Recap At the beginning of this chapter, I talked about great value propositions from amazing companies like Waze, Airbnb, and Snapchat. Some of these value props are very different from what their founders started with before their products had substantial traction. Value propositions of products evolve with a great understanding of customers’ needs. Not to quote Peter Drucker ad nauseum, but he did say, “Strategy requires knowing what our business is and what it should [31] be.” By mashing up customer-discovery techniques with traditional user-research tools such as provisional personas, you now have a cost-efficient way to determine if you are on the right track with your product. Even if you are intimidated by users, new to research, locked in by a requirements document, fighting a looming deadline, or staring at a two-line vision statement, you want to reach out to users when you are at the starting point for a product development cycle. Because doing so is always far better than making an “ASS out of U and Me.” [24] Drucker, Peter. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. HarperBusiness, 1973. [25] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinder_%28application%29 [26] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper [27] Cooper, Alan. About Face. Wiley, 1995. [28] Cooper, Alan. About Face 3. Wiley, 2007. [29] Gothelf, Jeff with Josh Seiden. Lean UX. O’Reilly, 2013. [30] Blank, Steve. The Four Steps to the Epiphany. K&S Ranch Press, 2005. [31] Drucker, Peter. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. HarperBusiness, 1973.