Who's Your Project For?

I like the framing of customer/problem/solution for how to work through designing value propositions. It’s a simple framework but you can always build complexity on top of simplicity.

I believe customer/problem/solution can be applied to many contexts.

Isn’t dating ultimately a customer (your date), problem (loneliness) and solution (get together for ice cream) construct?

The challenge in many situations, and you can get sideways if you don’t have it, is nailing down exactly who your customer is.

Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight

You can’t define a problem clearly without some idea of your customer and you can’t define a solution clearly without an idea of what their problem is. In short, not having a clearly defined customer will screw up all of the other steps.

You don’t have to be committed to that customer persona forever.

A few years back I was working on a digital product and we realized there was some company risk around going forward to this product with this customer. We pivoted to a new customer and the project went forward and has been a massive success.

One of my core beliefs is that you have to write something down, or draw something, or provide an example to move projects forward. You can update the example but you have to pull the idea down from the clouds to focus your energy.

So, let’s write down an example of a customer that we might want to pursue.