to market or having the best product is rarely sufficient to win over the long term. betamax y Mi espacio son sólo dos ejemplos de este tipo de productos.  

Broadly speaking there are two ways to build your product’s moat:

1. Quality – Depending on the type of product, quality can be measured in several ways, such as better features, performance, reliability or aesthetics. But because quality is often hard to judge before actually using a product, a customer’s perception of quality is often based on reputation or brand which can be expensive and slow to build.  
2. Price –  Unlike quality, price is easy for customers to assess. Therefore, low price can be a very effective way to quickly capture market share. 
3. Flywheels – A flywheel is any component of your product that increases the size of your moat over time as you succeed. We will discuss flywheels in greater detail below.

Volantes

A menos que tenga acceso a propiedad intelectual valiosa o ventajas significativas en costos de mano de obra, materiales u otros insumos, competir en características o precios sólo proporcionará ventajas a corto plazo. Es por eso que lo alentamos a incorporar volantes a su estrategia. Aquí hay unos ejemplos:

1. Network effects – Network effects occur when your product becomes more valuable to customers as the number of users grows. For example, Fax machines had little value until enough people owned them to make sending faxes a convenient form of communication. Then, over time, the value of each fax machine grew as they became more common.
2. Platform strategy – Platforms are products that create value by facilitating exchanges between customers. Marketplaces like Ebay, Airbnb and app stores are one example. Social networks, like Facebook are another. In all cases, the product’s moat grows with the number of users and interactions.
3. Data effects – With technology products, the accumulation of data over time can create extremely large moats. For example, Facebook has enormous amounts of data on each user, which is then used by advertisers to target ads. The more data Facebook obtains, the more it can charge for ads and the harder it becomes for other platforms to compete.
4. Economies of scale – Economies of scale occur when it becomes cheaper to provide your product as demand grows. For example, a car manufacturer receives increasingly large volume discounts on parts as they manufacture more vehicles.
5. Switching costs – Switching costs make it hard for customer to replace a competitor’s product with yours, and they typically increase over time. Products with steep learning curves, such as complex software, often have high switching costs. Switching costs are also high with products that improve over time as they gather more data about users, then utilize that data to improve the user’s experience. Examples include Netflix, Spotify and Youtube.

Puntos a considerar

• Flywheels can be combined – The best products combine multiple flywheels. For example, Facebook combines network effects, switching costs and platform strategy. The iPhone combines economies of scale with switching costs.
• Flywheels can take time – Its OK to start by competing on price or quality, but you should plan to build in at least one flywheel into your product in the future. Gathering feedback from customers can be enormously helpful to this process so don’t delay your launch just because you haven’t figured out your flywheel strategy.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Crea una lista de ventajas que te ayudarán a destacar dentro del panorama competitivo que definiste en el último paso.
• Divida su lista en ventajas que puedan implementarse ahora o que deban posponerse para más adelante.
• Comparta la lista con su equipo para recibir comentarios.

PASO SEIS: Defina la visión de su producto

Now that you have a clear picture of your customer, competitors and competitive strategy, it’s time to define your product vision.

The product vision brings your product’s long term goals to life in a compelling, persuasive way. A good product vision serves several important functions:

1. Guides your team’s decision-making as you move through the development process.
2. Permite que su equipo y otras partes interesadas se alineen en torno a una visión compartida.
3. Inspira y motiva a las partes interesadas internas y externas para ayudar a manifestar la visión.

No existen reglas sobre cómo comunicar su visión. Uno de los enfoques más simples es escribir una declaración usando el siguiente formato: 

• Para (cliente objetivo) que (declaración de necesidad u oportunidad), el (nombre del producto) es una (categoría de producto) que (beneficio clave, motivo para comprar). A diferencia de (alternativa competitiva primaria), nuestro producto (declaración de diferenciación primaria).*

Here’s how Microsoft used this approach to communicate their vision for the Surface tablet: 

• For the business user  who needs to be productive in the office and on the go, the Surface is a convertible table that is easy to carry and gives you full computing productivity no matter where you are. Unlike laptops, Surface serves your on-the-go needs without having to carry an extra device

Alternativamente, puedes crear una presentación de diapositivas, un prototipo e incluso un vídeo como el que Apple creó para su Producto Navegador de conocimientos. Cualquiera que sea el formato que utilice, lo importante es encontrar un enfoque que se adapte a su producto y audiencia para crear el máximo impacto.

Puntos a considerar

• Choose an appropriate timeframe – A product vision that’s focused too far in the future will be harder to relate to and may seem unattainable. A shorter timeframe may feel unambitious and uninspiring. For most technology products, a 3-5 year timeframe strikes the right balance.
• Be specific – The more detailed your vision, the more believable it will be and the better it will serve as a guide for strategic decision making. Don’t shy away from details like user personas, use cases and design elements.
• Be bold – Don’t be afraid to predict the future in ways that may make you uncomfortable today. As you craft your vision, try to imagine how your product will change your customers lives, your industry and even society as a whole.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

• Elige un formato y crea tu visión de producto
• Compártelo con tu equipo para recibir comentarios

Hojas de ruta de productos

Introducción

En este curso aprenderá la importancia de las hojas de ruta de los productos y cómo crearlas y utilizarlas. 

¿Qué es una hoja de ruta de producto? 

A product roadmap is a visual depiction of your product’s journey from its current state to a future version. The format is essentially an XY graph that plots product attributes on the Y-axis against an X-axis representing time.

Se pueden crear hojas de ruta para consumo externo o interno. Los primeros generalmente se comparten con los clientes para ayudarlos a anticipar cuándo estarán disponibles ciertas funciones. Este tipo de hoja de ruta suele ser muy específica con respecto a los desgloses de funciones y las fechas. Nuestro enfoque en este artículo es el tipo interno, que es menos específico, lo que deja a los equipos más libertad para definir características y establecer prioridades a lo largo del tiempo.

Ejemplo de hoja de ruta de alto nivel. 

Ejemplo de hoja de ruta detallada. 

¿Por qué crear hojas de ruta de productos?

Las hojas de ruta de productos pueden ser una herramienta extremadamente valiosa para crear una comprensión compartida del producto dentro de una organización y obtener el apoyo necesario de diferentes grupos funcionales. Más específicamente cumplen tres funciones principales:

1. Help communicate your product strategy and vision –  Product teams use a variety of tools to communicate their product vision, such as slide decks, vision statements and prototypes, but these only tell part of the story. Product roadmaps provide important context and specificity by describing the product’s evolution over time.
2. Communicate priorities – The time scale or x-axis of a product roadmap is a statement about priorities. Items on the left side of the timescale are delivered sooner and are therefore higher priority than those on the right.
3. Convey time-based commitments – While roadmaps should not be viewed as an agreement to specific features and dates (more on this later), they do provide the broader organization with a sense of a product team’s high-level commitments.  This can help executive management provide better oversight and help sales and marketing teams plan their activities. 

Qué no son las hojas de ruta

It’s tempting to treat roadmaps as a kind of feature list or spec, but you should avoid this.  Your roadmap should be concise and big picture. It should tell a story about your key objectives, not the tactics you’ll use to achieve them.  This is important for several reasons:

1. Los equipos de producto están más comprometidos y son más productivos cuando tienen la libertad de definir sus propias soluciones y establecer sus propias prioridades. Y dado que el equipo de producto suele ser el más cercano al cliente, está en la mejor posición para tomar estas decisiones.
2. Product teams shouldn’t be measured solely on their ability to deliver features. A feature must also deliver value by solving the customer’s problem and helping the company meet its business goals. 
3. Your current assumptions about which features are needed may be wrong.  Learning is inevitable as you receive customer feedback. Your roadmap should enable you to embrace change, not resist it.
4. While a roadmap depicts time, it can’t predict the future. Until your product design is complete and you have buy-in from engineering, its impossible to know precisely when you will release a given feature. 

PASO UNO: Definir épicas 

En el Módulo de alcance del producto discutimos los conceptos de Pila de Producto, historias de usuarios y epopeyas. Una cartera de productos típica puede contener cientos de historias de usuarios y, debido a que la hoja de ruta debe ser concisa, sería imposible mostrarlas todas. Sin embargo, el trabajo atrasado típico contiene muchas menos epopeyas. Por lo tanto, el primer paso para crear tu hoja de ruta es combinar tus historias de usuario en epopeyas.

Puntos a considerar

• Para asegurarse de que su hoja de ruta tenga suficientes detalles y al mismo tiempo sea concisa, intente incluir entre 15 y 25 epopeyas.
• Para este ejercicio recomendamos crear una hoja de cálculo con columnas para cada épica y las historias de usuario que contiene. De esta manera puedes ordenar y filtrar fácilmente por épica.

Entregables

Una lista de epopeyas que describen la funcionalidad de sus productos a medida que evoluciona y madura con el tiempo. 

PASO DOS: Elija una escala de tiempo 

It’s important to choose the right time scale, or x-axis, for your roadmap. But first you need to know that when it comes to time scales there are two types of roadmaps: specific and non-specific.  Date-specific roadmaps display time increments such as weeks, months or quarters. Non-specific roadmaps display looser categories like “Now, Next, Later.” 

The approach you choose depends on several factors: (1) the complexity of your product; (2) your knowledge of the technical and design problems you’ll need to solve;  (3) the degree to which your organization follows agile vs. waterfall practices; (4) the demands of your customers, industry or executives for timely delivery.  In general, if you are developing a complex product in an agile environment, you’re better off with a non-specific timeline, or a timeline based on a large time increment like quarters. This gives your product team the opportunity to discover the best solutions for the customer’s problems without being forced to follow an arbitrary schedule.

Calendario mes a mes

Calendario no específico

Puntos a considerar

• It’s tempting to provide a specific timescale in order to please customers and internal stakeholders, but unless you are highly confident in your ability to deliver on time, you should avoid doing this because your team’s credibility and morale will be affected by delays.
• Herramientas de gestión de productos como Tablero de producto y vagabundo le permite expandir y contraer escalas de tiempo. Esta puede ser una forma útil de compartir hojas de ruta que cubran períodos de tiempo más largos.

Entregables

Una elección de escala de tiempo que se adapta a las necesidades de su producto y organización. 

PASO tres: cree su hoja de ruta

Now that you have a timescale and a set of epics, it’s time to create your roadmap by arranging your epics on the timeline. At this point, you may be wondering what tools to use.  Because the process of creating roadmaps is usually iterative and your roadmap will surely change over time, it’s best to choose a tool that enables you to update your roadmap easily.  The options fall into three basic categories:

1. Presentation applications (e.g. Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Slides) –  These tools provide maximum control over your layout and design, but will make your roadmap harder to update compared to the other options below.
2. Spreadsheets  (e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers) – Spreadsheets are easier to update than slides but provide fewer design options. 
3. Dedicated applications (e.g. Aha!, Roadmonk, ProdPlan) – These tools provide a balance between attractive design and ease of updating. They also typically enable you to expand and contract epics, and include features for other product management tasks, such as prioritization and gathering customer feedback. However, there are some downsides to be aware of:  (1) You and your team will experience a ramp-up period while you are learning these tools; (2) They typically impose restrictions on the layout of your roadmap whereas spreadsheets and presentation tools allow for infinite flexibility.

Cualquiera que sea la herramienta que elijas, el proceso de creación de tu hoja de ruta es idéntico:

1. Prioriza tus epopeyas según la secuencia de lanzamiento. Para hacer esto, simplemente colóquelos de arriba a abajo con las epopeyas de mayor prioridad en la parte superior. Por ejemplo:
   
   
   
   
2. Assign a point on your timescale for each epic. In doing so, try to be realistic about timing without going overboard. At this point you simply don’t have enough information about design and development complexity to set specific dates.  Also your customer’s needs should dictate timing as much, if not more, than your development schedule. For example: 
   
   
   

Puntos a considerar

• Asegúrese de que sus herramientas y la estructura de su hoja de ruta le permitan realizar actualizaciones fácilmente en el futuro.
• To further organize your roadmap, consider dividing your epics into themes. For example, going back to our car example, you could group all safety-related epics under a “Safety” theme and all performance related epics under a “Performance” theme.
  
  
  
  
• At this point you should be ready to share your roadmap with your product team and the broader organization.  Ask for their feedback and if they have any questions or concerns.  Ultimately, you want to make sure they understand the journey you have mapped out and are ready to support you.

Entregables

• Una hoja de ruta completa, lista para compartir con su equipo para recibir comentarios.

Diseño de producto 

Introducción

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” 

Charles Eames, diseñador, arquitecto y cineasta estadounidense

Si has tomado nuestro Descubrimiento de productos y Estrategia de producto courses, you should have a  good idea by now about what to build and for whom. Moreover, you should have an inspiring visión del producto con claro objetivos y una estrategia para crear una economía sostenible ventaja competitiva. Si es así, el siguiente paso es diseñar su producto. 

Este curso le enseñará conceptos de diseño importantes que le ahorrarán tiempo y dinero a medida que avanza en la fase de diseño. Antes de comenzar, tenga en cuenta lo siguiente:

1. Este curso fue diseñado principalmente teniendo en cuenta los productos tecnológicos, pero la información aquí también se puede aplicar a otros tipos de productos.
2. This course presents a sequence of steps that a product manager would typically follow. However, every product and team is different so we encourage you to adapt this process as needed. Feel free to choose your own sequence or even skip certain steps if you feel they don’t apply to you. 

¿Qué es el diseño de producto? 

El diseño de producto tiene numerosas definiciones. Si bien algunas definiciones incluyen descubrimiento de producto, asumiremos que comienza después de que se haya completado una fase de descubrimiento inicial. Algunas definiciones también incluyen partes del producto que son invisibles para el usuario, como algoritmos, pero para nuestros propósitos solo incluiremos lo que el usuario puede ver, oír o sentir de otra manera. El diseño de producto también abarca muchas áreas distintas del diseño. Aquí hay algunos términos que puede encontrar:

• User interface design – Also called “UI design,” this is the practice of creating ways for users to interact with a product.
• User experience design – Also called “UX design,” this type of design attempts to optimize the user’s experience across all touchpoints, not just the product itself. These might include packaging, customer support and service.
• Visual design – The process of choosing of colors, fonts, icons and other visual details that add polish to a screen or web page.
• Interaction design – The design of animations, sounds, vibrations and other sensory cues that result from a user’s interaction with a product.
• Workflow design – The way that individual features are connected in a path, or the path through a single feature.
• Feature design – The arrangement of components that comprise a single feature.

Poner a los usuarios primero 

El objetivo del diseño de producto es transformar las ideas en bruto en un todo tangible y unificado que ayude a lograr sus objetivos. objetivos del producto. Si bien no siempre fue así, hoy existe un acuerdo universal de que la mejor manera de abordar este proceso es poniendo al usuario en primer lugar. Esto a veces se conoce como diseño centrado en el usuario, diseño centrado en el ser humano o el pensamiento de diseño.  Putting users first means thinking deeply about their needs. We can visualize these as a pyramidal hierarchy starting with the most important needs at the base.

1. Functional – Does your product enable the user to achieve their goals?
2. Reliable – Does the product function as expected on consistent basis?
3. Pleasureable – Does the product elicit positive emotions? 
4. Pleasureable – Does the product elicit positive emotions? 
   
   

El diseño es un buen negocio

Si desea que su producto tenga éxito en el mercado, debe preocuparse profundamente por su diseño. Durante los últimos 20 años hemos visto una explosión de productos y empresas impulsados por el diseño y la evidencia es clara: un buen diseño es un buen negocio. De hecho, según un estudio, las empresas centradas en el diseño superó al S&P 500 por 228%.  And we can see this impact all around us in companies like Apple and Airbnb whose products weren’t first to market, but wound up dominating their markets through good design.  The increasing prevalence of good design has now created an expectation in users that whatever product they choose will live up to the design standards they have become accustomed to.  This means, now more than ever, your product must be well designed in order to compete.

Recursos útiles

• Ineractiondesign.org, ¿Qué es el diseño de interacción?
• grupo normal neilson, La definición de diseño de experiencia de usuario
• Ineractiondesign.org, Diseño de interfaz de usuario

Evaluación comparativa de diseño e inspiración

“Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal”

– Unknown

Product design isn’t easy but due to the explosion of good design, you are in a fortunate position: there are now many well-designed products you can draw upon for inspiration during your design process. You can even take this approach a step further by copying existing designs. This may sound unethical, but this is a common practice that is achieved using an approach called “UI patterns.”  UI Patterns are repeatable solutions to common design problems. You can find patterns for simple features such as sign up, sign in, log in and log in, but also more complex ones like recommendation engines and user dashboards.  Not only will UI patterns save you time and money, but they will increase the likelihood that your product is both usable and pleasurable. This is because your customer uses many other products on a regular basis that also follow these patterns. User behavior is hard to change so if you deviate from standard patterns, you are forcing your customer to learn a new way of interacting which may result in dissatisfaction or even abandonment of your product.

Puntos a considerar

El diseño de producto tiene numerosas definiciones. Si bien algunas definiciones incluyen descubrimiento de producto, asumiremos que comienza después de que se haya completado una fase de descubrimiento inicial. Algunas definiciones también incluyen partes del producto que son invisibles para el usuario, como algoritmos, pero para nuestros propósitos solo incluiremos lo que el usuario puede ver, oír o sentir de otra manera. El diseño de producto también abarca muchas áreas distintas del diseño. Aquí hay algunos términos que puede encontrar:

• Sometimes design innovation is necessary  – If you are trying to solve a design problem and there is no established pattern, you should innovate, but make sure to test your design with your target customer and iterate as needed until you have mitigated as much risk as possible.
• Look across industries –  Products that solve similar problems in other industries can be an excellent source of design inspiration. This approach can also provide a significant competitive advantage by enabling you to innovate within your industry without the risk of creating a new design pattern from scratch.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

1. Identifique los elementos de su producto que cree que pueden basarse en diseños existentes.
2. Encuentre productos que resuelvan problemas similares.
3. Determine which of these existing designs can act as a basis for your product’s design. 
4. Compártelo con tu equipo para recibir comentarios. 

Selección de plataforma

One of the most important decisions you will make when designing your product is your choice of platforms.  A platform is a special type of product: one that enables the creation or delivery of other products. The most widely used are the dominant smartphone and personal computing platforms: Apple’s, IOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft Windows. Other major platforms include smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo, and TV-centric platforms like Roku. Looking to the future, popular platforms may one day include glasses, headsets, or even chip implants. Due to the disparate nature of these platforms, the optimal design for your product will vary significantly depending on the platform you choose. In addition, the functionality of your product may also need to vary for different platforms. Therefore technology products often have to undergo expensive modifications to work on more than one platform. This is just one reason why choosing the right platform is a crucial step in your product design process. In the next section, we will explore other factors.

Elegir una plataforma

Platform selection can be complex, but if you take a strategic approach you can narrow down the choices considerably.  Here are the primary factors you should consider:

1. Audience – How many of your target customers does the platform provide access to? For products with universal appeal, it may make sense to choose one of the dominant platforms. For special purpose products, the choice of platform should be driven by the access they provide to your target customer.
2. Time to market – As discussed, early identification of risks is crucial to product success. Therefore, as you choose a platform you should consider the amount of time it will take to bring your product to market. For example, since mobile app development takes much longer than website development, it is common for products to launch first on the web.
3. Cost – How much does it cost to develop or operate your product? Development costs include designers, engineers and testers. Operating costs include app store fees and software licenses.
4. User experience – Will your chosen platform enable you to create a functional, reliable, usable and pleasurable product? Also consider the ease of access to your product that each platform offers. For example, a website is relatively easy to access –  simply click a lick, perform a search or type an address. Now compare this to installing a mobile phone app: the user must launch the app store, find the app and often enter a password or credit card before they can finally download it.
5. Ease of proliferation – How much opportunity does the platform offer for your product to spread? For example, users can easily find smartphone apps through app store and internet searches. App stores also provide algorithmic recommendations.  By contrast, it is much harder for users to discover new applications on smart speaker devices.  Also consider the opportunity for your product to spread virally within or across platforms. Using our previous example, it’s relatively easy for users to share smartphone apps and websites but much harder to share smart speaker applications.

Puntos a considerar

• Prioritize your platforms – It is rare to launch a new product on multiple platforms.  Even large companies will usually release a new product on a single platform to gauge customer response and obtain feedback. Therefore, you should try to limit your first release to one platform and use the feedback you receive to plan your next one.
• Consider emerging platforms – Sometimes it pays develop your product for newer platforms that may not be widely used now, but are growing in popularity.  You will face less competition and as the platform grows you will have the opportunity to build a strong reputation and platform expertise.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

1. Revise los factores de selección anteriores
2. Enumere las cinco plataformas principales para su producto en orden de prioridad.
3. Comparte con tu equipo para recibir comentarios 
4. Elija una plataforma para el lanzamiento de su producto

Alcance del producto 

El alcance del producto es el proceso de decidir qué incluir y excluir de su producto. El alcance es especialmente importante cuando se lanza un nuevo producto porque el tiempo y el dinero son escaso. El alcance adecuado le permite alcanzar los objetivos de su producto de la manera más rápida y eficiente posible.

Cascada versus ágil

Until the mid 2000’s product scoping usually involved creating a prioritized list of features. The team would then estimate the cost of developing each feature and how far down the list they could afford to develop given their available time and resources. This was known as the waterfall approach because the entire product scope would be sent to engineering, and then to testing in a waterfall-like fashion before a final release could occur many months later.

Desde entonces, se desarrolló una metodología llamada ágil que utiliza un enfoque iterativo para determinar el alcance se ha vuelto dominante. En lugar de planificar todo el alcance por adelantado, el desarrollo se realiza en ráfagas cortas llamadas carreras de velocidad. El software funcional se lanza después de cada sprint y el alcance está sujeto a cambios a medida que el equipo recibe comentarios sobre cada lanzamiento.

Historias de usuarios y epopeyas

Otro impacto de la metodología ágil es que las especificaciones de funciones han sido reemplazadas en gran medida por historias de usuarios. User stories are one sentence scenarios that describe the problem that a feature is supposed to solve and for whom.  For example, suppose you are designing a braking system for a car and your target customers live in snowy areas. Your user story might go something like this:  “As a driver I need the ability to stop my car quickly in the snow in order to avoid accidents.”

Las historias a menudo se combinan en grupos más grandes llamados epopeyas. Going back to our car example, suppose we need to ensure the car can brake safely under other adverse conditions such as rain, sleet and unpaved roads. We could then create user stories for each of these conditions and group them into an epic called “Safe Braking.”

La cartera de productos

Otro concepto ágil clave es el Pila de Producto. This is simply a prioritized list of user stories with the most important stories at the top. With each development cycle, stories are handed off to the development team for execution. When feedback is received, the backlog is re-prioritized or “groomed.”  There are many prioritization techniques you can use. Some of the most popular are MOSCÚ, ARROZ y mapeo de historias.

Using an agile approach, it’s obviously impossible to predict what your backlog will look like from sprint to sprint because the process is iterative. However, you should prioritize your backlog as best you can in alignment with your product goals and vision. Even though it may change over time, this will give your team a firm baseline to work from.  Remember, the first version of your product won’t include every user story, so as you build your backlog limit your focus to the first few iterations of your product.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

1. Cree una cartera de productos escribiendo todas las historias de usuarios que crea que son necesarias para la primera versión de su producto.
2. Priorice su trabajo pendiente basándose en una de las técnicas de priorización mencionadas anteriormente.
3. Discute los resultados con tu equipo.

Medición

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

-Peter Drucker

Puede que la medición no parezca estar relacionada con el diseño, pero recopilar los datos correctos de los usuarios es crucial para mejorar su diseño después de su lanzamiento. Y saber de antemano qué medir no sólo mejora su capacidad para capturar los datos correctos, sino que también puede resultar en un diseño más efectivo. Esto se debe a que enmarcar los objetivos de su producto en términos numéricos lo obliga a pensar en los comportamientos del usuario que desea fomentar y cómo las diferentes partes de la experiencia del usuario contribuyen a ellos.

Let’s take an example. Suppose you are designing a social media app and the behavior that you want to encourage is getting users to post frequent updates. In that case, your design might include sending weekly reminders to users who haven’t posted in awhile, and a large, colorful “post” button to attract their attention. 

Una vez que haya identificado los comportamientos de usuario deseados, el siguiente paso es determinar cómo los medirá y establecerá objetivos, de la siguiente manera:

1. Define KPIs – KPI stands for “Key Performance indicator.”  These are the metrics that your product design should optimize.  For example, with our social media app we would certainly want to include a KPI that enables us to measure our success in getting users to post frequently. One such KPI might be the number of posts per user per month. Another might be the percent of users who click on the weekly reminders.
2. Set Targets – Once we know what to measure, setting targets for these measurements helps us further optimize our design. For example, suppose we set an ambitious target for our monthly posts KPI. That might lead us toward further optimizations such as animating the button and increasing the frequency of the reminders.

Embudos de conversión

Conversion funnels are an important concept when it comes to measurement and optimization.  A conversion funnel is the path through your product that a user takes toward some desired outcome. They’re called funnels because the flow of users is almost always funnel-shaped: the largest number of users are at the top and the funnel narrows towards the bottom as usage drops off. When thinking of your design as a funnel, your goal is to remove steps and other sources of friction in order to retain as many users as possible as they move through the funnel.

Puntos a considerar

• Use KPIs sparingly –  Having too many KPIs makes it harder for your team to track, communicate and internalize them. You should aim for between five and ten KPIs. 
• KPIs are subject to change – As you learn more about your customer, your market and your product, it’s likely that one or more of your original KPIs will become outdated and will need to be replaced. Therefore, don’t worry too much about finding the perfect KPIs and don’t cling too tightly to KPIs that aren’t serving the needs of your product.

Recursos útiles

Entregables

1. Compile una lista de diez métricas que sean cruciales para que las mida su producto.
2. Elija sus cinco mejores de esta lista. Estos son tus KPI.
3. Establecer objetivos para cada KPI.
4. Revise el diseño de su producto para asegurarse de que esté optimizado para cumplir con sus objetivos.