Once upon a time there was a princess
Once upon a time there was a princess
Vision Over Validation
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Introduction
Justin pitches Barry.
A Princess has a Vision
We greet a new anti-design pattern: VisionOverValidation
Korean Nail Studios
The engineering team is at the Venice studio apartment; preparing a new release of the software for gig workers.
Yasmin is reviewing the bug list with Justin, their QA engineer.
Justin is 21 and Korean, a new CompSci grad from Santa Monica College. Korean streetwear style, baggy pants and hoodie. Yasmin is wearing a Chamberlain Linen-Blend Blazer and matching Livvy Linen-Blend Straight Leg Trouser set from L’Agence on Rodeo. Another shopping trip with Amir, her rich Persian boyfriend. Barely dented his Visa Signature.
Yasmin, “I think we’re good to go, do you have any open issues Justin?”.
Justin, “No. But I have an idea for Barry. You told me you do your nails at a Korean nail studio on Pico, right?”
Yasmin, “Yes, I do, but what do Korean nail studios have to do with Barry?”
Justin, “I have an idea. We can offer payment and back office processing to beauty professionals”.
Yasmin, “Pitch it to Barry. He’s co-founder and runs sales. He’ll tell you if it’s a good idea”.
Justin walks over to Barry in the living room.
Barry is in Tony Soprano mode today, pairing his Nike tracksuit with casual sneakers.
Justin pitches Barry.
Barry, “I like it. It expands our offer downstream into the beauty industry. How many nail studio ladies have you talked to?”.
Justin, “Uh. None. I wouldn’t know what to say. These Korean women are very tough”.
Barry, “Justin - that’s the whole idea. Pitch the idea to your grandmother first. She’s your test case. Then, go visit 50 nail studios. Ask them how a cloud service for payments and back office would help them. Or, maybe they need something else.
Sales is a pain in the ass, but the only way to know if people will pay for your product, is to sell them something”.
Justin, “That’s scary. I’m not a salesman. I mean like it’s a good idea, isn’t it?”.
Barry, “Let me tell you a bedtime story about good ideas”.
Once upon a time, there was a princess.
The princess went to Stanford and studied medicine and then did a PhD in computer science after getting her MD.
Her father, the king; said “go out and do something useful with your life”.
The princess said:
“I will change the world and make a mobile personal health record that will empower patients by connecting them seamlessly with their healthcare providers’ EHR using FHIR and package it in a mobile app with a beautiful UX for Apple IOS. Patients will be able to share and engage on Instagram”
The queen told her:
“I don’t understand a word of what you said dear, but if it makes you happy — go for it. Just remember — you are an only child and we would love to see successors to the throne by FY 2025. No pressure — but your Dad and I will not be around forever”.
And so it was.
The princess raised some seed money from the royal family office, hired some developer friends from school and a year later launched her app — Royal Clinical — the mobile service that puts in charge of your personal health.
They did all the right things. The used industry standards. The connection between the provider electronic health record (EHR) and Royal Clinical used FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard APIs as defined by the Argonaut Project. They supported data types for allergies, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures, and vitals out of the box.
The created a seamless connection with the EHR using OAuth 2.0, which allowed users to authenticate using their Google Account and create a persistent connection to the EHR APIs. The Royal clinical app periodically connects to the EHR APIs to pull in any new health records and notified the user when new records are available.
After 3 months — they had 300 downloads. She was dismayed. People are not signing up for my dream. I must be doing something wrong. So — she went out and bought the Lean Startup book and read it and said:
AHAH — I need to do some experiments and ask people what they really want
So she hired Lucifer and they started doing Zoom sessions with people and Lucifer would ask them:
What do you really want in a mobile app for your personal health?
People said — the app is really beautify, but I don’t really want to filter pictures of my shingles on Instagram.
Other users said — umm, this is very cool, but you know, I haven’t been in my doctor’s office for 5 years (unless you count a checkup before the New York Marathon) so there isn’t much to see.
Other users said — when I started getting a fever 3 weeks ago, the app couldn’t help me because my provider’s EHR doesn’t have any data points on low-grade fevers in my health record. So I googled — and it turns out I don’t have Corona. So it’s a really cool app but it’s not really what I need right now. If the app could measure my temperature and give me a quick go/no-go — that would be really useful.
And so she became unsure that the notion of a beautiful mobile UX for Kaiser’s EPIC system was going to change the world.
So she called up one of her professors at the Stanford business school. (she did an MBA while she was doing her internship because her Dad, the king, said it might come in handy some day.
The business school professor said:
The answer is simple. Let’s analyze what the failure of Microsofts Healthvault means for the future of ehrs
Microsoft shut down HealthVault Nov 2019. HealthVault was Microsoft’s attempt at a personal health record system.
The downfalls of HealthVault included its focus on traditional health records over dynamic and patient-acquired data, its lack of integration with many popular wearables and other smart health devices and its limited social and sharing capabilities. Electronic medical records are an extremely small part of the overall picture of a person’s health today. These records are primarily kept and utilized for the purposes of insurance reimbursement.
While the service launched with prominent partners including the American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson and Allscripts, HealthVault suffered from many of the same issues that felled its competitor Google Health.
Google Health’s personal health information service was introduced in 2008 and ended three years later because of low user adoption. Ironically, one of the services suggested by Google when their own record system wound down was HealthVault.
To the chagrin of doctors, electronic medical records are not leveraged for health optimization. Without genomic data, mobile telemetry, health behavior data, and patient-acquired data, today’s electronic medical records are close to worthless for both the provider and the patient.
So the princess googled again and came up with this picture from Statista:
And she said — AHAH. Maybe we should start validating data from privacy-preserving contact tracing and give people the ability to make up their own mind. With our beautiful UX and some anomaly detection — I bet we can make something people need — not just what we want.
And so it was.
The VisionOverValidation Anti-Design Pattern
An anti-design-pattern is a template that guarantees failure in different situations. For example, not reading the IKEA instructions and throwing out the little tools.
What does VisionOverValidation look like?
Many people hoping to build a new product or business, make the same mistake.
They don't listen enough to the people who will use their product.
Instead, they come up with a “vision” they like and work on it alone. They don't talk to the people who would use their product. They're scared of talking to them because it feels like selling something, which they find hard.
They take too long to finish their product because they're scared to show something that's not perfect. They don't want to deal with rejection when they finally show it to people. They avoid talking to the real world and the people who would use their product.
Why is this an anti-design pattern?
There are 5 reasons why VisionOverValidation is bad.
Poor product-market-fit: By prioritizing personal vision over customer needs, you may not be able to actually sell the product in volume.
Wasted time and money: You can be doing something more productive with your time and money than talking to yourself in a cafe and hoping to raise money and then working hard so that customers will buy your product.
Missed Opportunities for Improvement: For existing products or services; not engaging actively with customers results in missed opportunities for improvement.
Slow Time-to-Market: Procrastinating on shipping the product due to fear of imperfection slows down the time-to-market, allows competitors to gain an edge and reduces the window of opportunity for market traction.
Stifled Innovation: Refusing to engage with real-world feedback and clinging to a rigid vision inhibits innovation and adaptation. Embracing user feedback and iteration is key to driving innovation and staying competitive.
Solving “VisionOverValidation”
Build a mockup: Build a mockup in Figma (or Powerpoint or Google Slides) that visualizes how the product or service works and how it helps your prospective customers. Do it over the weekend. Use an AI tool.
Talk to prospective buyers: Write a script for your demo. Cold-call / cold-email / cold-DM prospects with your offer - We help X like you, do Y by Z. Make the offer very clear and simple - “We help coin laundries like you save 30% on your energy bill by shortening wash and dry cycles”. Touch 5,000 people and get 50 case studies.
Take notes: Make a standard interview form and collect feedback.
How much would they pay?: During the call, ask the prospect how much they would pay.
When would they buy it? Ask the prospect when they would buy your product or service.
What is your unique offer? Ask what about your product makes it unique compared to competitors. Do you do the same thing, only differently, faster or do you eliminate part of the customer’s process?
Debrief: Debrief each call. What went well, what went poorly, what to add, what to remove from your presentation.
Be honest: After 50 calls, be honest with yourself - do you have a business opportunity or is it time to close the vision and move on.
On a park bench in Venice CA
Mark was the one who began.
Mark, “Bob, what do you think about the princess story?”.
Mark remained silent as they sat on the park bench.
In front of them there was the green calm of the park.
A man hungry for an answer, must stock up on patience.
A man in possession of analytical skills needs to listen.
That is why Mark remained silent.
Bob, “Barry changed the story a bit, but the princess is a real person”
Bob, “Justin should interview 50 beauty professionals and collect data on an offer by Giganet for payment and backoffice services. From a technology perspective, it can be done, but it’s a huge change for the business to move downstream from the enterprise to serving the gig workers themselves”.
Mark, “I agree. Let’s see how Justin does with these tough Korean women”.
Bob, “Yeah right. Justin has no idea how hard it is. The advantage of being a noobie”.