4 Components of a Product Discovery Experiment
Product discovery is best conducted as a series of small experiments.
They should focus on your biggest risk: will anyone want to use it?
To effectively evaluate a concept, assemble these components and focus on confirming or rejecting its value.
Actual or Representative User
Recruit folks who are relevant to the problem or opportunity that your solution is focused on.
Focus on behaviors more than demographics.
Ensure that your full user panel is diverse with respect to gender, race and socioeconomic levels.
For business user recruiting, focus on the activities that a business user does more than their job title.
Example:
— Consumer
— Purchased a tablet in last 60 days
— Has used curbside delivery (from any company)
— Age > 25
— Employed
Right Mindset
Research shows that the correct participant mindset vastly improves answers’ quality. Try prompting with “Think back to a time when…” (inspired by a Teresa Torres talk), or “When you…”
When the user reflects on a real moment, they are mentally closer to the activity, their mindset when performing it, and their emotional state. Their answers will be grounded in their actual experience.
Avoid using phrases like “Imagine that…” because they may encourage your participants to put themselves in a hypothetical situation, make things up, or rely on hearsay.
Example:
— “Think back to a time when you purchased/upgraded a new phone/tablet...Have you done that in the previous 60 days? Please describe that time to me in a few sentences.”
Best Effort Content
Use good content in your prototypes. Prototype content should similar to a launched product. (But don’t get blocked making it perfect).
It puts users in the right mindset and helps them focus on the question/task at hand. Boilerplate or placeholder content is distracting, setting up participants to lose focus and momentum.
Write content and supply relevant image assets yourself.
There’s no need to wait for a content writer or for images from Marketing. Moving fast is important and sourcing your own content improves your thinking. You may get better content from specialized folks, but it’s rarely worth the wait.
High Fidelity Prototype
High fidelity prototypes keep the user in the right mindset; avoid paper prototypes.
It’s easy to create realistic prototypes quickly using tools like Figma and a screenshot/lightweight image editor tool like SnagIt.
Examples:
— Multi step clickable prototype
— Micro prototypes like a push msg on a lock screen
— Different variations of a Sales presentation
— API documentation (for testing with API developers)
— Fake report or analysis document
* Significant contributions to this article were made by Noam Livnat.
Jim knows how to build and scale successful products.
He co-founded PowerReviews which grew to 1,200+ clients and sold for $168 million. He product-managed and architected one of the first ecommerce engines at online retailer Fogdog.com which had a $450 million IPO.
These days, he coaches Product teams and leaders at startups and corporations to use Product Discovery to validate and test their ideas before building them. He’s created a custom curriculum and training program that pulls from his 25 years of experience and the best minds in Product Management. He graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science.
Jim is based in San Francisco and helps clients engage their customers to test and validate ideas in ecommerce, machine learning, reporting/analysis, API development, computer vision, online payments, digital health, marketplaces, and more.
