---
title: "Product market misfit: Adventures in user empathy"
weight: 2
---

Mitch from aviatrix -a former software engineer who has now switched over to product managment.

## Opening Thesis

Opening with the Atari 2600 E.T. game as very bad fit sample.
Thesis: Missing user empathy

* A very hard game aimed at children without the will to trail and error
* Other aspect: Some of the devalopers were pulled together from throughout the company -> No passion needed

### Another sample

* Idea: SCADA system with sensors that can be moved and the current location get's tracked via iPad.
* Result: Nobody used the iPad app - only the desktop webapp
* Problem: Sensor get's moved, location not updated, the measurements for the wrong location get reported until update
* Source: Moving a sensor is a pretty involved process including high pressure aka no priority for iPad
* Empathy loss: Different working endvironments result in drastic work experience missmatch

## The source

* Idea: A software engineer writes software, that someone else has to use, not themselfes
* Problem: Distance between user and dev is high and their perspectives differ heavily

## User empathy

* The art of taking on the perspective of one's users/customers
* Without this your product will fail

## Stories from Istio

* Classic implementation: Sidecar Proxy
* Question: Can the same value be provided without a sidecar anywhers
* Answer: Ambient mode -> split into l4 (proxy per node) and l7 (no sharing)
* Problem: After alpha release ther was a lack of exitement and feedback
* Result: Twitter Space event for feedback

### Ideas and feedback

* Idea: Sidecar is somewhat magical
* Feedback: Sidecars are a pain, but after integrating istio can be automated -> a problem gets solved, that already had a solution
* Result: Highly overvalued the pain of sidecars
* Idea: Building istio into a platform sounds easy
* Feedback: The platform has to be changed for the new ambient mode -> High time investment while engineers are hard
* Result: The cost of platform changes was highly undervalued
* Idea: Sidecar compute sound expensive and networking itself pretty cheap
* Feedback: Many users have multi-region clusters -> Egress is whery expoenive
* Result: The relation between compute and egress cost was pretty much swapped

### What now?

* Ambient is the right solution for new users (fresh service mesehes)
* Existing users probaly won't upgrade
* Result: They will move forward with ambient mdoe

## So what did we lern

### Basic questions

* Who are my intended users?
* What exites/worries them?
* What do they find easy/hard?
* What is ther biggest expense and what is inexpensive?

### How to get better empathy

1. Shared perspective comes from proximity
   1. Where they are
   2. What they do -> Dogfood everything related to the platform (not just your own products)
2. Never stop listening
   1. Even if you love your product
   2. Especially if you love your product
   3. Invite critical feedback

### Takeaways

* Don't ship a puzzlebox (landscape) but a picture (this integrates with this and that)
