Outcome: you can name your customers and users, and describe how they find, buy and use the product.
Words to know
- User. The person who uses the product.
- Customer. The person who pays. Sometimes the same person. Often not.
- B2B2C. Business to business to consumer. A business pays. Its consumers use the product.
- Persona. A short profile of a typical person, built from real interviews.
- Touch point. Any place a person meets your product: a web page, an email, an app screen, a receipt, a support chat.
- User journey. The steps a user takes to reach a goal, with thoughts and feelings.
- Customer journey. The steps a customer takes: aware, consider, buy, onboard, renew, refer.
TrailMug example: Maya the commuter pays for her own cup, so she is user and customer. Leo owns a café. He is a partner. He accepts returned cups and gets a monthly fee. Both journeys differ, so you map both.
The 60-minute workshop
Invite the epic manager (you), a sponsor or mentor, one person who knows users, and one person from sales or support if you have them.
| Minutes | Activity | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 | State the goal | Shared goal |
| 5 to 15 | Who. List users and customers. Pick the main ones. | Draft list |
| 15 to 25 | Demographics. Fill the sheet. Mark each line known or guess. | Draft sheet |
| 25 to 40 | Journey. Draw it left to right: do, think, feel, pain. | Draft journey |
| 40 to 50 | Touch points. At each step ask: where do they meet us? | List |
| 50 to 58 | Unknowns. List the top five. | Interview questions |
| 58 to 60 | Close. Name who does what next. | Actions |
Rules: the epic manager writes the notes. Mark every guess as a guess. No solutions yet. Do not ask an AI to answer the questions. AI may type up the notes afterwards.
Interview five users
Five interviews show patterns. Fewer give stories. More than eight repeat themselves.
- Ask permission before you take notes. Never record without a clear yes. Do not share names.
- Keep calls to 30 minutes. Listen about 80 percent of the time.
- Ask about the past, not the future. “What did you do last time?” beats “Would you use this?”
Script
- Tell me about yourself and your work.
- What are you trying to achieve now? Why does it matter?
- Tell me about the last time you did this task.
- What tools do you use today?
- Which step takes the most time?
- Tell me about a time something went wrong. What did you do?
- How do you feel when you start? When you finish?
- What worries you most?
- Have you paid for a tool for this? Why?
- Who decides to pay? What would make you stop?
- Where do you look first when you need help?
- What should I have asked, but did not? May I contact you again?
Within one hour after each call, update your sheet and journey. Put real quotes in quotation marks.
What you write yourself
- The product brief.
- The choice of main user and main customer.
- The persona sheets.
- A “we will not serve” list.
- The journey maps and the touch-point list.
AI may format and check them. It may not invent personas, quotes or steps.
Templates for this week
Exercises
- Run the workshop.
- Complete five interviews.
- Write two to four personas, with K (known) or G (guess) on every line.
- Complete a touch-point list.
- Draw one user journey and one customer journey.
Coach checkpoint
Present one persona and one journey. Say where the journey breaks today.
Discovery done checklist
- Product brief written by me.
- Main user and main customer named.
- “We will not serve” list has at least one item.
- Five interviews done. Notes are in git without private details.
- A persona for each main person, with K and G marks.
- Touch points cover payments, help, status, policy and analytics.
- A user journey and a customer journey are complete.
- Top five unknowns written, each with a plan.
- A second person read my files and asked questions.
