Lecture 16 - How to Run a User Interview (Emmett Shear)

1. SPSpeaker0:01

   All right, uh, good afternoon. Today's guest speaker is Emmett Shear. Emmett is the CEO of Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon, where he now works. Um, and Emmett is going to do a new format of class today, uh, and talk about how to do great user interviews. So this is the talking to users part of starting a startup. Uh, should be really useful. Thank you very much for coming.

2. ESEmmett Shear0:21

   Thanks, Dan. Context so everyone knows, uh, where I'm coming from, from this. Uh, we started our-- I started my first startup with Justin Kan, uh, right out of college. Um, we started this company called Kiko Calendar. Uh, it didn't go so well. Uh, I mean, it went all right. We, we, we built it. We, uh, we sold it, but we sold it on eBay, uh, so that's not necessarily the end you want for your startup.

3. SPSpeaker0:47

   [laughs]

4. ESEmmett Shear0:47

   And, uh, it was, uh, it was a good time. We learned a lot. We learned a lot about programming. Um, we didn't know anything about calendars. Uh, neither of us were users of calendars, nor did we, during the period of time we worked on Kiko, talk to anyone who actually did use a calendar. Uh, so that was, uh, that was not optimal. Uh, we, we got the build stuff part of the, uh, startup down. We did not get the talk to users part. Uh, the second startup we started, we used a very common trick that pr- lets you get away with not talking to users, which was that we were our own consumer. We, uh, we had this idea for a television show, Justin TV, a reality show of Justin Kan's life, and, uh, uh, we built a whole set of s- technology and website around the reality show we wanted to run, um, and so we were the user for that, uh, for that product. And that's actually one way to cheat and get away with not talking to many other users is if you're just building something that literally is just for you, you don't need to talk to anyone else because you know what it is you want, um, and what you need. Uh, but that's actually a really limiting way to start a startup. Most startups are not just built for the person who is, uh, who is using them. And when you do that, every now and then you get really lucky, and you are representative of some huge class of people who all want the exact same thing you do. Uh, but very often also that just turns into a side project that doesn't go anywhere. Uh, so we kept working on Justin TV for a while, and we actually achieved a good deal of success because it turned out that there were people out there who wanted to do the same thing we did, uh, which was broadcast ourselves live on the Internet. But, uh, the issue with Justin TV, the thing that, the thing that sort of kept us from achieving greatness is we hadn't figured out yet how to, uh, how to build towards anything beyond that initial TV show. We knew how to bu- we built a great product, actually. If you wanted to run a live twenty-four seven reality television show about your life, we had the website for you. We had exactly what you needed. But w- if we wanted to go do more than that, if we wanted to open it up to a broader spectrum of people, a broader spectrum of use cases, we didn't have, uh, we didn't have the insight to figure that out because we weren't that user. Uh, and so at some point, we decided to pivot Justin TV. We decided we needed to go in a new direction. Uh, we thought we'd built a lot of valuable technology, but we hadn't identified the use case that would let it get really big. Uh, and there were two directions that seemed promising. One of them was mobile, and one of them was gaming. Uh, and I led the gaming initiative inside of the company. And what we did with gaming that was very, very different from what we'd ever done before was we actually went and talked to users because, while I loved watching gaming video, I was very aware that neither I nor anyone else in the company knew anything about broadcasting video games. And so, uh, I was amped about the content. I thought there was a market there. That was sort of the insight that, uh, that I had that I think wasn't common at the time, which is how much fun it was to watch video games. Uh, quick show of hands, people know about watching video games on the Internet here? Okay, I'm just gonna assume the people listening to this also know about it. If you don't know about watching video games on the Internet, you should go read about that, uh, because, uh, it's sort of important context for the stuff I'm gonna talk about. But, uh, the main point is, uh, I thought that was awesome, uh, but I didn't know anything about the side of it that was really important, which is actually acquiring the content, uh, to start broadcasting. So we went out, and we ran a-- actually a very large number of user interviews. We talked to, uh, a lot of people and brought that data back, and that formed the core of all the decision-making that was for the next three years of product features on Twitch, uh, was sort of some of the insights we got from that. And we continued to talk to users and, in fact, built an entire part of the company whose job it is basically to talk to our users, um, which is an, a whole division that we just didn't even have at Justin TV. We had no one at the company whose job it was to talk to our most important users. Um, so, uh, so that was Twitch. And I'm gonna, I wanna give you guys a little bit of a, uh, uh, a little bit of an insight into, uh, with Twitch, what, uh, what that, what that meant going to go talk to users. So we determined that the broadcasters were the most important people. Um, and the reason we determined that was when we went and looked into the market, we went, I, I, we looked into what, what determined why people watched a certain, uh, streamer and went to a certain website. They would just follow the content, right? You had a, you had a piece of content you loved, uh, and the broadcaster would come with you. Um, and that's actually the one really important point about user interviews, which is that who you talk to is as important as what questions you ask and what you pull away from it. Because if you go and talk to a set of users, if we'd gone and talked to viewers only, we would have gotten a completely different set of feedback than talking to the broadcasters. And talking to the broadcasters gave us insight into how to build something for them. Um, and that turned out to be strategically correct. Uh, I wish I could tell you the recipe for figuring out who the target user is, uh, for your product and who your target user should be, but there isn't a recipe. Uh, it comes down to think really hard and, and use your, use your judgment to figure out who you're really building this for. Um, so, uh, what I wanna do is a little bit, something a little bit interactive now, which is, uh, we're, I'm gonna, I got a bunch of ideas, uh, from, from you guys actually, so sort of suggested ideas. Um, and I'm, I'm gonna pick one of them, and, uh, I want everyone to sort of sit down and do, do step one of this process for me right now, which is think aboutWho would you go ask about this? Like, which people, where would you go to find the people you needed to talk to about this, uh, in order to, uh, in order to learn about what you should build? Um, and so the idea we're gonna use is, let me see here, of these ideas. So here, it's a lecture-focused note-taking app. The idea is, I don't think that the state-of-the-art for note-taking is good enough yet. Um, and I wanna make a note-taking app that, uh, impr- you know, improves that experience, makes taking notes in class better, um, or taking notes while listening to a lecture online better. Um, so you know, maybe it has collaboration features, uh, maybe it, like, helps you focus better somehow. It has m- multimedia enhancements. I don't know, right? It, all sorts of possible features. But that's the, that's the idea. So take, like, take 120 seconds right now and think about not what you would ask or what the right features for this app is, but who would you talk to? Who should the... Who, who is gonna give you that feedback that's gonna tell you, uh, whether this is good or not? I actually mean it right now. Take your laptop out, like, type, write some stuff down. Think, think about, like, the... You can, it's, it's good enough to, like, think that in your head. But actually, like, if you actually just write it down, and, like, just come up with the five people you'd talk to or the five types of people you'd talk to, um, and who you think the most important one was. Like, actually do it because there's nothing like actually running through a practice of something and trying to do it to actually get it into your head the right way to do it. Um, I'm gratified to s- hear clicking in the c- of keyboards now. Um, if you're following along at home, pause, actually do it. Think about who you, who would you talk to? Um, because, uh, that's a, that is the first question, uh, for almost any startup that you need to answer is, like, who is my user and, and where am I gonna find them? All right. Uh, that's, like, way shorter than you'd normally use to think about this problem. It's actually a really tricky problem, and, like, figuring out where to source the people is pretty hard. But, uh, uh-

5. SPSpeaker8:32

   [coughs]

6. ESEmmett Shear8:32

   ... we're going to move along anyways in the, in this highly abbreviated version of learning how to build a product and run a user interview. So, um, can, uh, can I, can I get one volunteer from the audience to come up and, uh, tell, tell us what, uh, who you would talk to, and we'll talk about it? You guys are all preselected. Here you go.

7. SPSpeaker8:52

   [laughs]

8. ESEmmett Shear8:52

   I don't know how to turn this thing on. Here we go. So who do you talk to? Yeah.

9. SPSpeaker8:59

   Um, I would definitely talk to college students first, obviously, because we sit in a lot of lectures. And specifically, I would wanna talk to college students studying different subjects to see if maybe, um, you know, if you're an English major, if that makes a difference versus you're studying, um, math or computer science in terms of how you wanna take notes in different lectures.

10. ESEmmett Shear9:19

    Um, and, uh, so you, so you're gonna talk to, talk to a bunch of college students. Would you pick any particular subset of college students? Like, sounds like you really, we don't wanna talk to all college students or, like, a broader array.

11. SPSpeaker9:30

    I, I would wanna talk to college students, um, like, and break down the divisions by, like, people who study different areas maybe. And then also maybe it would make sense for people who have, like, different study techniques 'cause some people take a lot of notes, some people don't take that many notes but still jot stuff down.

12. ESEmmett Shear9:45

    Right. So I mean, that, that's a really good start. Like, that's, that is actually, obviously a group of users you wanna go talk to, especially if you're targeting something at, you know, at college students, uh, as the consumer. Um, and if you're talking to college students as a consumer, uh, the, you're gonna get a lot out of students about what their current note-taking habits are and, you know, what they would be excited about. Um, one of the problems with selling things to college students is that college students don't actually spend very much money. Um, it's, it's really hard to get you guys to open your wallets, especially, uh, if you want them to pay for a school-related thing. I mean, people don't even wanna buy textbooks, right? Uh, I think you've probably, probably all used Chegg or that, you know, borrow it from your friend or whatever. Uh, and so, uh, o- one of the, like, one of the things w- that I think you'd be missing if, if you go after just the students, right, is you want to figure out who, who is the most important person, uh, to this, to this app? And if you actually had a note-taking app, my guess is for colleges, the people most likely to actually buy a note-taking app that you guys would use would be college IT, right? I mean, presumably, for most, for the most part, if you wanna sell s- software to students, like, the people who have to get bought into that is usually the school administrators. So that would be, that would be one approach. If you like thought, "Okay, well," you presumably go talk to the college students, and you find out, uh, they don't actually buy any note-taking software right now at all. I mean, likely. Uh, it's possible they do, um, in which case I'm, I'm completely wrong. And this is why you actually have to go talk to the users. But, uh, you then have to try to maybe try other, other, uh, groups, right? So I would talk to college I- I would talk to IT administrators as well. Um, I think that's a, that's another, uh, area that's really promising. You might l- talk to parents, right? Who, who, who spends money on their kids' education and is, like, willing to pull their wallet out? Like, the, you know, parents of kids. Um, parents of kids who are freshmen or going off to college for the first time. You need this app to make your kid productive so that they don't fail out of college. Um, and, and there's actually a lot of groups that are potential, that aren't necessarily the obvious user, but who are critical, critical to your app's success, potentially. Um, and you, when you're, when you're s- at the very beginning of a startup like this when you're like, you have this idea that you think is awesome, uh, you wanna have that broadest group you possibly can. You don't just wanna talk to one type of person and, and, and learn that. You wanna get familiar with the space. You wanna get familiar with the various kinds of people who could be contributing. All right. So, uh, uh, let's, uh, let's have someone come up, and we're gonna, we're gonna pretend, uh, we're gonna run this user interview. So we're gonna talk to a college student, um, and try to find out, uh, what we should build, you know, what we should get, uh, into this note-taking app. So, so some, another volunteer, please, uh, for, for running an interviewYes. All right, so, uh, hello.

13. SPSpeaker12:26

    Hi.

14. ESEmmett Shear12:26

    S-

15. SPSpeaker12:26

    I'm Stephanie.

16. ESEmmett Shear12:27

    Hi, Stephanie.

17. SPSpeaker12:28

    Nice to meet you.

18. ESEmmett Shear12:28

    Um, welcome. Thank you for agreeing to do this user interview with us.

19. SPSpeaker12:31

    [laughs]

20. ESEmmett Shear12:31

    So, uh, I wanted to hear from you about, you know, what are your note taking habits. Like, how do you take notes today?

21. SPSpeaker12:38

    Sure. So, um, I take notes in a variety of ways. I like to, um, now because of speed and efficiency and just to come back to it later, it's easy for me to just take notes on my laptop. Um, and so a lot of those notes will be primarily text-based. Um, but in certain classes, so for example, if I'm taking a history class, most of it will be in text, but if I'm taking a, taking a physics class, for example, there are gonna be more complex diagrams, different angles that I have to draw, and so that's a little harder, harder for me to both get the-

22. ESEmmett Shear13:05

    What software do you use for this stuff today?

23. SPSpeaker13:07

    I just do pen and paper for that.

24. ESEmmett Shear13:09

    You do pen and paper. So you do a combination. You take notes with pen and paper.

25. SPSpeaker13:11

    Exactly.

26. ESEmmett Shear13:11

    You take notes with your computer sometimes.

27. SPSpeaker13:13

    Yeah.

28. ESEmmett Shear13:13

    Um, and, uh, when you take notes with, uh, when you take all these notes, at the end of it, like do you actually review them? Like do you... Be honest.

29. SPSpeaker13:21

    Mm-hmm.

30. ESEmmett Shear13:21

    Do you actually go back and ever actually look at these notes?

Episode duration: 46:27