From my experience working as a PM with a medical/educational/hardware/software product, I think everyone finds this process is extremely challenging.

First surprising thing I learned is that users don't usually actually have the will to spend any amount of time giving feedback. But they will avoid admitting it. The second discouraging thing is that when you do get them to sit down and talk, you will find that they're really good at subverting and evading any sort of plan you might have had. And then finally, after you have managed to collect information, it can be extremely difficult to interpret the results and come back with clear insightful ideas for changes and improvements in the product.

To me, interviewing and talking to users is something between the role of an anthropologist and journalist. You sort of have to charm them enough for them to open up, but you also have to maintain scepticism about what they tell you. You have to be inquisitive. And on top of that you have to be able to set aside your own interpretations and thoughts so as not to tip the scales. It can be emotionally draining, especially when you have your own convictions.

I work with engineers and they hate talking to users. The process can be very vague and often feels fruitless to them. Engineers can be stubborn and hold on to their worldview because they strongly believe theirs is objective and there should only be right and wrong answers.

I don't know what it's like at a smaller or larger scale. I can imagine some things are easier, and some are harder. A large company may have real resources to spend on finding the answers which can bring more people to the table. A single-person operation might not have those resources but could be sympathetic enough to bring individuals to the table based on sympathy.

However, when you make discoveries and insights, those are things that can make or break your entire product. It's almost like panning for gold or fishing, you spend a lot of time searching and in doubt, and then you come across that one idea that really makes it all work. Anyways those are my thoughts. It's incredibly satisfying and I love it but I hate it.

People really don't have any passion for talking about your solution because they don't really care about you and you should take any discussion of solutions with a large grain of salt because customers are not PMs.

But people are passionate about talking about their problems and that's where you should orient your discussions on. Don't ask about your product at all during PM interviews, simply try to understand the problems users are facing and figure out what ways your product is or is not addressing those problems.

The biggest mistake I see PMs make is coming in with an over optimism bias and assuming that your product must be top of mind for all users when the reality is that the most often scenario you discover from user interviews is that the problem you're trying to solve is of relatively minor importance to most people.

> The biggest mistake I see PMs make is coming in with an over optimism bias and assuming that your product must be top of mind for all users when the reality is that the most often scenario you discover from user interviews is that the problem you're trying to solve is of relatively minor importance to most people.

You see this come through in products all. The. Damn. Time.

Some PM, and probably one or more designers who were on their side, wanted an "experience". The user just wants to get in and out of your thing as fast as possible and in a way that requires minimal attention.

I just wanted to pay my fucking water bill. A barely-formatted HTML form with nothing else on the page would have been better than almost anything they might come up with. Anything but expert and extremely tasteful efforts to improve on that, will just make it worse. But no. The PM wanted an "experience".

And don't get me started on people in software who complain about users complaining about redesigns. Those users just wanted to do the three clicks they do every morning to do the one thing they do with your software, then forget about it again until tomorrow. You surprised them with a full screen "LOOK WHAT'S NEW" they didn't want and had to figure out how to get rid of, then made them waste some time playing "Where's Waldo" for the element they usually click, and maybe even made it so they couldn't figure out how to do that one thing at all. Of course they're not happy.

> Anything but expert and extremely tasteful efforts to improve on that, will just make it worse.

This is very important in my mind.

Frequently when people talk about mfing website or similar philosophies, you get response like "Well you can improve that in this very specific way". Yes. You can improve it. But think twice first, not everything is broken just because it hasn't been touched. And a lot is broken because it has.

The users just wanted to do three clicks. The same they do every morning. The one thing they do with with the program. But each user does three different clicks, to each do one different thing.

Ya your product is your entire world. But it's just a small thing for customers (esp. before you find traction)

Helps to know exactly what type of feedback you're looking for. Frame any ask as a way to help them [save time / money etc]. And come up with open-ended questions.

Some good templates here: https://giddy-amusement-c74.notion.site/Interview-customers-...

> But people are passionate about talking about their problems and that's where you should orient your discussions on. Don't ask about your product at all during PM interviews, simply try to understand the problems users are facing and figure out what ways your product is or is not addressing those problems.

Yeah you need to understand the whole process that the user is part of, and then design a better overall process.

You can't ask the customer to design the product for you, they don't have the overview it requires and they also don't have any incentives to help you with your job, unless you give them something for their time.

Product managers make their job way too easy for themselves by expecting the users to provide complete requirements for them.

You could never have done any user research that would show you that people wanted to have a phone without buttons, before the iphone came out.

Yeah they’d buy magic wands if they solved their problem. They don’t care about your solution. They care about their solution.

One frequent market research question starts with: if you had magic wand ...

I've see it at Lays, P&G, Google, Mars and others.

It seems a great trick to get humans to cast off the current status quo.

Harsh but very true.

My experience has been very different. People have been quite happy to chat about their experience using the product and the pain-points uncovered were consistent across users.

In a nutshell, what we did was email users asking for a 30-45 minute remote interview in exchange for $50 gift card. We started the meetings letting the user know that there are no wrong answers, that it's quite informal and they can leave at any time. We then spent the first half of the interview finding out who the user is, what they do and how they use the product. The second half was spent uncovering pain-points and maybe even asking users to share their screen and show us.

We'd take notes during the interviews and then once we've done a few we'll collate the notes at which point the improvements to make to the product would become obvious.

> First surprising thing I learned is that users don't usually actually have the will to spend any amount of time giving feedback.

People love to give feedback, and they especially to complain. If you have enough users they'll do it entirely on their own, creating forums and subreddits to discuss a particular program or service. Get your users talking to each other about your stuff and it's much much easier.

When I dismiss a plea for leaving feedback it's usually because I was bothered with the request while in the middle of a task I was trying to complete, I was asked to hand over personal information (like an email address) to some random 3rd party hired to collect the data, or it seemed like a scam (like "rate/review my product and get a free X!"

The people who have to deal with your software when it's bad are more than willing to talk to you. However, if you make it super hard or ignore them when it's not flattering or doesn't match up with your plan.. you get what you deserve.

This is why it’s helpful to work with researchers, who know how to structure the approach to get the answers you’re looking for. They’ll highlight what you can and can’t learn through different approaches and advise on the level of confidence in each insight. Worth their weight in gold.

This sounds remarkably like my job as a high school teacher. Depending on what else it entails, I bet I would enjoy a similar role. Thanks for the thoughts.

I suggest you look into “UX Research”. That’s precisely the role described by the parent comment. They work on a product team with designers, engineers, and PMs to help everyone else understand the needs of the user. They also help define who the user should be based on the needs of different kinds of users. It’s a pretty important role in most user-facing tech companies.

I absolutely will. I’ve looked at UX more generally as a possible career alternative and believe I would be good at it. Can you speak at all to the career prospects/lifestyle of UXR?

In terms of career prospects, you'd work with a lot of designers and product managers, so you could expect similar growths.

I personnaly find this work very fulfilling, as it blends my social science expertise and my tech passion. And if anything, this thread and the answers are the living proof that the job will be needed for a while !

Glad to hear it. Thank you.

As a follow up: my intuition is that a UX Researcher would first enter as a UX Designer. Is this accurate in your experience, or are there paths for direct entry into UXR?

In design school, they briefly teach you how to run user studies. And, in very small companies, they sometimes get the designer to run user studies so they don’t have to hire a separate researcher.

However, UXR is really a separate discipline and every larger company I know (>a few hundred employees) hires dedicated UXRs. Most UXRs have a natural interest in people. Often they come from PhD programs in psychology or sociology (easiest route). But I’ve seen plenty come from a bachelors program, or other “people” fields like sales and marketing. With your background I’m sure you could tell a compelling story about why you’re a fit for the role.

If I were you I’d try to learn as much about UXR methodologies from books or online, and then try to get a job doing UXR at a small company. No need to do UX Design first—that’s a separate skill set.

You might find the following experiential program of interest:

https://www.bentley.edu/centers/ux-education

Or something more academic:

https://www.bentley.edu/academics/graduate-programs/masters-...

https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/

To answer your specific question re: "career prospects/lifestyle of UXR"; I used to do that work full-time, and even founded a consulting business around that. FWIW, I also chaired one of the largest local chapters of the relevant ACM special interest group (SIGCHI). However, I don't work in that field anymore, by choice. And I'm somewhat pessimistic about it, even though I still think it is a critical discipline. My reasons for leaving are:

-- Smaller companies can only afford one person, so they typically hire someone with an art school background; and expect that person to also be able to do UX work well. They are really distinct (but slightly overlapping) skill sets, so it is hard to find one person who is competent at both! Especially on a small company salary...

-- Personal to me: I don't have that art-school background, so that puts me out of contention for a lot of jobs.

-- Most 'tech' companies, from giants like Apple, to small start-ups don't seem to value high-quality UX work any more. At least not as much, and as generally, as was expected in the dot-com years. More typically, nowadays, they seem more interested in visual appeal, and being 'on trend'.

-- I've also heard that UX is not really important because new users are 'digital natives'.

-- I can make a LOT more money, and find more jobs, slinging web front-end code (Vue/React/JS/TS/etc.), than I can doing UX work.

Thanks for the comments and references.

While I have a creative background (previous life as a Local 600 cameraman on features/commercials/music videos/etc, father was a design professor) - I am not an illustrator or designer by experience.

If I make a jump, I would aim for tech in some capacity (UX/UXR, Sales, PM are current focal points), but between now and June - I’m just gathering information.

Be careful what you wish for. I've had the 'second coming of Jesus' email me, and an ungodly amount of abuse, also a lot of people who I think don't even know what a computer is, and lonely people who just want to talk.

Talking with your customers lets you build relationships and brand loyalty which is valuable, but I'm also not sure if that outweighs the downsides.

But for your situation just create a survey with Google forms or something and send it out to everyone. If you don't have many customers yet take the time to personalise each one.

Since your product is a journal, maybe have a public forum/journal to build a community with as well?

Some wisdom in this reply.

When I read the OP question I took "difficult to talk with users" as being about the content of discussion/feedback not the mechanisms for soliciting it, so I'll stick with that take....

I'd say, you need to know what you want.

You will definitely get extremes. I deal with feedback as a teacher, developer, author or musician, and many of the same things apply. Some will be straight, some over-nice, some funny and teasing, some will be rude and angry. But what you want is useful responses, regardless of emotional sentiment and how it's packaged.

How do you filter for that? Like the guidelines of HN it's good to take the most sincere interpretation possible and look for attempts to communicate nuggets of useful critique. Someone who knocks your work down can be great, not even because they're right, but because they do so in a useful way, maybe by making you think about something.

It's good to have a framework for identifying and interpreting things you're looking for. When I post on HN, because I am researching for a book, I have a kinda X-Keyscore selector set in mind - I'm looking for ethical/moral signals, nuggets that reveal underlying attitudes of hackers. But that could apply to any product or project and a set of information you're interested in seeking.

A research method that can help you with this is thematic analysis and sentiment analysis. You "code" responses and score them as to how much they tell you about pre-selected areas you;re trying to improve... installation, usability, cost, configuration, interoperability.... and so on. Then, if you're going to respond, get back to those users on those specific points for clarification.

This is so true. I too love to talk to users via smartsupp from time to time but just last time I was discussing meditation in Himalayas with a user after he asked where I was from.

He was super a cool customer and really helped me improve the product too but you need to have a lot of patience and genuinely love talking to them with a mutual interest in them and then you can interview them to your hearts content. Also don't expect to get any dev done while you're doing this :)

this. i also have had all of the above. once you talk to them and you are the developer of the software, be prepared for those users who will demand more features, that you fix bugs by tomorrow, that you do what they want, etc. i have had so much personal attacks and abuse i’ve stepped back and started bringing in other collaborators while i remain behind the scenes working on the software.

Can't really speak for desktop or web, but I have a series of mobile apps that I have a 'contact' button that pops up the email client with some prefilled data and lets them fill anything in. I find if people are enthusiasts, they'll reach out to share. It's a mixed bag of emails. I get maybe 20-25 emails a month of suggestions, appreciation, and mostly questions on the content. It contains an in-app purchase for almost $50 and if the user simply asks, I'll give the unlock for free (and ask for an honest posted review, well worth it imo). Past a certain point, I don't really care about the money, just to make it better without being confusing. They do quite well without marketing or ads anyway.

I used to deal with and include all the tracking, analytics, logs, etc., but it's all just bloatware for me since it's relatively small apps. I don't require login or accounts and don't want to spam and make everything voluntary in the end, and not force it. It will take time, and the focus is on being as non-predatory as possible. I keep things slim and simple and people seem to like that. Making sure a user has a good experience with software that I write is always #1. All of these points collectively I feel is inviting for people to socialize their thoughts to me.

I've been running office hours sessions on Fridays for this. I've been running them for over a year now and they have been incredibly useful.

I have a Calendly which people can book a 20 minute conversation with me about my project.

I've had at least 60 high value conversations now, with people all over the world.

I don't promote them heavily at the moment so I sometimes get just 0-2 a week, but in the past I've had days with 3 or 4.

I wrote about this pattern here: https://simonwillison.net/2021/Feb/19/office-hours/

I launched a crowdfunded product back in 2017 that has kept going for the past 5 years, and I've never had this problem at all.

Random people email me all the time (at least 3-5 times per week, even now) with information about bugs/feature requests, or just to say hi/thanks and show off their projects made with it.

Comparing my site (https://espotek.com) to yours, yours is much more "corporate" looking and doesn't explicitly invite contact.

I've seen other people advertising their CRMs and whatever in the comments, but perhaps it's just as simple as openly acknowledging that you're one guy, the business is your personal project and people shouldn't hesitate to contact you.

I never thought about this consciously, but there's something there.

If I feel a product is made by one or few close-knit people, there's a sense of empathy. I want to support the underdog, show gratitude, establish contact. So just the aura of small shop invites and encourages me to contact.

A large company, no matter how friendly, does not make me eager to write/contact/feedback: There's an implicit subconscious assumption that my feedback will get lost in gears of the massive machine; that whoever receives feedback has no input on development or product; and that best I'll get an insultingly cheerful copy&paste from their customer service 3 ring binder.

My 2 cents :)

As a fellow hardware founder, may I ask your revenue on that? Or some ball park number of how many you sell? I understand if it’s private.

I sell about 100k USD worth of hardware a year. Of that, profit is something like 50k USD.

This is just a hobby project now (my main business is second-hand and refurbished video games, of all things), so I'm very happy with those figures.

Just as a side note, I think the main thing other hardware founders get wrong is logistics. They don't keep the right amount of hardware in stock to account for the incredibly bursty sales they receive, and fail to make use of 3PL to reach a global audience.

If you want to have a chat about this, feel free to shoot me an email (link in bio).

I’ve emailed you :)

Which crowd funding platform did you use?

Crowd Supply.

Could not recommend them more for hardware projects like this.

They were ridiculously hands-on and actively made sure the campaign was a success - to the point of editing my writing and giving useful, actionable feedback on the pricing. The big platforms like Kickstarter/IGG just don't give a fuck about you.

They look great! Too bad they're hardware only.

One of the most valuable things I've found is not to talk to your users but to watch them. And by watch I mean sit beside them / screen share with them as they use your product and get them to talk you through what they are trying to do, and then get them to explain to you why they are doing it the way they are. If users consistently struggle to do something or find something frustrating or non obvious then you have an issue with your design, even if to you it is obvious or you are sure you are doing things the "right" way. If you don't have any users yet then pay someone to try to use your software to perform the basic tasks without any instruction

I agree, I also try to do this.

I use support calls as an excuse to also ask users about things they are bothered with.

I must say that lately I've been feeling overwhelmed with existing bug reports so it's hard to force myself to solicit even more potentially bad feedback from users.

I've found this video [0] to be kind of helpful, although the focus is somewhat different than OP's question, it's more of a general advice and patterns for UX people.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lq0zFDb3Xg

I happily use formspark.io for both Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/contact), The Low-tech Guys (https://lowtechguys.com/contact) and my personal website (https://alinpanaitiu.com/contact). A contact form that's customizable with simple HTML inputs, gets redirected to your email, and you can just reply to that email to begin a discussion with that user. I've had great success with it, users know how to use it, they're happy when they get a prompt response and they like the privacy (as opposed to having to create a public post on forums/Github/Discord).

You also get free bot protection with botpoison or the usual captcha. There are some false positives as usual, which is why I also have a Discord server running for the apps. But Formspark goes 99% of the way and it's incredibly cheap with a free option.

EDIT:

I see you're mostly looking for a way to reach your users instead of letting the users reach you. I feel that's not something most users want. I almost never like when I get an unsolicited email after I start using an app, and unsubscribe instantly.

It's better to provide good documentation (maybe a simple organized markdown page to start with), and one as clear as possible first page.

People will reach you when they need more info and you can update the website and documentation based on the feedback to minimize the repetitive interactions.

Back in 2015 I noticed SaaS companies asking for in-app feedback and started compiling screenshots. Here are 51 examples from companies like Shopify, YNAB, Customer.io, Stackshare, Mailgun, and more compiled over the past 7 years:

https://www.savio.io/blog/how-saas-companies-get-in-app-prod...

At my co we ask for feedback:

0. When someone books a demo (email)

1. When a user signs up (in-app and via email)

2. When a user converts from trial to paid (email)

3. When a user cancels (email)

We also:

1. Use Intercom and lots of feedback comes in there

2. Have several in-app callouts to vote on features on our voting board or contact support

3. Close the loop with customers when we ship a feature they asked for, and ask for feedback

We could definitely do a better job on the in-app feedback collection side.

I don't, but it's probably because I've spent most of my career being the guy who did that part.

I'm old (52), so while I did code initially in my career, I was tempted away ($$) into roles where the fact that I'm also good at written and spoken communication was part of the remit. Being able to communicate with users AND understand how software is actually written turns out to be a remunerative skill.

Like coding, though, it's not something just everyone can do well. Also like coding, you have to WANT to do it. If you're pushed into a role like this and you don't like it or don't want to do it, everyone will suffer -- you, the users, and the rest of the dev team. It's a recipe for sadness.

What is your new role? How much more remunerative do you find it compared to coding?

I have a link to the Discord server on the web page and I always have that open. Once every week or two someone will ask me something, usually really basic, about how to use the system. Mostly it seems like they want to make sure there is support for the product. So the questions are usually easy to answer.

People do also occasionally message me with feature requests or put them in the public room.

I will say though that the times I have directly asked groups of users what product or feature to build, I have mostly received crickets. Before I built the main product I practically begged a couple of Discord communities to tell me what they needed/wanted. It took awhile and I got a single response. I built that and then had everyone else in the community tell me how badly they had needed it.

I don't know what it is really but it can be like extracting teeth. But the sort of leaders may eventually give feedback.

FWIW I’ve had success just DMing tons of people on Discord. Asking people as a group might be tough.

People can be very relucatant to share feedback in groups for fear of their ideas being shot down publicly.

I don’t understand the appeal of Discord for feedback. As a user I have to sign up, figure out your channel structure and rules and then publicly post with no context on whether what I am asking has been asked before (and there is no way I’ll spend time searching endless posts to see if it has).

It’s possibly the worst experience for a user that just wants to share some feedback and engage with the product creators in a somewhat private setting.

There is a search field, and you can pin posts. Also about half the time people just click on my name and message me directly.

I'm on there because all of the different communities from developers to creators in this ecosystem are on there.

You are kind of implying that something like a forum or FAQ would be better. A forum would be nice but the search feature would end up making it about the same as searching a forum. But the thing is, 90% of the questions they ask are self-evident from the UI or explained in the Help section that is right on the form.

I think a lot of the people that message directly or in the chat are looking to interact with a live person as much as they are interested in the answers. They want to make sure there is someone available to help in case they run into a problem. And/or they feel like asking questions is going to be easier than having to search or read instructions that are in the web app already.

As a solo founder I have a couple of startups[0] and I built Zigpoll[1] to help with this problem. It lets you embed a non-obtrusive micro-survey / contact us form directly into your website. You can use our javascript API to make it appear based on sign up, time on site, exit intent, etc... it's up to you. You could also email it out to your customers if you prefer.

Also I have to point out there are other competitors in this space you could also use like Drift, Intercom, or even an automated email flow with Calendly for example.

[0] https://www.jqbx.fm, https://www.roseandrex.com

[1] https://www.zigpoll.com

Wow Jason! That's so cool. I might want to use that for my website. I'm kind of upgrading it XD. My peers from Founders Cafe might also want to try Zigpoll. We're a bunch of founders that help each other with problems and we even share stories about our startup journey. You might want to join too so many people can use Zigpoll :D

You say you don't have any way to talk to them, but when I looked at your signup process, I noticed that you ask for their email so you can email them. So here are some questions and example emails you could send as conversation starters. Send it from an actual email address, not a no-reply, and allow them to email you back or contact you via chat or schedule a call.

---

Hi, it's Abylay Keldibek from just-diary. It's been a week since you signed up, and I wanted to ask what's been the most useful aspect of the product? What's been the least useful?

I am also happy to answer any questions you have.

[sigblock with phone or skype or way to schedule a call]

---

Hi, it's Abylay Keldibek from just-diary again. It's been two weeks since you signed up, and I was curious what has been the most surprising thing about just diary?

Is there anything missing that you would like to see or something that you would like to be able to do that does not appear to be supported

[sigblock with phone or skype or way to schedule a call]

---

Hi, it's Abylay Keldibek from just-diary. We are planning the next major feature release, and I wanted to know if there is anything you would like to see fixed or anything you would like to see added.

[sigblock with phone or skype or way to schedule a call]

---

I don't see a pricing model, so I am unsure about your longer-term business model. There is a significant difference between "Free users" and paying customers, and you are more likely to get useful feedback from the latter.

For more details on customer conversations, I have collected 40 Tips for B2B Customers interviews many have found helpful in preparing for and analyzing customer conversations. It's a long blog post up at https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2020/01/30/40-tips-for-b2b-cus...

If you do this, please please please include an unsubscribe option on the email that doesn't require a login to "manage email preferences".

As a user, I do not want to receive an email like this at all, but I will forgive one if I can permanently opt-out with a single-click.

What advice can you give the OP?

What questions would you be willing to answer from someone trying to improve a service that you were using--or perhaps even paying for?

How would you like to see them phrased?

Some people are willing to give product feedback others aren't (like me). Recognise the latter quickly and don't bother them.

Slightly off topic, and talking to users is the first step, be careful what you wish for. As an example, I subscribe(d) to NYT Cooking, they solicited my feedback on the search functionality (which is broken - full on broken, search for omelette and only one of the first six results is for an omelette, filter for low carb, no omelettes come up, etc.) I got so pissed writing my review (realizing I was paying monthly for a broken service) and getting zero response after them soliciting my feedback I canceled my subscription…

This and some other comments definitely are reminiscent of the effect of the "Cahiers de doléances"[1][2], aka "Books of Grievances". Ahead of the outbreak of Revolution, King Louis XVI of France sent out a call for feedback from his people of all levels of society. He genuinely meant well, but largely it just got the people thinking about all the things that were wrong with society, which only fueled public anger in the face of the looming crisis and made thing worse! Eventually this anger would see the nation abandon the Ancien Regime in a similar manner - it was a "broken service" and they metaphorically "cancelled their subscription" to the system.

I think there's actually a lot of other lessons to be learned from this effort - anyone looking to try and gather feedback should look at how it went over in 1789 France.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_de_dol%C3%A9ances [2] https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/cahier-peasants-me... An example Cahier

Thank you, this is a very interesting part of history I wasn't aware of.

I have more of an enterprise product working with school districts. It did take some time to get meetings with users, but I did get them. In my case it was similar to any enterprise endeavor. I had a champion to make introductions to the different users and then asked those users to introduce me to another user group, etc.

And I am doing that in a variety of school systems to get feedback.

I do find getting 30-60 minutes with a user or group of users extremely valuable. You've really got to try and dig into their use case and understand them. And tell them to stop telling you what they think other people might do and get them to focus on themselves. Everyone likes to tell me what other users might want, and then asking them, well, do you do this? "Nope, but other people might..."

But once you get through that, the rewards are fantastic. You can build some frameworks around your users and have a much better intuition of who would like what and how they would use it. Then reach back out and ask.

One other method I use is an ask for features button on the app. Once they ask for a feature, I ask if they are open to connecting over zoom so I can deeply understand their use case. And sometimes they get their feature built, and sometimes they get something much better.

As a user, I see (generally speaking) how a lot of software has "opinionated" procedures.

The programmers/engineers may have assembled a "perfect" tool (in the sense that it actually solves the problem that it should solve) but often practical usage needs to go through a number of steps that feel "unnatural" to the final user.

In some cases I managed to actually talk to the programmers but what I found most time is a sort of elastic wall, they often concur that this (or that) thing would be better/easier/simpler, then (for this or that reason) they never change it.

Maybe it is just me and my suggestions may well be either "impossible" to implement or plainly stupid, but after having been told a few times "You are right, if we do this it would be better, I am taking this note for next release." and then 1, 2, 3, 4 updates/releases after nothing has changed, it becomes tiring/frustrating to provide feedback/suggestions that will never be implemented.

Only as an example (which is a pet peeve of mine) is input forms, talking of desktop apps nowadays a (say) 1024x768 resolution on a monitor is a "bare minimum".

A single form (entirely viewable without scrolling) can well contain 30/40 input fields, yet (for some reasons) a number of softwares use multi-tabbed (tiny) forms, i.e. for the 30 fields you have three tabs, each one with 10 fields, if you forget an input on a field on tab #1 and go on, you cannot see which field is is missing (as you are on tab #2 or tab #3), then when you confirm you get a missing field error and you have to check all three tabs.

As a sysadmin I do not find challenging talking to users, while sometimes I'm asking myself how can they live in our society seeing their reasoning...

However to communicate with the whole world:

- potential public it's too vast to be handled, that's the classic problem of big companies after-sale services;

- spam will be veeery abundant

IMVHO the best solution is just offer an email contact, with a good enough antispam and a large enough pool of people who read the incoming messages. Some users who do not know how to make disposable emails will probably avoid contacting you but that's a minority. Offering to register, without demanding mail/phones etc, again with aggressive policing in pruning if they prefer a personal form to communicate and still being able to read answers. Clearly state that basic accounts are created on the spot and do not demand ANY personal data, mail including, they are just ways to communicate with the public,

Those who do not want to write a real email or to sign up are not interested anyway. If your business is about scraping such cohort of users than an optional login-with-Big&Powerful (GAFAM) suffice.

Offer a VoIP/phone support for paid users might be a good idea, and a complicated one.

I'm on IRC and and the project's own Discourse forums, plus two independent different Discord servers, at all times. There's also the bugtracker, currently with about 2700 open bug reports. Not really a problem, but this is all after 22 years, so probably not equivalent to a "when I had my first users" situation.

This is, by the way, why I prefer having other developers as my first users.

I don't get it, you've got a website people go to on a regular basis and you collect contact info. Why not just throw up a giant box after users log-in saying:

"Hey $user, you've been an active user of our site since $signup_date and we'd love to hear what you think about how we're doing and what we could be doing better?"

Add buttons for "Sure", "I'm busy right now, but ask me later!" and "No thanks" and call it day.

People love to give their opinions on things. They'll go out of their way to do it. Look at how many people (myself included) are doing it right here in this thread. It takes minimal effort to get people talking (and even less to get them complaining). If you've got enough users people will even do it themselves. They'll create entire forums and subreddits just to discuss your product/service all on their own. It might not be a bad idea to set up a space for that kind of thing yourself. Discord is a good place to start.

I work on emergency software and we get the opportunity as developers to do “ride alongs” with firefighters and police officers. They’re pretty open with their feelings about the software. Riding along with then as they do their jobs while using software you wrote gives you a different perspective of the criticality of it.

Yes, very much this. I always found that it was critical for me to walk/live/breathe with my users to design the best software for them.

Whether it's shadowing the parts warehouse guys while they do inventory counts in a supply chain management system or getting to know the chief compliance officer and chief counsel while designing a regulatory system for them that's mandated by the SEC, their experience as human beings relayed to me as users of my software was invaluable.

It's all about the empathy one has for one's users and how you use that information to take care of them. They will love you if you are successful in doing that.

I don’t have a problem at all. I have a link to a feedback form in the main menu. I was going to install a live chat widget until I realized just how horrible those things are.

The best way to find out what a customer wants is to ask them.

Edit: the form is only 3 fields long and email is optional if you want a response.

Getting feedback is tough. It’s why bigger companies will even pay you to give them feedback.

My method has always been to be offer a few companies/users a free account. Assuming your product is something they really need, a free account in exchange for feedback is a win win for both sides.

Did you try emailing them? Look up your most active users and send a personal email or reach out to them on Twitter.

Especially when you’re B2C, small, and your users are small, build that personal relationship. Find your most passionate users, figure out where they hang out (Reddit? Twitter? Facebook? Discord) and try to start a community there.

This serves two purposes:

- Your passionate users will want to talk to you! They will have a particular power-user perspective, but much better than no feedback.

- Building an effective community that is excited about your product is fantastic for marketing. Word of mouth is the most effective kind of advertising.

I've never worked with external stakeholders, but have worked on internal operations tooling for the past few years and found talking to end users very rewarding.

I try to focus on problems (the things they run into every day and it's easy for them to talk about to help you identify gaps in your understanding) more than my solutions (asking too many questions or presenting something complicated can be mentally exhausting). You can sometimes save weeks of work when you talk directly to end users and understand that something that was in your original requirements, isn't really necessary.

It is a common problem.

I think it comes from you, the builder, having spent thousands of hours on a problem (here making an electronic diary) trying to get insights from someone who have just spent a short minute thinking about the same problem.

Instead of thinking about it as "talking to your users", try to think about it as observing how your product is used, and how they work in general within the domain.

Observe them directly if you can (sit next to them and just watch them do their stuff), or indirectly e.g. by extensive application logging or maybe a screen recording tool (like hotjar).

I know it sounds obvious. But if you want to talk to users, just build a little feedback mechanism to talk with users.

Write 10-30 random prompts: “what do you hate about this page”, “what do you love about this app”, “what do you wish you could do”, etc. show them the prompt and log a free form response. Simple as. We’re talking a few hours of work.

Also, find your most engaged users via your analytics and email them to do a video interview to understand how they use the product. Try to find overlaps between them that you can use to target new customers.

The pattern I have seen (which imo is not annoying) is that the welcome email comes from the 'CEO's address and you can reply or book a call.

Most people will delete it. But I don't find it dishonest because it's literally an offer to help and you can ask anything you like (I have always gotten replies as a consumer).

I'm assuming once this doesn't scale you can just do the same with support agents (no fake here, just put their names and emails) so the inbound is handled by different people with the same goal in mind.

This is exactly what I do at my SaaS platform. The "Welcome" email explains that you can do the click-here-and-do-yourself approach to onboarding or if you need help or have a question, just reply to the email. I think that's the lowest friction option for most new users. Over the few years that I had this in the welcome email, very few people took advantage of the offer and replied.

I need to give you my email address to sign up. Can't you email me and ask me to hop on a call, fill out a survey, etc.?

Also, if no one replies to your request, that's a data point as well.

Have you considered simply putting a feedback button or link to a survey?

It's interesting I have no problem communicating with all of my users because my project is a live chat app.

But one thing I noticed is there are countless things people want, so much that it can become challenging to filter them down and choose which ones are valid or should have priority.

Another issue is the conversations can be dispersed, so really it makes me think having a dedicated feedback button is still the best option even in my case.

No, we run a Discord and I am a user so I talk to them and get feedback like I would with friends and they are pretty open about bug reports, feature requests, etc. :)

If I talk regular it is over their heads, I have to dumb it down and do some hand holding when things break. In the company I worked, I visited the users and asked them what they wanted in a wish list when I fixed their PC problems working with the help desk. Most wanted a faster program with fewer errors.

You need to make it absurdly easy and in-flow. Otherwise you are stuck sending emails to users asking for feedback, and the return on those in my experience is below 4%.

If what you want is to have a lengthier conversation please remember time is money--remunerate the user for their time helping you.

Ha, I've had two companies ask me for a 1h and even 2h(!) timeslot do discuss my feedback in depth. In return they'll give me a 20$ gift certificate. I actually worked for a competitor of them for a while, my feedback would have been insanely valuable.

Lowballing an incentive is worse than offering no incentive. Either pay a fair hourly rate and run fewer interviews, or skip it entirely. Charity donations can also be effective if you offer a reasonably sized donation.

The IQ of the average user differs too much from that of the average developer.

This makes communication really difficult.

I teach coding tutorials on my website and have a few subscribers. I occasionally send out a mass email asking them what they’d like to learn. Sometimes I send a tiny survey instead of asking such an open ended question. Every time I’ve received at least a couple of responses.

I'm going to take a bit of different tact to other answers. TLDR: Don't look for "feedback", learn the customer/user and the problem they are trying to solve.

Communicating with users (or future users) is not really an issue I've faced with either of my startups (metaverse for outdoor sports https://ayvri.com & neurotech/sleeptech https://soundmind.co).

I inherited Ayvri, but started SoundMind. The first thing is speaking to users, not something you do after. Who is your target user and where do you find them. I think if you are solving somebodies problem, or understand the problem you are solving it makes it easier to reach out and communicate with the users.

It's difficult to reach out to existing users with a "can you give feedback" without really understanding the problem you are solving for them specifically, or asking about a problem.

When working on Ayvri (then Doarama), we had a few paragliders who were really into the product. I'm not a paraglider (which always amazes that community) so I had no idea what they wanted. I looked at our most viewed 3D scenes, found out who made it, and reached out saying "hey, you're getting lots of views, and you clearly love the platform. I know nothing about paragliding and why you use our product, can you tell me about it, and how you use it and why?" Sure it's "feedback", but it's really about understanding what they are trying to accomplish and why they use the product. That is more important than getting "feedback" on what you've got. Understand the problem, and you may find solutions that the users don't know they need.

With SoundMind, before we really didn't knew what the product would be, I was communicating with people on reddit re: neurotech, sleep, biohackers, etc. From there, I've had people (including investors) hunt me down on linkedin or message me on via reddit (HN has also been a good source). I dove deep into understanding people's problem with sleep, and from there we've focused on two initial HIGHLY specific use cases that we can help them with. So once we know who THOSE users are, again, it's fairly easy to speak to them.

People are suggesting emailing users that have signed up which would be the best way imo. I also suggest creating a twitter account for your site if you dont already have one. If someone tweets feedback, questions, etc, you can direct message them there as well.

Assuming they sign up for an account. Email them, and ask. There are tons of products out there to allegedly help with this within your site: i.e feedback popups, chat popups, etc. But the easy way is simply to email them!

Yes, and you should read “The Mom Test”. Key takeaway, focus your questions on the problems customers are trying to solve and details therein, rather than talking about your solution or trying to be on pitch mode.

I like what Twitch does. They send a email offering a certain amount of users to complete their survey $5. I think $100 is worth learning what 20 users think and it's a good incentive!

Are you trying to understand your users, what problems they are trying to solve with your product or are you trying to get validation for your product?

yeah, it's really hard. I wanted to engage with 100 users to understand them better to prioritize features. So, I made a discord server, WhatsApp group, kanban page where a user can post. I sometimes post update information there and ask for feedback. They seldom show up. However, some of them keep using it and report a bug. They might want to keep the distance hahaha.

I’ve been thinking about writing a book on this topic. I love running user studies!

how are you distributing the product to them without some form of marketing contact

yes, cause I have no users

no. communication is part of the path we call life.