This is part of a series of open letters to founders called ‘Howdy Founder’ addressed to startup founders in search of a designer.
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Open LETTER TO TECHNICAL Saas FOUNDERS ABOUT TO HIRE THEIR FIRST DESIGNER - part 1
Howdy, Founder 👋🏻
Congrats on the amazing technology you and your team have built. I was really impressed with the technical demo and it’s obvious to me that your team has poured their hearts into crafting this software for your users. After meeting with you and your cofounder today to discuss your new product, I grabbed a coffee and wrote down my thoughts. I had a few ideas that I thought I’d share. FWIW, these thoughts have percolated after talking to several SaaS companies and finding common threads in my conversations with each.
First, a note about building and investing in design culture early. It is never easy merging in design into an all engineering or sales-heavy team, but I think the sooner it is done, the greater value it will have downstream. It has to happen at some point(!) and I think building and investing into these processes will have enormous value now, in future, and de-stress the product roadmap. Is your team diverse in other ways too? No one wants to be the first designer, person of color, AND woman at a startup, and unfortunately sometimes we’re asked to be all three. Of course it can be done, but it’s a lot to take on….and something that our white, male counterparts don’t have to take on in addition to design responsibilities.
Back to design… You asked me, How can design, and an early designer add value to my SaaS product? I think there are specific ways a designer adds value, whether pre-product-market fit OR post product-market fit. Regardless of stage, a designer who is a strong product thinker is crucial. (Esp. if you haven’t reached product market fit or need to pivot in your value prop.) What is ‘product thinking?’ Here and here are 2 good articles that summarize how product thinking works. A key concept is, ‘what is the job to be done, and how does our software / product / solution meeting that human’s needs?’ (Clayton Christensen of HBS was the first to coin and popularize the ‘jobs to be done’ mental model).
Can you clearly answer these questions:
What is “the job to be done?” What is the job your user urgently needs to do? Is it a ‘vitamin’ need (nice to have) or is it a ‘vicadin’ need (must have)? Hopefully it is the latter. For example: The job, “I need to deliver a company-wide briefing every Monday,” or “put 10 candidates in the recruiting pipeline,” or “summarize findings from my weeklong research project for my boss” are examples of urgent, vicadin-level tasks I need done in order to do my job well. “Trying out a cool new AI tool,” “a super fast gmail replacement,” or a productivity dashboard on crack, are simply not “jobs to be done” in her mind. How do you help her or him get the job(s) done better, faster, smarter? How does his boss expect it to be delivered? As a word doc? Presentation to clients? a series of phone calls with candidates? Do you help her look like a hero as she achieves that goal?
As you tailor the current product to user “jobs to be done,” design thinking principles will come in handy. Here is a link to an article that explains the process of design thinking: ‘Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test.’ Very simply put, empathy is the first step — and it’s not soft and fuzzy at all. It is down to brass tacks, practical and hard-working. It’s about nailing the headspace of the person who will eventually pay for your product with their time or money.
How do you know if your product is helping to get the job done? How do you measure the success of this product / tool? Is it improving over time?
After meeting with you today, I think I have a pretty good overview of the product’s features and capabilities of your product, but would love to chat more about gaining clarity on the exact use case, as well as the current usage, metrics and greatest pain points of existing or paying customers….Part 2 of my letter is below.
Cheers for now,
J
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Open LETTER TO TECHNICAL Saas FOUNDERS ABOUT TO HIRE THEIR FIRST DESIGNER - part 2
Hello again, Founder of SaaS startup 👋🏻
I’ll pick up where I left off with a great question you asked me earlier: “Design is so vague — what are tangible design projects that we could begin with?” I’ve listed a few, high ROI design projects that came to mind, given the stage and state of where your product is now. These projects target the value proposition to the user, product usability and creating a valuable feedback loop.
UX Audit of landing page - Because so many SaaS products get one shot for someone to understand the product and request a demo, this page is critical. Do potential users of your product understand what you’re offering and how to get what they want? Is the landing page a good funnel of conversion to the demo or trial? Are bounce rates normal for the industry average? The landing page can be a major source of friction. Do users make it to the pricing page? Does it ask for people to speak to a sales representative? (No one wants to talk to a sales person without seeing something) Are there smaller ‘asks’ you can make of the user first to signal engagement and interest?
UX Audit of the core product for usability - If the product is in pilot or being used by people now, we need to understand how they’re using it. A few questions to consider: What business goal(s) is the product meeting / achieving for your users now? Which features never get used? What is our golden goose? How is what you have built working or not working to achieve your goals? As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But what are the existing points of friction preventing more people from using your product? How does our pricing system incentivize or dis-incentivize usage? If the engineering team is really strong and has been building in a vacuum, you might have an over-built product. Are there any features we could ‘kill’ from a Darwinian perspective? Where could it improve? How do we prevent feature creep? If your product is an API, it’s definitely worth writing an interview script to speak with the developers who are reading your API docs.
Systematizing and synthesizing user feedback: Developing a method to obtain user feedback systematically: How do we select which users to get feedback from and listen to? What kind of feedback, and which methods should we use? How do we develop a process for this? User feedback is probably coming in through various streams and pipelines now: Intercom, in-person meetings, Sales meetings, Feature request emails, Twitter complaints, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, etc. How do we bring it all together in one place and start to synthesize the feedback? Have any users been so bold as to suggest features on their own? Is anyone riffing on the intended use of your product and co-opting it for their unique goals? Those creative users are definitely worth talking to. How are you synthesizing existing user feedback and processing it into product discussions with the team? What are people saying about your product now, and what would you like them to be saying about how they use your product, 2-3 months from now?
Translating OKRs into Product and Design Goals. This might be slightly more on the strategy side, but post-launch, I think it is very worthwhile to review the founder’s vision, the company-wide OKRs, and then drill down into the product metrics and KPIs that will support these goals. We will refine these statements and revise them every few months if necessary, so it is clear across the company what the usage, metrics and goals for the product are. Then work backwards to design a product that will achieve them. How will you know if/when your product has succeeded? What are the hypothetical “metrics of success” that you expect to see if your product catches on? What are baseline metrics for products like yours? What will the “symptoms” of success look like if your product is sticky and / or viral? A good product designer will work with you and the product team to clarify and define this from the beginning. What are the product metrics now, and where would we like them to be in 2-3 months? You can’t improve that which you don’t measure.
Audit of social channels and messaging. What is the user’s first impression of your company? It may NOT come from your landing page, but come from Twitter, social media, or a co-worker. What is the one line that new users repeat to others about your product when describing it? Their manager? This description, and the accompanying graphics and visuals are incredibly valuable and worth crafting because it will act as your calling card and live on (forever) in emails, tweets, slack channels, the landing page, your bio, and linkedin for recruiting, etc. A good designer and writer can craft this, make it consistent across your channels, and even test its performance over time.
And finally, I’ll leave you with a provocation. What do you wish you knew the answer to, so that you could build / sell / scale with the greatest confidence? What are the existential questions, hypotheses and assumptions undergirding your product? A good product designer will help the team articulate these early and design a process toward answering them.
FWIW, these are my 2 cents after talking to a bunch of SaaS companies in a row this month and finding common threads in my conversations with them. Thanks for reading!
J