Summary: (anon post) Use of "customer development process". We made people think we had a product in development, based on some photoshop screenshots. We changed the "product" based on what we found when were were talking to them. We iterated. We made people sign agreements to try the product. Our product is ugly and has few features.
Oddly enough, if you are not logged into Google at all, you can view Google Groups public content without hitting a login prompt. But if you are logged in to Google in another way -- perhaps in a stale way -- attempting to view public Groups content often triggers a login page, and there's no option to skip it. (Only by completely logging out elsewhere is the path cleared for non-logged-in access.)
A lesson that even at Google, single-sign-on is wonky.
Is it a great find? In many cases you can't really believe what you find on the cover of a world known news paper, written by an author every body can connect to a face. That's why you have to add other sources in science papers and serious journalism, too. And here we have a description of something without even having an author. What can you really learn from this mail?
It makes (some) people feel good by "validating" closely held beliefs ;-)
Seriously though, you are right. There is no specific data of any kind on the application/company/customers etc.
Without data, this is hardly a "case study". (The Bingo Card Creator addition of MixPanel - http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/tracking-with-mixpa... - is a much better "case study" of a subset of the "Customer Discovery" Idea , especially if there is a follow up).
Comparitively, the referenced post in the google group is very lightweight, with no concrete insights or data.
You'll see many such "experiences" in lists devoted to specific methodologies (agile/lean/scrum etc) Sounds like a "testimonial" invented by a marketing person (not saying this isn't true, just that there is no data and the post is very content lite, and so practically valueless)
Summary: (anon post) Use of "customer development process". We made people think we had a product in development, based on some photoshop screenshots. We changed the "product" based on what we found when were were talking to them. We iterated. We made people sign agreements to try the product. Our product is ugly and has few features.