How Human Centric Computing Affects the Economy :: Essays Papers

How Human Centric Computing Affects the Economy Our economy was overwhelmed when the universe of PCs was acquainted with huge organizations and organizations. It resembled a relentless pattern that everybody needed to follow. In the event that an organization decided not to acquire mass PCs for all workers, they falled behind and were overlooked. The economy is going to encounter another flood of progress. Human driven processing is very nearly breaking out into the light. Starting at right now human driven registering prowls in the shadows, simply holding back to be acquainted with organizations, to governments, to our silicone valley, and huge amounts of other related things. Human driven figuring will permit individuals to collaborate with their PCs more than use them. Rather than understanding directions and other time squandering assignments, human driven registering will permit you to converse with your PC. The entirety of your inquiries will be replied by conversing with your PC and having it disrespect you. Rather than figuring out your PC looking for a record, wouldn’t it be decent on the off chance that you just requested that your PC discover it, and it was found? Human driven registering is likewise about having PCs skip ventures for you. Rather than managing B and C, it is basically going from A to D. When utilizing a PC nowadays, it can become baffling and upsetting when PCs normally crash on you. This new improvement to PCs as far as anyone knows will end the ghastly of most the accidents individuals experience. At whatever point you go to the bank to make an exchange, you ensure its during open hours, you round out a structure relating to your target, and hold up in a long queue. Human driven registering, later on, ought to dispense with this messiness and spare a precious measure of time. In the wake of arranging an excursion to a removed land, you first need to purchase boarding passes, hold a lodging, and possibly research the territory. On the off chance that you are a specialist working the core of New York, you have positively no an ideal opportunity to do this. Be that as it may, on the off chance that you asked your PC, I need the most readily accessible boarding pass to Taiwan on November 23, the time, a lodging, ECT.

LSD :: essays research papers

 â â â â The book I picked is titled, â€Å"The LSD Controversy.† The writer is Maurice S. Wastes, Ph.D. The call number is 615.78 and I read pages 1-50.      The first area of the book I read about arrangements with phrasing. The other segment I read about includes the general synthetic attributes of LSD. LSD’s complete name is D-lysergic corrosive diethylamide tartrate. Its shortened form originates from the German Lyserg Sã ¤ure Diethylamid. The creator proceeds to characterize various terms for LSD, for example, psychedelic drug, illusinogen, and fantastica. He at that point endeavors to locate the best possible term for it. He accepts that the term stimulant is unseemly in light of the fact that genuine pipedreams are uncommon. In spite of the fact that it is broadly utilized, he inclines toward illusinogen in light of the fact that as per S. Cohen, â€Å"hallucinations† are really hallucination.      As for the general attributes of LSD, the creator poses the inquiry, â€Å"What is LSD?† From a concoction point of view, LSD is a semisynthetic diethylamide that is set up from lysergic corrosive. This is a normally happening substance of the parasitic organism called ergot. This develops in the seeds of rye and different grasses. Stoll and Hoffman were the first to integrate it in 1938. Hoffman found its belongings in 1943 when he incidentally sniffed a couple of micrograms; he thought he was going crazy.      LSD in an unadulterated structure is an unscented, dismal, and boring powder that is dissolvable in water and liquor. Despite the fact that it might be difficult to identify, it is known as one of the most powerful hallucinogenic medications in presence. Approximately two pounds of the medication in powder structure can flexibly ten million dosages of 100 micrograms every which is adequate for pretty much anybody. 100 micrograms is scarcely even noticeable!      Once it is has been taken by an individual, it is retained quickly and circulated all through the body. It has no issue going through the blood-mind obstruction and is totally used by the body. It is discharged by the liver as 2-oxy-LSD.      The instance of whether LSD is addictive is contended in the book straightaway. The explanation it is so difficult to decide whether LSD is addictive or not is on the grounds that there is no settled meaning of compulsion. Therapists discuss clairvoyant or passionate reliance while specialists talk about physical reliance. At that point there’s a differentiation to be made on whether it’s the medication or the individual that is addictive or dependent. To make it simpler, the World Health Organization has perceived the uncertainty of the word â€Å"addiction† and concocted the term â€Å"drug reliance in 1965.

Customer Development Model Understanding Customer Validation

Customer Development Model Understanding Customer Validation WHAT IS CUSTOMER VALIDATIONCustomer validation is the phase of the Customer Development model where you obtain hard evidence regarding the possible success of your business model. You cannot just assume that customers will buy your product â€" even if they tell you they might! Dealing in hypothetical scenarios does not help you affirm whether you have a solid business plan. This is why you must validate all of the information that you think you know.Customer validation proves whether your assumptions are correct before you spend too much money. This is essential for the process because it is what sets it apart from any other type of development model. According to Steve Blank, the reason that too many businesses fail is because they work based on their assumptions. Many businesses either do not know how to validate their knowledge or skip the process all together. If you do not validate your knowledge, you only push failure off into the future.Customer validation helps you avoid buil ding a product that no one wants. This is because it forces you to get out of the building and talk to real customers. Talking to your friends, family, industry companions and employees is fine. But they are not thinking like your customers do. They all have a vested interest in your and your business and want to see it succeed. So naturally, they do think that you have a great product.Your friends, family and acquaintances may not actually be members of your target market. Asking their opinion is hazardous because if they think that your idea is not worth much this can be damaging to your confidence. If they are not natural customers of yours, they have no idea how much your idea is worth because you’re not solving one of their problems.For these reasons, it is essential to get out of the building. Directing your efforts at your target customer base is more effective for your learning than talking about your product with people who might not even have the problem your product sol ves.Another key benefit of the customer validation step is that it allows you to change your methods early. Iteration is key in this model and it is okay to get it wrong. Failing early is better for you because it gives you the opportunity to try again. If you fail before you have launched or shipped, you will have inevitably have spent far less money than you might have otherwise.Finally, customer validation tells you whether customers will really buy your product. Hearing customers say that they would buy your product is nice but it is ultimately meaningless. Your customers need to actually put their money where their mouth is for this sentiment to be worth anything.Learn more on customer validation by reading through this workshop notes.[slideshare id=31044803doc=customervalidationfinalplain-140210124144-phpapp02w=710h=500]WHAT YOU NEED TO VALIDATEKnowing what to validate is just as important as understanding the importance of customer validation. There are three essential things that you must validate during this process. However, it is important to remember to keep each of these things separate from each other.The first thing that you need to do is validate the market. It is important to determine your total market potential as well as the amount of that market that you may be able to reach. It is important to be realistic when validating your market because you need to make sure that the market that you serve is large enough and that there will be people willing to buy your product.To learn more about your market, you can use several different tools. First, you might consider using industry reports for your industry as a whole to get a sense of the broader market. You can also use free tools like Google Trends to evaluate your market over time. You can also do a comparison of the traffic of competitor’s websites to figure out how many people are currently active in your market.You should avoid market forecasts during the validation process. Many foreca sts are based on assumptions. In the validation process, you are trying to avoid assumptions in favor of hard data.You also need to validate the problem. The problem is at the heart of the validation process because potential customers would come to you to solve their problem. Solving a problem that is important to your market is what the success of your business is all about.Validating the problem means that you need to make sure that the problem is real. It requires you to go out and speak to potential customers about this problem. When you ask customers the right questions about their problems, they will provide you with a wealth of information. At this stage, some of the most important information that you can take away from speaking to customers is what their problem really is and how important solving this problem is to them. This will also help validate your market.Finally, you need to validate your product. This is the last thing that you should do because finding your marke t and solving a problem has less to do with your product and more to do with establishing the need for your product. When you are validating your product, you are trying to establish whether the product you offer complements the information that you learned when validating the market and the product.COMMON MISTAKE BUSINESSES MAKE DURING CUSTOMER VALIDATIONValidating your customers is not easy. It is not that the process itself is complicated. Interviewing your customers with good questions is simple if you know what to look for. The hard part of customer validation is the fact that you must accept that you might be wrong. Clinging too tightly to assumptions causes people to make mistakes during the customer validation process. These mistakes can actually make all of the new information worthless to the business. This is because these mistakes will ultimately lead to the business missing out on truly valuable information.The biggest mistake that a business makes during customer valid ation is when they think they know their target market. When a business thinks they know what is going on out in the real world, they are less likely to prioritize proving it. There is nothing wrong with going after hard evidence to prove your assumptions. If you are correct, there is no harm in proving it.Another mistake that people make is that they take people’s opinions on the product as gold. Friends, family, colleagues and even customers are happy to tell you that you have a great product most of the time. This is exactly what a business wants to hear. Too often, customer validation stops when this answer is given. But this is not credible evidence that validates your customer base. There is a difference between a customer who thinks you have a great product and a customer who would buy your product. In order for a customer to buy your product, it has to solve a problem that is important to them.Finally, too many businesses are afraid of changing their products. Whether the product is too close their heart or they are just afraid of rejection, it can be hard for businesses to hear that their product does not quite measure up. To avoid being rejected by strangers, businesses try hard to ask only the questions that they already know the answers to. This is because they want to protect themselves from disappointment or embarrassment.Unfortunately, there’s no room for fear in customer validation. If you go out to validate your market and you are afraid of what they are going to tell you, you will naturally try to protect yourself and your business. This is incredibly common and many businesses are guilty of it. But in order for customer validation to work, you need to be comfortable with the possibility that you are wrong.Being wrong is perfectly fine. No one is right all the time. It is better to be wrong before you’ve spent all your money on a product that nobody wants. At least then you have a chance to start again.THE CUSTOMER VALIDATION PROCESSOnc e you understand the importance of customer validation, the methods that you use to make the process work will begin to make more sense. Using a methodology for the customer validation process is essential because without a plan, you cannot measure your results. Your data is worthless if you can’t examine the context in which you obtained it. You might consider using the following process when you are going through customer validation.HypothesisYour hypothesis is a summary of everything that you assume about your market, their problem and your solution.You might take Coke Zero’s hypothesis as an example. Coke Zero sees its target market as men between the ages of 18 and 25. They believe the problem that this market has is that they want to cut calories but they don’t want to drink Diet Coke for various reasons like taste and the “diet” label. The solution to this problem is a new product: Coke Zero. Coke Zero offers a low calorie product with a different taste and brand as sociation than Diet Coke has.What Coca Cola should do in this case is develop questions targeted to these customers regarding this problem. They could then return to the hypothesis for comparison later to see whether or not they were right about their assumptions.ChannelsYou need to figure out the channels that you will use to reach your customers. These may be paid or free channels. However, you should not consider big advertising strategies yet. You are looking for customers who are looking for you.Coke Zero is designed for male millennials. Coca Cola had the budget to take its new product right to the customer. As a result, Coke Zero used cross-channel marketing to create engagement with customers. Coke Zero also focused heavily on getting out of the building by showing up at rock concerts, college sports games and other places where they were likely to find their target market. They took the opportunity to arrange taste tests at these events but also gather large amounts of data from potential customers.Of course, Coca Cola has a budget that is equivalent to the GDP of a small country. Therefore, they have a lot of channels available to them even in the product launch phase. But this is a good example of ways that you can use certain channels, or a combination of channels to get right to where your potential customers live.Sell to Early Customers and Product EvangelistsEarly customers will be validating everything you think you know about your business model by spending their money with you. They will also be validating your unique selling proposition.Your early customers can become your product evangelists if you are solving their problems well. However, in order for them to become product evangelists, you need to give them the tools to help you sell your product for you. Many of those tools will be set up online.There are few things that you need to have set up online to help your early adopters spread the word about your product. All of these should be built into your product website:You need a landing page for your product. Your landing page is where you can really excite potential customers. You can also include a demo of the product. Of course, you also need a strong call-to-action to convert your traffic into real customers.You also need a price page. It is important to forget about the sales advice that you heard about putting price off until the last moment. Online customers want transparency and this includes adding a breakdown of how much your product costs.Do not just include a pricing page and leave it at that. This works for companies like Apple but few businesses will ever have this kind of luxury. You will want to soften the blow for new buyers by offering free trials, guarantees or even discounts.Avoid giving your products away for free. Giving away free products only works well for social media companies like Spotify where the number of users they have is more important than revenue. Besides, the point of the custom er validation phase is to prove that people will buy your product, not accept it when you give it away for free.Finally, you need a sign up page to convert traffic into to potential customers. This needs to be relatively painless and include very few steps. It is a good idea to set up your registration page to be compatible with Facebook or Google+ (to capture Gmail accounts). This allows customers to register with the click of a button.Your sign up page is a valuable tool. Some of your market may not be ready to dive in immediately but that does not mean that they are not valuable. When they become more familiar with your name through association, they will remember that they discovered your business early. This will add legitimacy that will influence purchasing decisions significantly.Increase Your SpendingIf your initial sales are successful, you can also begin loosen up your wallet at this point. Once you know that your market is real and their problems are important to them, it is okay to begin to push sales and marketing further. Customer acquisition costs money and it is okay to spend money here once youve validated your key assumptions.However, this is not yet the step where you begin growing your business. Increasing your burn rate to the scale of company building is not yet relevant here because you have not optimized your process. Ramping up your marketing and sales efforts is great at this step. But do not start looking for new office space in New York, London and Sydney just yet.OptimizeYou have learned a lot about your customers and your product by this point. You need to take this information and learn from it to make your product and methods better than ever. Even if it is measured and analyzed, customer data is useless if you don’t learn from it! Take what you’ve learned thus far and make changes or corrections to your strategies.IterateIteration is key in both the customer validation process and the Customer Development model as a whole. Optimizing your product for the wider market will usually take several iterations.Iteration is good and does not just take place while the product is being developed. You will need to make changes as your market grows and changes. You can even hold on to old models to see if they work somewhere down the line, even if they don’t work right now.CONCLUSION Customer validation is the second part of the Customer Development model. This phase is important because you find out whether your assumptions regarding  customers are true or false. Customer discovery was all about figuring out who your customers are and how to reach them. Customer validation is about making sure that your research is correct and developing your business model to reflect that information. Essentially, if you can validate your customer related assumptions then you have potentially found customers who will buy your product. Based on Customer Development Model created by Steve BlankIn this article, you will learn 1) what is customer validation, 2) what assumptions you need to validate, 3) common mistakes businesses make during customer validation, and 4) the customer validation process.  WHAT IS CUSTOMER VALIDATIONCustomer validation is the phase of the Customer Development model where you obtain hard evidence regarding the possible success of your business model. You cannot just assume that customers will buy your product â€" even if they tell you they might! Dealing in hypothetical scenarios does not help you affirm whether you have a solid business plan. This is why you must validate all of the information that you think you know.Customer validation proves whether your assumptions are correct before you spend too much money. This is essential for the process because it is what sets it apart from any other type of development model. According to Steve Blank, the reason that too many businesses fail is because they work based on their assumptions. Many businesses either do not know how to validate their knowledge or skip the process all together. If you do not validate your knowledge, you only push failure off into the future.Customer validation helps you avoid building a product that no one wants. This is because it forces you to get out of the building and talk to real customers. Talking to your friends, family, industry companions and employees is fine. But they are not thinking like your customers do. They all have a vested interest in your and your business and want to see it succeed. So naturally, they do think that you have a great product.Your friends, family and acquaintances may not actually be members of your target market. Asking their opinion is hazardous because if they think that your idea is not worth much this can be damaging to your confidence. If they are not natural customers of yours, they have no idea how much your idea is worth because you’re not solving o ne of their problems.For these reasons, it is essential to get out of the building. Directing your efforts at your target customer base is more effective for your learning than talking about your product with people who might not even have the problem your product solves.Another key benefit of the customer validation step is that it allows you to change your methods early. Iteration is key in this model and it is okay to get it wrong. Failing early is better for you because it gives you the opportunity to try again. If you fail before you have launched or shipped, you will have inevitably have spent far less money than you might have otherwise.Finally, customer validation tells you whether customers will really buy your product. Hearing customers say that they would buy your product is nice but it is ultimately meaningless. Your customers need to actually put their money where their mouth is for this sentiment to be worth anything.Learn more on customer validation by reading through this workshop notes.[slideshare id=31044803doc=customervalidationfinalplain-140210124144-phpapp02w=710h=500]WHAT YOU NEED TO VALIDATEKnowing what to validate is just as important as understanding the importance of customer validation. There are three essential things that you must validate during this process. However, it is important to remember to keep each of these things separate from each other.The first thing that you need to do is validate the market. It is important to determine your total market potential as well as the amount of that market that you may be able to reach. It is important to be realistic when validating your market because you need to make sure that the market that you serve is large enough and that there will be people willing to buy your product.To learn more about your market, you can use several different tools. First, you might consider using industry reports for your industry as a whole to get a sense of the broader market. You can also use free tools like Google Trends to evaluate your market over time. You can also do a comparison of the traffic of competitor’s websites to figure out how many people are currently active in your market.You should avoid market forecasts during the validation process. Many forecasts are based on assumptions. In the validation process, you are trying to avoid assumptions in favor of hard data.You also need to validate the problem. The problem is at the heart of the validation process because potential customers would come to you to solve their problem. Solving a problem that is important to your market is what the success of your business is all about.Validating the problem means that you need to make sure that the problem is real. It requires you to go out and speak to potential customers about this problem. When you ask customers the right questions about their problems, they will provide you with a wealth of information. At this stage, some of the most important information that you can take away from speaking to customers is what their problem really is and how important solving this problem is to them. This will also help validate your market.Finally, you need to validate your product. This is the last thing that you should do because finding your market and solving a problem has less to do with your product and more to do with establishing the need for your product. When you are validating your product, you are trying to establish whether the product you offer complements the information that you learned when validating the market and the product.COMMON MISTAKE BUSINESSES MAKE DURING CUSTOMER VALIDATIONValidating your customers is not easy. It is not that the process itself is complicated. Interviewing your customers with good questions is simple if you know what to look for. The hard part of customer validation is the fact that you must accept that you might be wrong. Clinging too tightly to assumptions causes people to make mistakes during the customer validation p rocess. These mistakes can actually make all of the new information worthless to the business. This is because these mistakes will ultimately lead to the business missing out on truly valuable information.The biggest mistake that a business makes during customer validation is when they think they know their target market. When a business thinks they know what is going on out in the real world, they are less likely to prioritize proving it. There is nothing wrong with going after hard evidence to prove your assumptions. If you are correct, there is no harm in proving it.Another mistake that people make is that they take people’s opinions on the product as gold. Friends, family, colleagues and even customers are happy to tell you that you have a great product most of the time. This is exactly what a business wants to hear. Too often, customer validation stops when this answer is given. But this is not credible evidence that validates your customer base. There is a difference between a customer who thinks you have a great product and a customer who would buy your product. In order for a customer to buy your product, it has to solve a problem that is important to them.Finally, too many businesses are afraid of changing their products. Whether the product is too close their heart or they are just afraid of rejection, it can be hard for businesses to hear that their product does not quite measure up. To avoid being rejected by strangers, businesses try hard to ask only the questions that they already know the answers to. This is because they want to protect themselves from disappointment or embarrassment.Unfortunately, there’s no room for fear in customer validation. If you go out to validate your market and you are afraid of what they are going to tell you, you will naturally try to protect yourself and your business. This is incredibly common and many businesses are guilty of it. But in order for customer validation to work, you need to be comfortable with the possibility that you are wrong.Being wrong is perfectly fine. No one is right all the time. It is better to be wrong before you’ve spent all your money on a product that nobody wants. At least then you have a chance to start again.THE CUSTOMER VALIDATION PROCESSOnce you understand the importance of customer validation, the methods that you use to make the process work will begin to make more sense. Using a methodology for the customer validation process is essential because without a plan, you cannot measure your results. Your data is worthless if you can’t examine the context in which you obtained it. You might consider using the following process when you are going through customer validation.HypothesisYour hypothesis is a summary of everything that you assume about your market, their problem and your solution.You might take Coke Zero’s hypothesis as an example. Coke Zero sees its target market as men between the ages of 18 and 25. They believe the problem that this market has is that they want to cut calories but they don’t want to drink Diet Coke for various reasons like taste and the “diet” label. The solution to this problem is a new product: Coke Zero. Coke Zero offers a low calorie product with a different taste and brand association than Diet Coke has.What Coca Cola should do in this case is develop questions targeted to these customers regarding this problem. They could then return to the hypothesis for comparison later to see whether or not they were right about their assumptions.ChannelsYou need to figure out the channels that you will use to reach your customers. These may be paid or free channels. However, you should not consider big advertising strategies yet. You are looking for customers who are looking for you.Coke Zero is designed for male millennials. Coca Cola had the budget to take its new product right to the customer. As a result, Coke Zero used cross-channel marketing to create engagement with customers. Coke Zero also foc used heavily on getting out of the building by showing up at rock concerts, college sports games and other places where they were likely to find their target market. They took the opportunity to arrange taste tests at these events but also gather large amounts of data from potential customers.Of course, Coca Cola has a budget that is equivalent to the GDP of a small country. Therefore, they have a lot of channels available to them even in the product launch phase. But this is a good example of ways that you can use certain channels, or a combination of channels to get right to where your potential customers live.Sell to Early Customers and Product EvangelistsEarly customers will be validating everything you think you know about your business model by spending their money with you. They will also be validating your unique selling proposition.Your early customers can become your product evangelists if you are solving their problems well. However, in order for them to become product ev angelists, you need to give them the tools to help you sell your product for you. Many of those tools will be set up online.There are few things that you need to have set up online to help your early adopters spread the word about your product. All of these should be built into your product website:You need a landing page for your product. Your landing page is where you can really excite potential customers. You can also include a demo of the product. Of course, you also need a strong call-to-action to convert your traffic into real customers.You also need a price page. It is important to forget about the sales advice that you heard about putting price off until the last moment. Online customers want transparency and this includes adding a breakdown of how much your product costs.Do not just include a pricing page and leave it at that. This works for companies like Apple but few businesses will ever have this kind of luxury. You will want to soften the blow for new buyers by offerin g free trials, guarantees or even discounts.Avoid giving your products away for free. Giving away free products only works well for social media companies like Spotify where the number of users they have is more important than revenue. Besides, the point of the customer validation phase is to prove that people will buy your product, not accept it when you give it away for free.Finally, you need a sign up page to convert traffic into to potential customers. This needs to be relatively painless and include very few steps. It is a good idea to set up your registration page to be compatible with Facebook or Google+ (to capture Gmail accounts). This allows customers to register with the click of a button.Your sign up page is a valuable tool. Some of your market may not be ready to dive in immediately but that does not mean that they are not valuable. When they become more familiar with your name through association, they will remember that they discovered your business early. This will a dd legitimacy that will influence purchasing decisions significantly.Increase Your SpendingIf your initial sales are successful, you can also begin loosen up your wallet at this point. Once you know that your market is real and their problems are important to them, it is okay to begin to push sales and marketing further. Customer acquisition costs money and it is okay to spend money here once youve validated your key assumptions.However, this is not yet the step where you begin growing your business. Increasing your burn rate to the scale of company building is not yet relevant here because you have not optimized your process. Ramping up your marketing and sales efforts is great at this step. But do not start looking for new office space in New York, London and Sydney just yet.OptimizeYou have learned a lot about your customers and your product by this point. You need to take this information and learn from it to make your product and methods better than ever. Even if it is measured and analyzed, customer data is useless if you don’t learn from it! Take what you’ve learned thus far and make changes or corrections to your strategies.IterateIteration is key in both the customer validation process and the Customer Development model as a whole. Optimizing your product for the wider market will usually take several iterations.Iteration is good and does not just take place while the product is being developed. You will need to make changes as your market grows and changes. You can even hold on to old models to see if they work somewhere down the line, even if they don’t work right now.CONCLUSIONCustomer validation is an essential step for the Customer Development model. However, it will be useless if you do not approach it with an open and inquisitive mind. The methods, money and efforts used to gain valuable customer insight will be useless if you still believe that you know what is best for your customers. This is a valuable time to learn from the most impor tant people in your business: your customers. Remember that you might have a great product but if you do not have any customers, you do not have a business.

Customer Development Model Understanding Customer Validation

Customer Development Model Understanding Customer Validation WHAT IS CUSTOMER VALIDATIONCustomer validation is the phase of the Customer Development model where you obtain hard evidence regarding the possible success of your business model. You cannot just assume that customers will buy your product â€" even if they tell you they might! Dealing in hypothetical scenarios does not help you affirm whether you have a solid business plan. This is why you must validate all of the information that you think you know.Customer validation proves whether your assumptions are correct before you spend too much money. This is essential for the process because it is what sets it apart from any other type of development model. According to Steve Blank, the reason that too many businesses fail is because they work based on their assumptions. Many businesses either do not know how to validate their knowledge or skip the process all together. If you do not validate your knowledge, you only push failure off into the future.Customer validation helps you avoid buil ding a product that no one wants. This is because it forces you to get out of the building and talk to real customers. Talking to your friends, family, industry companions and employees is fine. But they are not thinking like your customers do. They all have a vested interest in your and your business and want to see it succeed. So naturally, they do think that you have a great product.Your friends, family and acquaintances may not actually be members of your target market. Asking their opinion is hazardous because if they think that your idea is not worth much this can be damaging to your confidence. If they are not natural customers of yours, they have no idea how much your idea is worth because you’re not solving one of their problems.For these reasons, it is essential to get out of the building. Directing your efforts at your target customer base is more effective for your learning than talking about your product with people who might not even have the problem your product sol ves.Another key benefit of the customer validation step is that it allows you to change your methods early. Iteration is key in this model and it is okay to get it wrong. Failing early is better for you because it gives you the opportunity to try again. If you fail before you have launched or shipped, you will have inevitably have spent far less money than you might have otherwise.Finally, customer validation tells you whether customers will really buy your product. Hearing customers say that they would buy your product is nice but it is ultimately meaningless. Your customers need to actually put their money where their mouth is for this sentiment to be worth anything.Learn more on customer validation by reading through this workshop notes.[slideshare id=31044803doc=customervalidationfinalplain-140210124144-phpapp02w=710h=500]WHAT YOU NEED TO VALIDATEKnowing what to validate is just as important as understanding the importance of customer validation. There are three essential things that you must validate during this process. However, it is important to remember to keep each of these things separate from each other.The first thing that you need to do is validate the market. It is important to determine your total market potential as well as the amount of that market that you may be able to reach. It is important to be realistic when validating your market because you need to make sure that the market that you serve is large enough and that there will be people willing to buy your product.To learn more about your market, you can use several different tools. First, you might consider using industry reports for your industry as a whole to get a sense of the broader market. You can also use free tools like Google Trends to evaluate your market over time. You can also do a comparison of the traffic of competitor’s websites to figure out how many people are currently active in your market.You should avoid market forecasts during the validation process. Many foreca sts are based on assumptions. In the validation process, you are trying to avoid assumptions in favor of hard data.You also need to validate the problem. The problem is at the heart of the validation process because potential customers would come to you to solve their problem. Solving a problem that is important to your market is what the success of your business is all about.Validating the problem means that you need to make sure that the problem is real. It requires you to go out and speak to potential customers about this problem. When you ask customers the right questions about their problems, they will provide you with a wealth of information. At this stage, some of the most important information that you can take away from speaking to customers is what their problem really is and how important solving this problem is to them. This will also help validate your market.Finally, you need to validate your product. This is the last thing that you should do because finding your marke t and solving a problem has less to do with your product and more to do with establishing the need for your product. When you are validating your product, you are trying to establish whether the product you offer complements the information that you learned when validating the market and the product.COMMON MISTAKE BUSINESSES MAKE DURING CUSTOMER VALIDATIONValidating your customers is not easy. It is not that the process itself is complicated. Interviewing your customers with good questions is simple if you know what to look for. The hard part of customer validation is the fact that you must accept that you might be wrong. Clinging too tightly to assumptions causes people to make mistakes during the customer validation process. These mistakes can actually make all of the new information worthless to the business. This is because these mistakes will ultimately lead to the business missing out on truly valuable information.The biggest mistake that a business makes during customer valid ation is when they think they know their target market. When a business thinks they know what is going on out in the real world, they are less likely to prioritize proving it. There is nothing wrong with going after hard evidence to prove your assumptions. If you are correct, there is no harm in proving it.Another mistake that people make is that they take people’s opinions on the product as gold. Friends, family, colleagues and even customers are happy to tell you that you have a great product most of the time. This is exactly what a business wants to hear. Too often, customer validation stops when this answer is given. But this is not credible evidence that validates your customer base. There is a difference between a customer who thinks you have a great product and a customer who would buy your product. In order for a customer to buy your product, it has to solve a problem that is important to them.Finally, too many businesses are afraid of changing their products. Whether the product is too close their heart or they are just afraid of rejection, it can be hard for businesses to hear that their product does not quite measure up. To avoid being rejected by strangers, businesses try hard to ask only the questions that they already know the answers to. This is because they want to protect themselves from disappointment or embarrassment.Unfortunately, there’s no room for fear in customer validation. If you go out to validate your market and you are afraid of what they are going to tell you, you will naturally try to protect yourself and your business. This is incredibly common and many businesses are guilty of it. But in order for customer validation to work, you need to be comfortable with the possibility that you are wrong.Being wrong is perfectly fine. No one is right all the time. It is better to be wrong before you’ve spent all your money on a product that nobody wants. At least then you have a chance to start again.THE CUSTOMER VALIDATION PROCESSOnc e you understand the importance of customer validation, the methods that you use to make the process work will begin to make more sense. Using a methodology for the customer validation process is essential because without a plan, you cannot measure your results. Your data is worthless if you can’t examine the context in which you obtained it. You might consider using the following process when you are going through customer validation.HypothesisYour hypothesis is a summary of everything that you assume about your market, their problem and your solution.You might take Coke Zero’s hypothesis as an example. Coke Zero sees its target market as men between the ages of 18 and 25. They believe the problem that this market has is that they want to cut calories but they don’t want to drink Diet Coke for various reasons like taste and the “diet” label. The solution to this problem is a new product: Coke Zero. Coke Zero offers a low calorie product with a different taste and brand as sociation than Diet Coke has.What Coca Cola should do in this case is develop questions targeted to these customers regarding this problem. They could then return to the hypothesis for comparison later to see whether or not they were right about their assumptions.ChannelsYou need to figure out the channels that you will use to reach your customers. These may be paid or free channels. However, you should not consider big advertising strategies yet. You are looking for customers who are looking for you.Coke Zero is designed for male millennials. Coca Cola had the budget to take its new product right to the customer. As a result, Coke Zero used cross-channel marketing to create engagement with customers. Coke Zero also focused heavily on getting out of the building by showing up at rock concerts, college sports games and other places where they were likely to find their target market. They took the opportunity to arrange taste tests at these events but also gather large amounts of data from potential customers.Of course, Coca Cola has a budget that is equivalent to the GDP of a small country. Therefore, they have a lot of channels available to them even in the product launch phase. But this is a good example of ways that you can use certain channels, or a combination of channels to get right to where your potential customers live.Sell to Early Customers and Product EvangelistsEarly customers will be validating everything you think you know about your business model by spending their money with you. They will also be validating your unique selling proposition.Your early customers can become your product evangelists if you are solving their problems well. However, in order for them to become product evangelists, you need to give them the tools to help you sell your product for you. Many of those tools will be set up online.There are few things that you need to have set up online to help your early adopters spread the word about your product. All of these should be built into your product website:You need a landing page for your product. Your landing page is where you can really excite potential customers. You can also include a demo of the product. Of course, you also need a strong call-to-action to convert your traffic into real customers.You also need a price page. It is important to forget about the sales advice that you heard about putting price off until the last moment. Online customers want transparency and this includes adding a breakdown of how much your product costs.Do not just include a pricing page and leave it at that. This works for companies like Apple but few businesses will ever have this kind of luxury. You will want to soften the blow for new buyers by offering free trials, guarantees or even discounts.Avoid giving your products away for free. Giving away free products only works well for social media companies like Spotify where the number of users they have is more important than revenue. Besides, the point of the custom er validation phase is to prove that people will buy your product, not accept it when you give it away for free.Finally, you need a sign up page to convert traffic into to potential customers. This needs to be relatively painless and include very few steps. It is a good idea to set up your registration page to be compatible with Facebook or Google+ (to capture Gmail accounts). This allows customers to register with the click of a button.Your sign up page is a valuable tool. Some of your market may not be ready to dive in immediately but that does not mean that they are not valuable. When they become more familiar with your name through association, they will remember that they discovered your business early. This will add legitimacy that will influence purchasing decisions significantly.Increase Your SpendingIf your initial sales are successful, you can also begin loosen up your wallet at this point. Once you know that your market is real and their problems are important to them, it is okay to begin to push sales and marketing further. Customer acquisition costs money and it is okay to spend money here once youve validated your key assumptions.However, this is not yet the step where you begin growing your business. Increasing your burn rate to the scale of company building is not yet relevant here because you have not optimized your process. Ramping up your marketing and sales efforts is great at this step. But do not start looking for new office space in New York, London and Sydney just yet.OptimizeYou have learned a lot about your customers and your product by this point. You need to take this information and learn from it to make your product and methods better than ever. Even if it is measured and analyzed, customer data is useless if you don’t learn from it! Take what you’ve learned thus far and make changes or corrections to your strategies.IterateIteration is key in both the customer validation process and the Customer Development model as a whole. Optimizing your product for the wider market will usually take several iterations.Iteration is good and does not just take place while the product is being developed. You will need to make changes as your market grows and changes. You can even hold on to old models to see if they work somewhere down the line, even if they don’t work right now.CONCLUSION Customer validation is the second part of the Customer Development model. This phase is important because you find out whether your assumptions regarding  customers are true or false. Customer discovery was all about figuring out who your customers are and how to reach them. Customer validation is about making sure that your research is correct and developing your business model to reflect that information. Essentially, if you can validate your customer related assumptions then you have potentially found customers who will buy your product. Based on Customer Development Model created by Steve BlankIn this article, you will learn 1) what is customer validation, 2) what assumptions you need to validate, 3) common mistakes businesses make during customer validation, and 4) the customer validation process.  WHAT IS CUSTOMER VALIDATIONCustomer validation is the phase of the Customer Development model where you obtain hard evidence regarding the possible success of your business model. You cannot just assume that customers will buy your product â€" even if they tell you they might! Dealing in hypothetical scenarios does not help you affirm whether you have a solid business plan. This is why you must validate all of the information that you think you know.Customer validation proves whether your assumptions are correct before you spend too much money. This is essential for the process because it is what sets it apart from any other type of development model. According to Steve Blank, the reason that too many businesses fail is because they work based on their assumptions. Many businesses either do not know how to validate their knowledge or skip the process all together. If you do not validate your knowledge, you only push failure off into the future.Customer validation helps you avoid building a product that no one wants. This is because it forces you to get out of the building and talk to real customers. Talking to your friends, family, industry companions and employees is fine. But they are not thinking like your customers do. They all have a vested interest in your and your business and want to see it succeed. So naturally, they do think that you have a great product.Your friends, family and acquaintances may not actually be members of your target market. Asking their opinion is hazardous because if they think that your idea is not worth much this can be damaging to your confidence. If they are not natural customers of yours, they have no idea how much your idea is worth because you’re not solving o ne of their problems.For these reasons, it is essential to get out of the building. Directing your efforts at your target customer base is more effective for your learning than talking about your product with people who might not even have the problem your product solves.Another key benefit of the customer validation step is that it allows you to change your methods early. Iteration is key in this model and it is okay to get it wrong. Failing early is better for you because it gives you the opportunity to try again. If you fail before you have launched or shipped, you will have inevitably have spent far less money than you might have otherwise.Finally, customer validation tells you whether customers will really buy your product. Hearing customers say that they would buy your product is nice but it is ultimately meaningless. Your customers need to actually put their money where their mouth is for this sentiment to be worth anything.Learn more on customer validation by reading through this workshop notes.[slideshare id=31044803doc=customervalidationfinalplain-140210124144-phpapp02w=710h=500]WHAT YOU NEED TO VALIDATEKnowing what to validate is just as important as understanding the importance of customer validation. There are three essential things that you must validate during this process. However, it is important to remember to keep each of these things separate from each other.The first thing that you need to do is validate the market. It is important to determine your total market potential as well as the amount of that market that you may be able to reach. It is important to be realistic when validating your market because you need to make sure that the market that you serve is large enough and that there will be people willing to buy your product.To learn more about your market, you can use several different tools. First, you might consider using industry reports for your industry as a whole to get a sense of the broader market. You can also use free tools like Google Trends to evaluate your market over time. You can also do a comparison of the traffic of competitor’s websites to figure out how many people are currently active in your market.You should avoid market forecasts during the validation process. Many forecasts are based on assumptions. In the validation process, you are trying to avoid assumptions in favor of hard data.You also need to validate the problem. The problem is at the heart of the validation process because potential customers would come to you to solve their problem. Solving a problem that is important to your market is what the success of your business is all about.Validating the problem means that you need to make sure that the problem is real. It requires you to go out and speak to potential customers about this problem. When you ask customers the right questions about their problems, they will provide you with a wealth of information. At this stage, some of the most important information that you can take away from speaking to customers is what their problem really is and how important solving this problem is to them. This will also help validate your market.Finally, you need to validate your product. This is the last thing that you should do because finding your market and solving a problem has less to do with your product and more to do with establishing the need for your product. When you are validating your product, you are trying to establish whether the product you offer complements the information that you learned when validating the market and the product.COMMON MISTAKE BUSINESSES MAKE DURING CUSTOMER VALIDATIONValidating your customers is not easy. It is not that the process itself is complicated. Interviewing your customers with good questions is simple if you know what to look for. The hard part of customer validation is the fact that you must accept that you might be wrong. Clinging too tightly to assumptions causes people to make mistakes during the customer validation p rocess. These mistakes can actually make all of the new information worthless to the business. This is because these mistakes will ultimately lead to the business missing out on truly valuable information.The biggest mistake that a business makes during customer validation is when they think they know their target market. When a business thinks they know what is going on out in the real world, they are less likely to prioritize proving it. There is nothing wrong with going after hard evidence to prove your assumptions. If you are correct, there is no harm in proving it.Another mistake that people make is that they take people’s opinions on the product as gold. Friends, family, colleagues and even customers are happy to tell you that you have a great product most of the time. This is exactly what a business wants to hear. Too often, customer validation stops when this answer is given. But this is not credible evidence that validates your customer base. There is a difference between a customer who thinks you have a great product and a customer who would buy your product. In order for a customer to buy your product, it has to solve a problem that is important to them.Finally, too many businesses are afraid of changing their products. Whether the product is too close their heart or they are just afraid of rejection, it can be hard for businesses to hear that their product does not quite measure up. To avoid being rejected by strangers, businesses try hard to ask only the questions that they already know the answers to. This is because they want to protect themselves from disappointment or embarrassment.Unfortunately, there’s no room for fear in customer validation. If you go out to validate your market and you are afraid of what they are going to tell you, you will naturally try to protect yourself and your business. This is incredibly common and many businesses are guilty of it. But in order for customer validation to work, you need to be comfortable with the possibility that you are wrong.Being wrong is perfectly fine. No one is right all the time. It is better to be wrong before you’ve spent all your money on a product that nobody wants. At least then you have a chance to start again.THE CUSTOMER VALIDATION PROCESSOnce you understand the importance of customer validation, the methods that you use to make the process work will begin to make more sense. Using a methodology for the customer validation process is essential because without a plan, you cannot measure your results. Your data is worthless if you can’t examine the context in which you obtained it. You might consider using the following process when you are going through customer validation.HypothesisYour hypothesis is a summary of everything that you assume about your market, their problem and your solution.You might take Coke Zero’s hypothesis as an example. Coke Zero sees its target market as men between the ages of 18 and 25. They believe the problem that this market has is that they want to cut calories but they don’t want to drink Diet Coke for various reasons like taste and the “diet” label. The solution to this problem is a new product: Coke Zero. Coke Zero offers a low calorie product with a different taste and brand association than Diet Coke has.What Coca Cola should do in this case is develop questions targeted to these customers regarding this problem. They could then return to the hypothesis for comparison later to see whether or not they were right about their assumptions.ChannelsYou need to figure out the channels that you will use to reach your customers. These may be paid or free channels. However, you should not consider big advertising strategies yet. You are looking for customers who are looking for you.Coke Zero is designed for male millennials. Coca Cola had the budget to take its new product right to the customer. As a result, Coke Zero used cross-channel marketing to create engagement with customers. Coke Zero also foc used heavily on getting out of the building by showing up at rock concerts, college sports games and other places where they were likely to find their target market. They took the opportunity to arrange taste tests at these events but also gather large amounts of data from potential customers.Of course, Coca Cola has a budget that is equivalent to the GDP of a small country. Therefore, they have a lot of channels available to them even in the product launch phase. But this is a good example of ways that you can use certain channels, or a combination of channels to get right to where your potential customers live.Sell to Early Customers and Product EvangelistsEarly customers will be validating everything you think you know about your business model by spending their money with you. They will also be validating your unique selling proposition.Your early customers can become your product evangelists if you are solving their problems well. However, in order for them to become product ev angelists, you need to give them the tools to help you sell your product for you. Many of those tools will be set up online.There are few things that you need to have set up online to help your early adopters spread the word about your product. All of these should be built into your product website:You need a landing page for your product. Your landing page is where you can really excite potential customers. You can also include a demo of the product. Of course, you also need a strong call-to-action to convert your traffic into real customers.You also need a price page. It is important to forget about the sales advice that you heard about putting price off until the last moment. Online customers want transparency and this includes adding a breakdown of how much your product costs.Do not just include a pricing page and leave it at that. This works for companies like Apple but few businesses will ever have this kind of luxury. You will want to soften the blow for new buyers by offerin g free trials, guarantees or even discounts.Avoid giving your products away for free. Giving away free products only works well for social media companies like Spotify where the number of users they have is more important than revenue. Besides, the point of the customer validation phase is to prove that people will buy your product, not accept it when you give it away for free.Finally, you need a sign up page to convert traffic into to potential customers. This needs to be relatively painless and include very few steps. It is a good idea to set up your registration page to be compatible with Facebook or Google+ (to capture Gmail accounts). This allows customers to register with the click of a button.Your sign up page is a valuable tool. Some of your market may not be ready to dive in immediately but that does not mean that they are not valuable. When they become more familiar with your name through association, they will remember that they discovered your business early. This will a dd legitimacy that will influence purchasing decisions significantly.Increase Your SpendingIf your initial sales are successful, you can also begin loosen up your wallet at this point. Once you know that your market is real and their problems are important to them, it is okay to begin to push sales and marketing further. Customer acquisition costs money and it is okay to spend money here once youve validated your key assumptions.However, this is not yet the step where you begin growing your business. Increasing your burn rate to the scale of company building is not yet relevant here because you have not optimized your process. Ramping up your marketing and sales efforts is great at this step. But do not start looking for new office space in New York, London and Sydney just yet.OptimizeYou have learned a lot about your customers and your product by this point. You need to take this information and learn from it to make your product and methods better than ever. Even if it is measured and analyzed, customer data is useless if you don’t learn from it! Take what you’ve learned thus far and make changes or corrections to your strategies.IterateIteration is key in both the customer validation process and the Customer Development model as a whole. Optimizing your product for the wider market will usually take several iterations.Iteration is good and does not just take place while the product is being developed. You will need to make changes as your market grows and changes. You can even hold on to old models to see if they work somewhere down the line, even if they don’t work right now.CONCLUSIONCustomer validation is an essential step for the Customer Development model. However, it will be useless if you do not approach it with an open and inquisitive mind. The methods, money and efforts used to gain valuable customer insight will be useless if you still believe that you know what is best for your customers. This is a valuable time to learn from the most impor tant people in your business: your customers. Remember that you might have a great product but if you do not have any customers, you do not have a business.

The Yellow Wallpaper An Essay by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The following is the complete text of the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, originally published in May 1892, in  The New England Magazine. Included are some questions for analyzing the story. Questions for Thinking About The Short Story Included Below Why is this usually considered a feminist story?  (What Is Feminism?)What rights did the main character have or not have? What choices were available to her? (What Are Womens Rights?)How does this treatment of womens rights compare to Mary Wollstonecrafts writings about womens rights?  (Mary Wollstonecraft - What Rights?)  How do each of them treat their experience in relationship to the purpose of their writings? (Mary Wollstonecraft: Grounded in Experience)What was the likelihood at the time that the main character would find a physician who was a woman, and shared womens experience?What do we know about Charlotte Perkins life and her words on related issues? (Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes | Biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman)Why do you think she wrote the story?  How does this compare to her own published reasons? (Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper)Could she have made her points better by writing a nonfiction essay? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity--but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and PERHAPS--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)--PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency--what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus--but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden--large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them. There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I dont care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window. I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. Im sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself--before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. I dont like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another. He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more. He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear, said he, and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time. So we took the nursery at the top of the house. It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint and paper look as if a boys school had used it. It is stripped off--the paper--in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away,--he hates to have me write a word. We have been here two weeks, and I havent felt like writing before, since that first day. I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him. Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able,--to dress and entertain, and other things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous. I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper! At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on. You know the place is doing you good, he said, and really, dear, I dont care to renovate the house just for a three months rental. Then do let us go downstairs, I said, there are such pretty rooms there. Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain. But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things. It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. Im really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try. It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now. I wish I could get well faster. But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it KNEW what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didnt match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other. I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store. I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here. The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother--they must have had perseverance as well as hatred. Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. But I dont mind it a bit--only the paper. There comes Johns sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick! But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows. There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isnt faded and where the sun is just so--I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. Theres sister on the stairs! Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week. Of course I didnt do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now. But it tired me all the same. John says if I dont pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I dont want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far. I dont feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and Im getting dreadfully fretful and querulous. I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I dont when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone. And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to. So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal. Im getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper. It dwells in my mind so! I lie here on this great immovable bed--it is nailed down, I believe--and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, well say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion. I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of. It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise. Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes--a kind of debased Romanesque with delirium tremens--go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity. But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase. The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction. They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion. There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,--the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess. I dont know why I should write this. I dont want to. I dont feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way--it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much. John says I musnt lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat. Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasnt able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose. And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well. He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me. Theres one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper. If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldnt have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds. I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see. Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I dont like it a bit. I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here! It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so. But I tried it last night. It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does. I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another. John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID move, and when I came back John was awake. What is it, little girl? he said. Dont go walking about like that--youll get cold. I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away. Why darling! said he, our lease will be up in three weeks, and I cant see how to leave before. The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you. I dont weigh a bit more, said I, nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away! Bless her little heart! said he with a big hug, she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now lets improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning! And you wont go away? I asked gloomily. Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better! Better in body perhaps-- I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. My darling, said he, I beg of you, for my sake and for our childs sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so? So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasnt, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately. On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions--why, that is something like it. That is, sometimes! There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself,and that is that it changes as the light changes. When the sun shoots in through the east window--I always watch for that first long, straight ray--it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it. That is why I watch it always. By moonlight--the moon shines in all night when there is a moon--I wouldnt know it was the same paper. At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. I didnt realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour. I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can. Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I dont sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I dont tell them Im awake--O no! The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John. He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look. It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the paper! I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and Ive caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once. She didnt know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper--she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry--asked me why I should frighten her so! Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and Johns, and she wished we would be more careful! Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself! Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was. John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper--he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away. I dont want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough. Im feeling ever so much better! I dont sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime. In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw--not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper--the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it--there is that smell! Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad--at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house--to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell. There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round--round and round and round--it makes me dizzy! I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad. I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And Ill tell you why--privately--Ive seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I dont blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I cant do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer now, that I dont want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I dont want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself. I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a time. And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind. If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little. I have found out another funny thing, but I shant tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much. There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I dont like the look in his eyes. And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give. She said I slept a good deal in the daytime. John knows I dont sleep very well at night, for all Im so quiet! He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldnt see through him! Still, I dont wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months. It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it. Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and wont be out until this evening. Jennie wanted to sleep with me--the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone. That was clever, for really I wasnt alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper. A strip about as high as my head and half around the room. And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day! We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before. Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing. She laughed and said she wouldnt mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired. How she betrayed herself that time! But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me--not ALIVE! She tried to get me out of the room--it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner--I would call when I woke. So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it. We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow. I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here! This bedstead is fairly gnawed! But I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I dont want to go out, and I dont want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him. Ive got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her! But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on! This bed will NOT move! I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner--but it hurt my teeth. Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldnt do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued. I dont like to LOOK out of the windows even--there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you dont get ME out in the road there! I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I dont want to go outside. I wont, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way. Why theres John at the door! It is no use, young man, you cant open it! How he does call and pound! Now hes crying for an axe. It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door! John dear! said I in the gentlest voice, the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf! That silenced him for a few moments. Then he said--very quietly indeed, Open the door, my darling! I cant, said I. The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf! And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door. What is the matter? he cried. For Gods sake, what are you doing! I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. Ive got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back! Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! Find more works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Charlotte Perkins GilmanCharlotte Perkins Gilman QuotesSome Poems of Charlotte Perkins GilmanHerlandWomen and EconomicsFor Birth ControlWe As Women Find womens history biographies, by name: A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M  |  N  |  O  |  P/Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U/V  |  W  |  X/Y/Z