It's really useful for those who have challenges typing (arthritis, disabilities etc..), perhaps not best for general audience as typing with auto complete is faster.
I used the same technique of having the keyboard layout away from the keys and moving to a different key layout. I'm currently using monkey type to train myself.
This. Have done this for my own and in some cases friends' potential startups: a fake door landing page and a couple hours of posting to discussion groups (don't spam, do it where communities allow) or a small Google ads advertising budget.
There's been a couple cases where that simple amount of initiative plus about a half day of work, the resulting feedback was enough of a push to overcome hesitations my friends' had in starting a company.
You’ll also need some kind of SEO to drive traffic to the page.
And if your project is in a niche area, then it probably not help at all.
I setup a landing page and in the last 6 months I’ve had less that 100 visits and no interactions with any of the call to actions; even with paid advertisements on linked in and google.
I thought about doing that, but it felt like false advertising and I didn't want to (a) piss people off, (b) underwhelm them, or (c) commit to getting the project ready for use by any specific date. Am I overthinking it?
Set an expectation that you plan to launch by some date and collect email id. If they are willing to share their email then that shows they are really interested.
My company in South East Asia has been doing this for years now, we are in ride hailing and food delivery business among others.
Why is it important?
It drives empathy. Testing in non-production environment can tell that the feature is working as expected but it can't tell what the delivery person goes through or what the customer experience is like.
Our policy is not one trip but one day of doing this.
Overall it drivers a deeper appreciation towards deliver agents.
Hi, I'm the author. Totally agree with you on this.
I do tend to focus on milestones first, because even if you're focusing on problems, using milestones to focus on what's next can sometimes be helpful. But if you can get to focusing on problems directly, that's even better.
For many organizations, there isn't the latitude to do so, so I've found this works within project-focused cultures better.