Ways of doing product discovery in every company may greatly differ. However, the principles of product discovery are applicable. Yes, in every business setting.
This is why this article will tell you more about the basic key principles of product discovery. May this help you build and develop your process effectively.
Do Not Fully Rely On Your Customers
Yes, we need our customers. Their preferences do a lot in our building. However, the full scope of building products does not fully rely on them.
One reason is that they don’t know the wide scope of possibilities. For instance, with the available technologies in place. Another thing is customers, do not know all the ‘possibles’. Unless it’s right in front of their eyes. This is why using prototypes and samples do a lot. Especially during your customer feedback sessions.
An example of this is the ‘iPhone’. This discovery would not happen if it were in focus groups. 3 and a half years were the time used for building this phone. At that time, the Palm released the Treo touchscreen but the customers dislike it. This is why the focus groups decided not to go for touch screens.
This happened with Motorola and Nokia. They did not go with touch screens. However, the Apple company pushed through the ‘possibilities’.
As you can see today, a lot of people of all sorts do use touchscreens. Apple never fails when it has a vision. To ‘build a touch screen powered phone’.
Certainly, this further helped other product discoveries to develop.
Focus On Building Value
This includes the value your products bring to the customers. If your customers see and test how valuable your product is. This gives you a good shot.
And this happens not until you make it happen.
User Experience Spells Success
Engineering in product discovery is exceptionally hard. But, reaching the best user experience is way harder. Thus, compete for this. Because although technology is indeed important in building. But, if it does not catch your customers on the hook. Then it is not that valuably successful. So, always aim for the best user experience possible.
There’s No Smooth Sailing In Discovery
Your team may be working hard round, but the customers still don’t like it. Even if that is the case, don’t lose heart.
In every product discovery, not every idea will be on blast. If it does not work today, then maybe with few more iterations it will work.
Moreover, do not fall for the ‘fall-in-love’ designing stage. But use less than 2 days for the design. This should be done before disclosing it to users.
So, how many iterations should be done? Likely, before jumping off to the next idea?
Consider the following:
- This mostly depends on the task importance
- It is also useful to ask oneself. If you are still learning in the process of iteration. If not, then you better skip the idea.
- Another is, you may try changing your team’s approach.
Certainly, there is a lot to learn in this field.
