Studio Note #54: They Already Told You.
You can design the path. You can’t decide where people walk.
There’s a weird thing businesses do.
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what people are going to want while occasionally ignoring what they’ve already told us they want.
The first version of the Vendorfied app was built largely on assumptions.
They were informed assumptions. We knew the problems we were trying to solve. We knew the industry. We talked to people. We thought through how vendors and the companies hiring them might use the platform.
But ultimately, we were still building something that didn’t exist yet.
At some point, you have to do that.
You can research forever. You can make diagrams, interview people, study competitors and fill a wall with sticky notes. Eventually you have to put something in front of people and see what happens.
So we did.
And then something much more useful than speculation started showing up.
Feedback.
People told us what they liked. They told us what they didn’t understand. They asked for things we hadn’t included. They used parts of the app differently than we expected. Some things we thought would matter didn’t matter nearly as much as we thought they would.
That information is shaping V2.
And there’s a pretty significant difference between sitting in a room deciding what you think people will want and sitting in that same room with a pile of evidence from people who actually used the thing.
This doesn’t mean customers should design your product for you.
People are usually very good at telling you where something hurts. They aren’t necessarily responsible for figuring out how you should fix it.
That part is still our job.
But once enough people point to the same problem, ask the same question or request the same thing, it seems a little ridiculous to keep guessing.
V1 gave us something people could react to.
V2 gets to benefit from those reactions.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
You have to guess a little to make the first thing.
You don’t have to keep guessing once people start giving you the answers.