Ask HN: How do you develop a product as you learn about the problem space

6 points·x1ph0z··3 comments

Do you have a list of features or goals in mind when you start a project? Or do you have periods of learning and then periods of development? Or are the 2 activities interspersed?

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In my case, they've been interspersed. Even features will change, as you gain more knowledge - and some things you thought as important, will turn out not to be.

I will tell you this: it takes a lot of will power to continue working, if the project is not short term. I've worked on mine for almost 2 years and I'm still in Beta.

Developing a successful product requires learning from your [potential] customers, which can include yourself if you're a customer, what is needed most. It definitely should be an interplay, a loop of development and feedback if your goal is a product. If you're just starting, sometimes you have to develop a toy before you can get meaningful feedback or before you learn anything useful about a problem, but often you can get feedback on ideas without developing anything but the idea.

For me, there's a strong tendency to develop and avoid feedback, because I love developing things and feedback is relatively hard to find and painful to receive. Definitely avoid this trap and seek feedback as early and often as possible.

I've kind of mapped learning to customer feedback here. IMO When you're developing a product, this is the type of learning that matters most because without feedback you'll tend to learn things that might not be useful to your customers.

Assuming that you are trying to solve a specific problem it would help to workshop the idea with others who can offer knowledge based on experience. Particularly once your app starts to take shape.

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