
Deploy Empathy
by Michele Hansen · first published 2021
9mentions
5recommended by
7HN commenters
2021–2025first – last mentioned
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical guide to user interviews and customer research for product teams, with concrete tips and scripts; seen as a deeper follow-up to The Mom Test for people who want to go further on the topic.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…fantastic. I remember reading a very early version when it first came out. I'm very pleased to see that it has steadily become more popular over the years. Another great new book on the same topic is Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen. Michele goes even deeper with lots of practical tips, scripts, and templates. I highly recommend it, especially if you liked The Mom Test - https://deployempathy.com.
on “The Mom Test – How to talk to customers” ↗Sounds like The Mom Test could be a good read (although targeted mainly toward start ups) and Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hansen for conducting user interviews. And yes, speak to everyone and always ask them for a referral to one (ideally two) other people if it went well with them.
on “Ask HN: How do you get companies to talk to you about their problems?” ↗…Philippa Perry 4. Burnout by Emily Nagoski 5. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson 6. Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff 7. How to Keep House While Drowning, KC Davis 8. Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen 9. The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel A. Van der Kolk 10. Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown 11. What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry…
on “Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?” ↗…the time: - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra - Obviously Awesome by April Dunford - The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Every book Seth Godin has written, particularly This is Marketing - Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Forget the Funnel by Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi
on “Bootstrapping Atlassian: $10k In Credit Card Debt To $20M In Revenue In 5 years” ↗…- Validating early ideas: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Very early sales (not a book, but): https://stripe.com/en-us/guides/atlas/starting-sales - Interviewing potential and current customers: Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Marketing ideas: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares - Deeper marketing ideas: Forget the funnel by Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi
on “Ask HN: What Is the Best Book for Indie SaaS Hackers” ↗- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
on “Ask HN: What are the best books on talking to users?” ↗Deploy Empathy is another great book on this. Think of it as the 102 course to The Mom Test's 101.
on “Story: “It would be career limiting..."” ↗Everyone's talking about the Mom Test so I should definitely give it a read! Someone else recommended Deploy Empathy which I've never heard of Feels like that would help in life generally!
Since there aren't many comments here, I figured that I'd watch the video and summarize. The speaker is the co-founder of Geocodio (SaaS) and the author of "Deploy Empathy", which is a guide to interviewing customers. They actually have a website here: https://deployempathy.com/ She was a product manager who did customer research, she briefly explains the concept of geocoding,…
on “Beyond the Code: Deploying Empathy” ↗