pukka_my

coming to this a bit late, but I'm glad that you (a) recognize that your wife's gender certainly plays a role in her career trajectory and (b) want to help her without mansplaining like I see most of the commenters so far have done. It's unfortunate but true that women are discouraged from pursuing technical and scientific careers from elementary school on, and once we get into this industry we are dismissed as 'not a good cultural fit' if we aren't interested in halo marathons and competitive cycling. My solution, taken from my consulting background, has been to send out 'contact reports' after meetings summarizing what was discussed and agreed on and making note of who is responsible for what - a paper trail is a wonderful thing, especially when you cc key stakeholders (eg marketing) who weren't in attendance. I also had to learn to take more responsibility for my own development and tell my managers that I wanted to take on new challenges and what specific responsibilities I wanted to have. I also am very assertive about scheduling 1:1 time with senior leaders to check and see what problems they need to solve, telling them how I can help and following through. And when all that seems like it's going nowhere, I have a 'lean in circle' of other professional women once a month for peer coaching. Good luck to both of you!

Honestly, you're unlikely to get your hands on any data sets (or paychecks) that could really be considered 'big' without (1) an understanding of how to translate research questions into code & (2) the ability to tell your client why the results matter in any way. Why not just do freelance dev work?

Screw making a landing page for an idea that isn't fleshed out into a product. Try talking to people you think might use your product, and to people who should want your product (not necessarily the same groups). Unless your target market consists of you, your friends and people like you and your friends, don't assume you know anything about your target until you actually talk to them. Do cross-category evaluation to understand the space you're working in - assume you won't get more than 5% of the total, ever.

I would (selfishly) add design research & design strategy, but nix all of engineering - some engineers are more like plumbers, fixing what already exists rather than creating something new

How small is small? Portland is nice, as is Austin. Boulder and Madison are both nice but full of hippies. Boston, Pittsburgh and Philly are all pretty cool if you are thinking mid-Atlantic/northeast; Charleston and Savannah are great if you want to be further south.

Actually, it is sexist to believe that it's ok to make comments of a sexual nature if they are likely to lead to members of the audience feeling uncomfortable or offended. Sexism is not just skill-related, it's the attitude that the opinions, feelings or actions of one gender are somehow inherently inferior or less important than those of another and expressing that attitude through your own actions or words. Intentionality has nothing to do with it; sexism is often implicit or so internalized that people (especially but not exclusively men) fail to realize when they are in fact acting in a sexist manner. A little self-reflection might help here . . .

Try the Pampered Chef timer - yes, it's a multi-level marketing company (aka pyramid scheme), but they make some good basic tools. I have one that I've been using on a weekly basis for 3+ years on the original battery, dropped frequently and still works.

from the POV of a design researcher/strategist, this is a pretty typical if oversimplified process

1) find a problem through user research 2) asess scope & scale (is this a big problem? does it impact a lot of people?) 3) identify what the successful experience would include (more/less interpersonal interaction? faster or more leisurely? high energy or soothing?) 4) create divergent solutions, filter to find ones that work and might actually be profitable

College may not make a huge difference if you are comfortable living like an adolescent when all of your friends are starting families, vacationing in Thailand, buying whatever new iObject is out this October - but it makes a huge difference if you want to do any of those things yourself. Right now I doubt you're in a position to know for sure if you ever want kids or decent furniture or to live by yourself. You may even discover that you enjoy working and want to have a career past age 35, an age which probably seems much older from your vantage than mine.

I think the HN community in general tends to underrate the value of college in developing the kind of soft skills (project management, playing well with others, critical thinking, learning how to study something new, writing & presentation skills) that make a real difference in how good an employee/manager/co-founder can be. I would never hire anyone without at least a few years college experience - even if they kick ass at one or two things, they would probably not be as prepared to develop into new roles and skills.

Also, college gives you the opportunity to engage with subjects and people outside of your current interests/peers - whether or not that has a direct impact on your career/life, it will likely make you a more empathetic, tolerant and interesting human being.

It may not be as widespread in the 'online startup community', but user-centricity is at the heart of design. (full transparency: I'm a user researcher/strategist who typically does this kind of work for more traditional CPG/service companies and at uxhours.com)

I think 'denounce' might be a bit strong. Your friend should start by asking his colleague if he can provide some 1:1 feedback (guidelines here aren't bad, key is to be specific about behaviors: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/giving-constructive-fe...), and if nothing changes he should voice his concern to his manager.

Have you put some time into thinking about how your product can provide a meaningfully different user experience than the competition? Do you understand what the competition really is? Telling a story about why users will pay for your product is part of making a compelling business case for the next round - your margins won't matter if nobody wants it.

You don't need to spend thousands on research to start getting a better sense of what problem you're solving. Send a note to http://uxhours.com/, or pick up a book on understanding user experience. Mike Kuniavsky's 'Observing the User Experience' is an accessible if not particularly comprehensive starting point; Vijay Kumar's 101 Design Methods is a broader look at the design process.

The term "Customer Development" is really only one highly specific methodology for understanding your users' reactions to an existing product. It's an awkward phrase, and kind of a backwards approach to innovation (try starting with identifying an actual user problem that needs solving, not just throwing technology against the wall to see if it sticks). Depending on where you are in the development process, there are a number of ways for you to understand your users' upfront needs and how they are interacting with or want to interact with your product/category. Feel free to reach out if you're looking for actual guidance on understanding why and how people use your product. http://uxhours.com/

As a researcher/strategist with a design background, I think it's reasonable to expect to check in with users 2-3 times before a design is finalized - and hopefully you started from a relatively deep knowledge of the current experience & opportunity before you ever started the project! The key is to know what you are trying to learn from each research cycle. Do you want to know if the idea seems reasonable? Sketch level ideas & storyboard scenarios are the best stimulus. If you want to understand UI flow, you should expect to have at least 70% of all potential outcomes wireframed, but they can look like crap. If you want to understand which of several design directions to take aesthetically, you need more slick-looking screens, but only 1 or 2 navigation paths for each (since the goal is gauging aesthetics rather than functionality). If you want to know if you are ready to launch, you should have the whole thing as finished as possible. And in general, more cycles with fewer people (think 5 core users, 5 extreme users & 5 potential future users) beats fewer cycles with lots of participants.