Thread by @SamDeBrule

In the past 24 hours @samiur1204 and I scheduled 19 video onboarding sessions to welcome people into the @usejournal beta.

Exciting!

But now I'm more nervous than happy.

Here's how I work through the nerves of hearing new product feedback:

Remember the only thing worse than harsh feedback is no feedback.

In the past we took too long to get feedback

We polished areas of the product that users didn't care about.

We wound up not building enough empathy

Now before we ship something new, my inbox looks like this:

Look forward to confusion

We onboard everyone over Zoom to see this confusion up close.

It's painful to watch.

But we can't make improvements without it.

The more we see, the more we can improve.

Admit feedback scares me

Of course I don't want anyone calling my baby ugly!

Are we shipping the product before it's ready?

What if people don't find it useful?

Are there too many bugs?

Only one way to find out.

Focus on the earliest usable "skateboard"

@henrikkniberg's framework reduces my stress.

Our goal is to get people from A to B.

Eventually we'll build a car, but we start with a skateboard.

It's okay that what we haven't built a lot.

blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/hen…

Make a list of "nows" and "laters"

We write down all the bugs we experience the day before we bring new users in.

We fix the must nows.

We don't touch the laters.

This relieves a lot of stress.

Here's today's list:

Tell people exactly what to expect.

We only want to talk to people who excited by what we're building.

So excited they can see past the rough edges.

We tell them our vision.

Explain who it's for.

Then list the exact features to expect.

Here's the email we sent:

Look forward to people saying "no thanks."

We get excited when someone says exactly why they don't want to talk.

Here's a no we received:

Feedback never gets less scary.

But you'll always be glad you heard it.

Don't be afraid to ask.