The Art of Dog Fooding

Dog Fooding is the idea of using your own product as a customer would. It's about pressure-testing the experience to uncover what works, what doesn't, and what truly adds value.

I've been doing this prior to and since our initial release of SoonCall (an app for long distance friendship), and there have been some tremendous benefits to making it part of the development cycle.

However, this self-reflective feedback mechanism should compliment, and not replace, feedback from your paying users.

Why you should be doing it from day one

• If you're not using your own product, you probably don't know where the real friction points are.
• If you're not empathising with your users, you probably don't know what problems they're trying to solve.

Important Reminders

User Feedback > Dog Fooding

• User feedback is always going to be more valuable than your own experiences with your product.
• It's easy to forget that you're using the product from advantaged perspective. You know it inside out, and you probably know why things work the way they do.
• Your users don't. Something that is obvious to you is probably not obvious to them.

User Feedback != Dog Fooding

• Your users are spending time in different places to you. They're probably trying to solve a different problem to you.
• It’s important you don’t fixate on solving problems that feel important to you when your average user might not care.