how to do product discovery

How To Do Product Discovery?

In this article, we will discuss how to do product discovery. We will also help you know the importance of this process to your company.

A Brief Introduction of Product Discovery

Product discovery is the process of refining your products. Also, it analyzes your customers’ problems. And, it sets out a plan on how to solve that.

According to Marty Cagan, it discovers whether there are real customers who want your product. Also, it discovers a solution that is usable, useful, and feasible.

Moreover, it identifies four product management risks:

  1. Value risk – if your customers buy or choose your product
  2. Usability risk – if your customers know how to use your product
  3. Feasibility risk – if your team can build your product
  4. Viability risk – if your product also works with other aspects of your company

So, How To Do Product Discovery?

Product discovery has two phases: problem and solution space.

Problem space helps you understand and define your customers’ needs and problems. On the other hand, solution space will help you identify how to provide a solution.

Let’s break down each phase one by one.

Product Discovery Initial Guide

  1. Note a problem or opportunity. These ideas can be your stakeholders’ thoughts. It can also be a reported situation by a client. Also, it can be your team’s suggestions.
  2. Give value to your products. Try to reduce the risk of giving an invaluable product to your audience. So whenever you make a product, question its value. 
  3. Test your assumptions. Talk to your customers. Talk to your team. Avoid making assumptions. If you made a successful product in the past, never assume that you can make it successful the second time. Thus, you should continue to improve your solutions.

Product Discovery Structure

Uncover your customers’ needs.

The process of product discovery begins with knowing your customers’ issues and needs. Also, during this stage, you will understand and define their concern.

Understand

Understand your customers’ underlying concerns that you want to solve with your product. You can use qualitative and quantitative research to get this data.

Also, other useful tools are:

  • focus groups
  • user research
  • interviews
  • analytics
  • empathic mapping

Define

After understanding their concerns, define them. You can do this by:

  1. Nailing down your problem
  2. Validating your problem
  3. Prioritizing what problem you should solve first

Moreover, by creating a framework, you’ll know which problem requires your attention. The tools for this framework are:

  • journey mapping
  • five why’s
  • SWOT analysis

Identify the product solution.

After determining your customers’ concerns, make attainable solutions. During this stage, it is best to follow the three steps.

  1. Ideas
  2. Prototype
  3. Test

Ideate

Plan on how to solve the problems. You can do team brainstorming. Moreover, you can also do mind mapping or storyboarding. Thus, you can create a prototype of your product.

Prototype

Bring your ideas to life by making a prototype. Additionally, you can present it by using sketches or mockups. Also, you can make clickable prototypes or MVPs.

Test

Test if your prototypes can solve the customers’ problem. These tools include interview surveys and beta testings.

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