I tend to forget to actually do this in any of the actual work. We keep adding cool features because they’re fun and we’re sure they’ll be useful, without just getting the project out there first and asking potential users.
I’ve used beeminder for this with some success. As with a lot of things that I used beeminder for, a large part of the value I get is by being forced to make an explicit goal about how many customers am going to talk to. E.g. right now I’m fundraising and so it might be easy for me to focus on that instead of customer validation, so having the beeminder set up forces me to figure out if I should put customer validation on hold or if it’s still important to talk to customers while raising.
I only started doing beeminder after I had already had a completed product, but you can see my progress after that here.
I’ve used beeminder for this with some success. As with a lot of things that I used beeminder for, a large part of the value I get is by being forced to make an explicit goal about how many customers am going to talk to. E.g. right now I’m fundraising and so it might be easy for me to focus on that instead of customer validation, so having the beeminder set up forces me to figure out if I should put customer validation on hold or if it’s still important to talk to customers while raising.
I only started doing beeminder after I had already had a completed product, but you can see my progress after that here.