87 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
87 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
---
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title: "Product market misfit: Adventures in user empathy"
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weight: 2
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tags:
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- platform
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- dx
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---
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{{% button href="https://youtu.be/jpIWERlrXT4" style="warning" icon="video" %}}Watch talk on YouTube{{% /button %}}
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Mitch from aviatrix -a former software engineer who has now switched over to product management.
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## Opening Thesis
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Opening with the Atari 2600 E.T. game as very bad fit sample.
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Thesis: Missing user empathy
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* A very hard game aimed at children without the will to trail and error
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* Other aspect: Some devalopers were pulled together from throughout the company -> No passion needed
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### Another sample
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* Idea: SCADA system with sensors that can be moved, and the current location gets tracked via iPad.
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* Result: Nobody used the iPad app - only the desktop Web-app
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* Problem: Sensor gets moved, location not updated, the measurements for the wrong location get reported until update
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* Source: Moving a sensor is a pretty involved process including high pressure aka no priority for iPad
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* Empathy loss: Different working environments result in drastic work experience mismatch
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## The source
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* Idea: A software engineer writes software, that someone else has to use, not themselves
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* Problem: Distance between user and dev is high and their perspectives differ heavily
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## User empathy
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* The art of taking on the perspective of one's users/customers
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* Without this your product will fail
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## Stories from Istio
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* Classic implementation: Sidecar Proxy
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* Question: Can the same value be provided without a sidecar anywhere
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* Answer: Ambient mode -> split into l4 (proxy per node) and l7 (no sharing)
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* Problem: After alpha release there was a lack of excitement and feedback
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* Result: Twitter Space event for feedback
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### Ideas and feedback
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* Idea: Sidecar is somewhat magical
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* Feedback: Sidecars are a pain, but after integrating Istio can be automated -> a problem gets solved, that already had a solution
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* Result: Highly overvalued the pain of sidecars
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* Idea: Building Istio into a platform sounds easy
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* Feedback: The platform has to be changed for the new ambient mode -> High time investment while engineers are hard
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* Result: The cost of platform changes was highly undervalued
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* Idea: Sidecar compute sound expensive and networking itself pretty cheap
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* Feedback: Many users have multi-region clusters -> Egress is very expensive
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* Result: The relation between compute and egress cost was pretty much swapped
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### What now?
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* Ambient is the right solution for new users (fresh service meshes)
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* Existing users probably won't upgrade
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* Result: They will move forward with ambient mode
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## So what did we learn
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### Basic questions
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* Who are my intended users?
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* What excites/worries them?
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* What do they find easy/hard?
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* What is the biggest expense and what is inexpensive?
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### How to get better empathy
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1. Shared perspective comes from proximity
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1. Where they are
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2. What they do -> Dog food everything related to the platform (not just your own products)
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2. Never stop listening
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1. Even if you love your product
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2. Especially if you love your product
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3. Invite critical feedback
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### Takeaways
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* Don't ship a puzzle box (landscape) but a picture (this integrates with this and that)
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