Stories came from listening without following requests literally

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 25:11

   know if you know this about his, he has many contrarian takes. One is if you're building a consumer product, do not talk to customers. Like not only is it not useful, his advice is it's harmful because it can infiltrate your subconscious and it just doesn't lead to great things. What's your perspective on that? Wow, that's really interesting. I would say you have to talk to customers. You have to share your idea. You should share your idea as quickly as possible, as frequently as possible. It doesn't mean you need to take people's advice or feedback, but it's really important, I think, to listen. And I think for me, it's not like the survey model of listening. I don't think that's particularly helpful. But I think going deep and talking with someone for an hour, two hours about how do they use technology? How does it fit in their

2. 25:53

   lives? How do they feel about, you know, the products they're using? You can learn so much. And I think, you know, customers are an endless source of inspiration when it comes to building products. So pro pro talking to users, because I feel like you've been really good at just like, here's what it'll be. And here's how it should be. And even though people may not understand, this is what it should be. I trust me. It'll work really well. What's that balance of just like, here's how, how, what I'll pay attention to. Here's what I want.

3. 26:20

   Well, let's use stories as an example, right? So, you know, back then we were hearing from customers all the time. I want to send all button. I want to send all button. You know, it's so annoying to select everybody on my list of friends and Snapchat. If you just give me a send all button, then I can blast snaps to everybody all day long and that'd be really great. And at the same time, we were talking to people about their use of social media, right? And they're like, oh gosh, social media, I feel all this pressure, right? Everything I put up there is permanent all the time. You know, it's got all these likes and comments. So there's all this judgment. So I only feel like I can put like pretty and perfect things up there. Uh, you know, and, and I, I just don't like that pressure. That doesn't feel good. I actually love the way that

4. 26:59

   Snapchat allows me to just express myself and share with my friends, um, without that, that sort of judgment and pressure. And so we thought that was really interesting. And so, you know, we dug deeper into the, you know, how people were using social media. We found that one of the things they thought was really weird was that everything was in reverse chronological order in the feed so the feed back in the day the timeline right uh like you know when people posted photos you know they would always find that like the end of the birthday party appeared first in the feed right and then the middle and then uh you know the beginning of the party so everything was was sort of you know just like played in reverse in the feed which was was really strange uh to folks so we listened to all of that right and heard all of that but then we

5. 27:41

   came up with something totally new and different uh which were stories right that were responsive to the feedback, right? They didn't, you know, create a send all button, but they did create a way to easily share with all of your friends without spamming them all day long. They removed, you know, public metrics. They didn't have, you know, likes and comments and things like that to reduce pressure. They disappeared after 20.

6. 28:00

   four hours so that everyone could start the day fresh again, you know, the next day. And they, you know, maybe most importantly, were in chronological order, which is the way that people have told stories, you know, since the beginning of time. So I think that's an example where like listening is incredibly valuable. All of those insights that we, you know, received just from listening to folks made a huge difference in the product design process. But we didn't build exactly what they asked for. We empathized and then, you know, came up with something new.

7. 28:25

   That's such a great story. I love hearing these stories of features that everyone's using now