===== A live interactive demo of customer discovery interviews =====
  * **Speaker**: Jocelyn Graf
  * **Room**: 332
  * **Time**: Saturday, [[|Oct 24th 11:30 – 12:20pm]]  

  * **Format**: Talk/Demo (50 minutes)
  * **Difficulty**: Beginner
  * **Track**: Entrepreneurship & Product Strategy
  * **Additional Tags**: Customer Discovery, User Research, Startups, Open Source, Product Validation, Interviewing  
  * **Experience**: Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of California Riverside and advisor for the Los Angeles Small Business Development Centers, specializing in startup viability and sustainable business models.  

==== Description: ====  
Whether launching an open-source project, starting a freelance business, or building a startup, success depends on understanding what users actually need rather than relying on assumptions. This session distinguishes customer discovery from traditional UX research, focusing on uncovering the deep motivations that drive a user to abandon their current routine for a new solution. Through a series of live, abbreviated interviews featuring a Seattle-based worker-owned cooperative team, the presenter will demonstrate techniques to bypass "agreeable" feedback and extract valuable, honest data. Attendees will learn how to construct a hypothesis—identifying the problem, solution, and target customer—and how to analyze interview data to either validate or pivot their venture.

**Target Audience:**  
  * Aspiring entrepreneurs and startup founders
  * Open-source project leads seeking to ensure long-term sustainability
  * Freelancers looking to identify and validate market needs