Over the years, I have become more and more convinced of the business and technical sense of co-designing new products and features with input from customers (or potential customers). Often known as design sprints, Google Ventures has published detailed guidance on how they carry out the process. It's well worth reading.
Away from the heavily-funded world of silicon valley, many startups can't afford the time or money required to run a 5-day sprint (or sprints) and I often come across a general reluctance to reach out to new customers until there is a product to show.
This is a mistake.
In my experience, people are very happy to give up some of their work time in order to help solve a problem ... provided that problem really exists for them. A week is a big ask, but an hour or two is normally fine. If you find yourself reaching out to potential clients and none of them want to spend a couple of hours developing the solution to a problem with their peers, you should probably ask yourself whether this problem (or even the market) really exists. If you don't believe me, do a little role play in your head ... imagine someone emailed to invite you to a short, high-energy session with a group of your peers/competitors to collectively design the solution to a specific problem you all face. You'd get to network and you'd get to shape a solution to the problem ... that someone else would then build for you. The only reason I can think of for saying no is that the problem isn't big enough to justify the time.
So what can you do in two hours?
As long as the problem is well defined, you can cram whole design sprint (up to the prototyping phase) into two hours. The trick is to plan it very carefully, time everything to the minute and pump up the energy in the room. Do it person - this sort of thing works poorly in a virtual environment. A good number of attendees is between six and twelve. A schedule might look something like this (there are lots of variations depending on the problem/context) ...
- Define the problem as people arrive ... get them to brainstorm the relevant pain points on sticky notes before the session even starts properly. This builds energy and it means you can be clear about what the problem is from the very start.
- Introduce the session for no more than 5 minutes.
- Using large-format posters of existing products/solutions, use sticky dots to make heat maps of what people like or dislike. Collectively agree an "elevator pitch" (or pitches) for what the rest of the session should focus on. (20 minutes)
- In smaller groups, brainstorm Insights, Questions and Ideas around the agreed pitch from the previous session. Groups feed back to each other at the end. This reduces the risk of groupthink. During the feedback session, have someone write the key ideas on sticky notes and start grouping them into themes. (20 mins)
- After a break, assign people to themes for a couple of rounds of crazy fours (a shorter version of crazy eights) - emphasise the goal of quantity over quality! (10 mins)
- Vote on everyone's crazy eights with sticky dots (5 mins)
- Pick a couple of solutions and story-board them in more detail for 10 minutes each.
- Recap to flush out any themes that have emerged unseen during the session.
With breaks, in two hours you'll have a detailed understanding of the pain points your potential users face, an understanding of why they matter and a ranked list of solutions along with sketched UI and storyboards.
Take that away and produce a click-functional mockup solution within a week using something like powerpoint/figma. Best to use a designer at this stage, because people can't usually see past bad design and you want to avoid too many comments about the colour of the buttons etc. Demo the mockup to the people who came to the workshop (invite the relevant decision maker too) and ask them what they'd pay for it.
Assuming you can make the financials stack up, now you just have to build it, sign up the people from the workshop (who are now very warm leads likely to leave stellar reviews) and market it using the information you gathered about pain points!
It's also worth noting the broader marketing benefits to this approach. You are showing off your brand in the context of deep understanding of the problem and developing solutions, you are being useful to potential clients which builds brand equity and you are leaving them with the impression that you are high-energy problem solvers, thought leaders and conveners. What's not to like?