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How To Demo Products

Monday, Apr. 2, 2018

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Hawes 203

 

Guests:

Srinivas Krishnamurti, CEO & Co-Founder, Zugata

Brendan Schwartz, CTO & Co-Founder, Wistia

 

We will discuss how to demonstrate products & create your final demo video using SoapBox. Free licenses for SoapBox are forthcoming!

 

Assignment

By Monday, April 2 at 10:00am, each team must post a google doc in the Assignment Master tab “April 2 - How to Demo” with a DRAFT storyboard and associated script for their demo video. You do not have to be great artists! Focus on the flow, the story you plan to tell, and who on your team will do the narration.

 

This is not a company pitch for investors. Assume you are preparing for customer demos of your product. Don't try to demo all your product's features, and don't try to explain all of your UI elements! Instead, walk through how a typical user would complete 1-2 specific tasks. Those tasks should show what some designers call a "hero path" through your product, i.e., one of the most important and/or most common use cases for your primary persona -- one that provides a differentiated solution for the unmet needs that matter most to them. (The term "hero path" is adapted from another design concept with which you should be familiar, the "hero shot" -- a home page photo or video that clearly shows your product's benefits and the context in which it is used.)

 

We know many of you will not have fully working software by the end of the course. If your product is not finished, plan to fill in with mocks, wireframes, or sketches to show how a user would proceed from screen to screen. Consider the following flow:

  1. Show a slide that describes your target user and the problem you'll solve for them.

  2. Next, show the solution: the single screen that, when the user sees it, will elicit the response, "That's just what I need!" Goal: get the audience excited about what you have to offer.

  3. Next, show the path to the solution quickly, mentioning what you are doing at each major step without providing any in-depth explanation. Goal: orient the audience to the major navigational elements of your app, so that when you explain these elements in more depth in the next step, the audience knows how each element fits into the overall context.

  4. Next, walk through the path more slowly, pointing out key UI design choices and explaining how you've provided a good user experience and a differentiated solution, compared to rival apps that address the same need.

 

See more on Wistia’s site for great tips on creating product explainer videos and examples of product videos for different use-cases.

 

Recommended Reading

  1. Your Product Demo Sucks Because It's Focused on Your Product (a summary of his book Just F*ing Demo), First Round Review interview of Monetate's Robert Falcone

  2. How to Make a Product Demo That Stands Out, by Oscar Santolalla

  3. Product Managers and the Product Demo, by Steve Johnson

  4. Nine Things Product Managers Should Know About Supporting Sales, oldie, but goodie by Daniel Shefer

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