I’ve spent the last few months working on a tough image processing problem with lots of moving parts. It was all engineering work. It was fun and technical but ultimately it came to nothing. I’ve been spending some time thinking about a new product that Anete had been sharing some ideas with me on.
She’s a creative, not a geek, so see’s the world through a different lens to me and she’s looking for help being more mindful of her skincare routine, organise her products, simplify. and … proposition here.
I’m always excited about working on new stuff, especially new green-field new Product stuff. Skincare is totally new to me I’ll have to admit, I don’t give much thought to my own skin. I really enjoy these situations, as I have zero expectation about what the customer might want or need. I can’t really relate to it either, but I am happy to talk about it and listen : )
Often when we’re close to the action, and we know the product really well, we’re embodied by a belief of what the product should be or do. If we’re working well, that belief comes from talking to our customers and knowing what needs they have and looking at all the data. Over time that ends up becoming (like it or not) a bias to how you interpret future customer research.
When we have zero belief or expectation it helps us to be open listeners because we’re also interested in finding out more. Ideally every time we talk to customers we want to listen, as much as we can, and reduce how many direct questions we ask. We can always ask opinions about direct topics after we’ve conducted our initial conversation.
We’re always interested in speaking to people about how they use skincare products, please reach out if you’d like to know what we’re doing and how we’re getting on.