Comments are real treasures
People speak out about what really concerns them. The challenge can be to find where they talk about it. I've often had pleasant surprises on forums, and here's an example.
Problem
I was starting a new project in a young sector and without much prior information. During my initial research, I struggled to find key information to guide my project. I also didn't have the opportunity to determine the best way to approach my mission.
Approach
I decided to visit forums such as Reddit and Slack. The idea was to see what people's main problems were, by colecting their recent posts and compiling them in order to prioritize them.
The Result
I am aware that it is important that any information gathered in this way, be treated as a "proto-personas", you cannot fully trust information that has not been communicated to you by a user. Having said that, I was able to approach my project with people's needs in mind.
