Write Your Own Fan Letter
During an exchange on the lean startups mailing list, one of the participants was having a hard time articulating the value of the vision he had for his proposed site. It was clear that he was passionate about what he wanted to build, that he was completely convinced about its value. The problem was that he couldn’t communicate the value to others.
I’ve been in a similar position many times, having a vision of where things were going next and how cool it could be but not able to communicate it clearly. I know three things about this situation 1) it’s incredibly frustrating for me, 2) it’s at least as frustrating for the people I’m trying to talk to, especially when I won’t shut up, and 3) I’m often wrong.
I’ve tried a variety of tactics to get out of being stuck. Just making the dang thing is one good way to clarify the situation. I wondered, though, if there was a less wasteful way for him to clarify his vision (I’m a geek and I don’t mind failing when I make something because making it is so much fun).
I borrowed an idea I’ve used often, speaking back from the future, and massaged it a bit: write a fan letter to yourself, written in the voice of a deliriously satisfied user. Here was my example:
Visions start out in your head but they don’t matter until they touch someone else. Finding a path by which visions can create joy is one of the many challenges of entrepreneurship. The purpose of writing your own fan letter is to prepare your mind to bridge the gap between vision and effect. When you can imagine how one person’s life is changed by your vision, you are ready to move forward.
Love the idea. Makes you think at the right level of abstraction and from the right point of view.
I think this (on some level, at least) relates to a technique I prefer to use when designing a new feature, or new system alltogether: write the user documentation first. Telling someone how to use the (future) system to accomplish their goals is a nice rehearsal in creating a usable and understandable solution: You have to be able to convey the use-case to a user in a compelling way before writing a line of code.
Then start backwards implementing it from there, using the newly created top level documentation as your guide.
Thanks, Kent. I am having trouble communicating the vision of my site. I feel that it is very useful for the target group, but whenever I tell someone about it, they nod politely but no one has ever signed up and actually used it. Even though it is free. Not sure how a fan letter will help, but I’ll certainly contemplate ways to incorporate the idea in my marketing.
That’s a great idea Kent. Essentially a customer testimonial to yourself. The thing is you’re touching on why your product or service solves the pain point which is essentially your vision – for make peoples’ lives easier in some way or other.
Love it.
I invite you to write one here (this goes for everyone who reads this), just to see if it works. Assume it’s an iterative process so it’s almost mandatory that you aren’t happy with your first draft.
[...] was inspired by this post by Kent Beck to write a fan letter to Redline Smalltalk, written in the voice of a deliriously satisfied user. [...]