Product Discovery
A lightweight process to quickly validate the Value, Usability, and Technical & Business Feasibility of an idea before building it
Product Discovery Process
Engineers have used agile methodology to achieve predictability and success. Product teams can do the same with Product Discovery. It starts by creating a growth mindset and developing empathy for customers. It continues by learning and executing techniques to find valuable problems and validate potential solutions.
Embed
Take a hands-on approach by embedding into the customer environment
Listen
Have conversations to find underserved and undersolved problems
Learn
Analyze how customers currently accomplish their goals
Align
Ideate and organize solutions around customer problems and corporate objectives
Experiment. Iterate.
Conduct user testing experiments to validate the value of solutions. Revise. Retest.
Build. Reject.
Build successful ideas.
Reject invalidated solutions.
Product Discovery Mindset
Product Discovery makes Product teams think like business owners
Too often, leaders push Product teams to hit deadlines and reward them for delivering on time whether or not their efforts drive positive business outcomes.
To drive positive outcomes, a Product team’s effort must shift and expand
Usability → Value
Personas → Behavior
Solutions → Problems
Quantitative → Qualitative
Too Often, Ideas Go Straight to Delivery
Without user validation, ideas often miss the mark and waste engineering effort
Start Doing Product Discovery to Gather Evidence
Working with users early and often keeps product teams on track
Quickly Cycle Through Ideas to Find the Good Ones
In Product Discovery, the designer does the “coding” by rapidly prototyping user experiences
However, Inexperience Can Slow Teams Down
Inexperienced teams “go through the motions” and “get mixed results” from customers
