INSIGHTS / EDITOR’S INDEX
Field notes on product focus, user research, website stories and growth for small teams.
Editor’s pick / Cover story
When a team serves three kinds of customer at once, meetings start with three different opening lines. This note follows one attempt to narrow a broad value proposition into a single sentence, including the two versions that were thrown out along the way.
Why read it now: the customer list keeps growing, every new request persuades someone, and the roadmap already runs into next quarter. The article shows how to close it down in two weeks.
Who it is for: teams of 3 to 15 with real users, about to rework the home page or reorder the roadmap.
One question to take to your next meeting: if we served only one kind of customer next quarter, at what moment would we want them to think of us?
Problem index
Two notes per path. Read them in order, then go back to your own material.
Path 01 / Product focus
Start with “Positioning is a set of trade-offs” to write down who this version serves and who waits; then read “Positioning” to turn the conclusion into a sentence colleagues can repeat. Leave a team meeting between the two.
Path 02 / User research
Start with “Three kinds of interview evidence” to separate what users said, what they actually did and what they were willing to give up; then “A research rhythm for small teams” puts that into a two-weekly routine.
Path 03 / Website and story
Start with “Whose question should the first screen answer?” to decide who the first screen speaks to; then “From feature list to value story” carries the same sentence into sales material and the pitch.
The six questions to ask in a positioning meeting, and what to write down after each.
Quotes, actual behaviour and what people gave up, in three columns side by side.
Each of the first three screens has one sentence to deliver; align a redesign screen by screen.
One card with the hypothesis, trigger, signal and stop rule, runnable within two weeks.
A two week process clarifies priority users, core situations, and alternatives to form a positioning hypothesis the team and market can test.
User problems, product turning points, and credible evidence form a narrative reusable across channels.
Design, run, and review a six week experiment around one specific growth bottleneck.
Useful positioning changes product priorities, sales qualification, and the opportunities a team declines.
The first screen chooses an audience, a situation, and a next action that deserve priority.
Sequences of events, real costs, and existing alternatives provide stronger evidence than attitudes and wishes alone.
Organize content around users' decisions so features explain a credible mechanism at the moment readers need them.
Light recruitment, regular reviews, and an evidence log make research part of weekly work.
A fictional case uses evidence to refocus an expanding collaboration tool on retaining decisions and their context.
Editor’s note
The notes come from situations and discussions common in consulting projects. Case details and numbers are illustrative.
Bring the problem you have now, the evidence you hold and the date you want to decide by. We start from there.