TL;DR Product discovery means ensuring alignment between your product and its users. It involves understanding the user's real needs and testing to find the right solution by exploring and validating how users use a product. Product discovery should be the very first step in your product development process. It includes user research, strategy, and prototyping with continuous improvement. With proper product discovery, product teams ensure they are developing and delivering the right and most impactful features; resulting in a successful product delivery and a great user experience.
Product discovery is understanding the users’ needs (or pain points) and testing to find the right solution. It can be broken up into two main parts: exploration and validation. The exploration phase of product discovery focuses on the problem at hand, whereas the validation phase of product discovery focuses on the solution.
Product discovery is essential because it allows product teams to provide a tailored response to the users’ needs. This is due to the in-depth knowledge product managers have of customer feedback, suggestions, and difficulties. Taking these issues on board is forming a strong connection and helps providing effective solutions in the product discovery process.
In terms of efficiency, product discovery also helps to create a more effective workflow. Why? This methodology creates a common goal and a way for product teams, product managers, UX researchers, engineers, customer success managers, and other team members to work seamlessly together.
Product discovery also ensures that the product development has a purpose. Creating a product or feature that is not aligned with customer feedback can be draining. On the flip side, the gratification from developing something that helps many people make product teams feel motivated and inspires dedication for successful product delivery.
A study of the well-known Nielson Norman Group on product discovery revealed the following:
Proper product discovery can decrease the risk of failure by 75% (4 vs. 16 failures).
Projects including product discovery are 59% more likely to be successful. (83 vs. 52 successes)
The importance of product discovery: projects become more successful with proper product discovery.
During the exploration phase, the product team engages in customer research, ideates on potential opportunities, and evaluates which opportunities are priority. During validation, a prototype is being generated, tested, and conclusions made based on what has been learned about the customer feedback during testing. This sets the baseline for excellent product development.
The process of product discovery consists of two phases: exploration & validation.
Different product teams have their own product discovery process. Some have more steps, some have less. The order of those steps in product discovery also varies sometimes. Here are the aspects that a product manager should always consider essential in any product discovery process:
User Research and customer feedback
Strategy and Prioritization
Prototype and Validation
The user is central in product discovery and product management in general. One of the first steps should be to learn as much as possible about the users’ needs and wants. A significant amount of time should be spent on customer feedback in the product discovery process.
While it can be helpful to have a more focused idea about what the product should do before embarking on this step, the approach should also be as broad as possible. If there are too many preconceived notions, it might get overlooked what the customer's real issues are.
There are a plethora of specialized tools for user research. In essence, product teams need to interview customers, send out surveys, create journey maps, and, above all, build a close relationship with users.
Before, during, and after user research, it is necessary to reflect on the product strategy. This is thinking about how to achieve the vision for the product development. What’s more, it is needed to use the information gathered from customers feedback. In doing so, it will be necessary to converge on specific concepts and designate some priorities.
During the user research step, a lot of information is obtained from customers. This means it must be considered which issues are a priority. As product managers, prioritization not only occurs regarding the problems to be solved but also in terms of the solutions.
Once a clearer idea of what problems we want to solve has been formed in the product discovery process, product teams must be allowed free rein to brainstorm various solutions. From these solutions, the product team needs to apply the strategy and priorities to narrow down this list. Eventually, the product team can create a minimum viable product (MVP) — a first approach to solving the customers’ needs.
Creating an MVP (also called a mockup or a prototype) is only one part of product discovery. Product managers also need to spend significant time testing this MVP with customers to confirm that it indeed solves the problem and to gain valuable insights.
The aspects detailed above will be continuously reviewed to make the most of the product discovery efforts. Customer research not only occurs before the solution, but it also happens once a prototype is developed and product teams need to test it. A product roadmap can be created before researching, but it may need to be modified in light of the information obtained from users.
The pillars of continuous product discovery.
Other steps can be considered in product discovery, but these can all be regarded as subtasks of the three we detail above. These include product analysis, market research, KPI analysis, and interaction mapping.
The Double Diamond Process is closely related to product discovery. This model or framework has its roots in industrial design. However, product teams have increasingly used it in the last few years to enhance their product development process. There are four main steps.
Discovery: examining user needs
Definition: a clear description of the project
Development: exploring multiple solutions
Delivery: selecting a final solution
The Double Diamond process is a framework often used in product discovery.
In the Double Diamond framework, there are phases of convergence and divergence. During a phase of divergence, product management considers all possible options, whereas, during a phase of convergence, the ideas are narrowed down on the table.
Ideally, product discovery shouldn’t be considered a one-off stage of the product development process. Instead, the information related to the exploration phase should be gathered throughout the product's lifetime and should continuously shape the product roadmap.
Nowadays, it may not be possible to consider digital products, such as software, as being finished. These products undergo numerous modifications and are in continuous evolution.
Since the growth of digital products is continuous, digital product discovery should, therefore, follow suit. This is why it is often spoken of as the methodology or tool of continuous product discovery.
Always remember that as the expertise in the product grows, the curse of knowledge should be avoided. This is when a team or person's expertise negatively affects what they do. For example, if you know a lot about a topic, you may omit specific details when teaching people who know less than you do. Continuous product discovery ensures that our decisions consistently align with customer needs.
Product discovery has to be done to have a clear vision of the product being developed and determine precise objectives for different teams. While product discovery should ideally be done throughout the product’s lifetime, there are various situations in which product discovery becomes pivotal.
Working on a new product:
by correctly identifying user needs, it is possible to design the product appropriately.
Releasing an update:
developing new features that aren’t helpful for customers is neither beneficial to the user nor the business.
Launching in a different locale:
commercializing a product in a different region or country makes product discovery critical to adapt to new potential client needs appropriately and to know about the competition.
After deciding on critical steps in the product discovery process and reflecting on pertinent questions, the focus is on more specific product discovery techniques. These techniques for product discovery include:
user interviews,
usability tests,
A/B tests,
assumption tests,
customer journey mapping,
experience mapping,
opportunity solution trees,
impact mapping.
Regardless of the technique used, product teams must have clear outcomes for the product discovery process.
Product teams asking the right questions related to product discovery, can refine the process and determine the appropriate techniques. Since there are many variables and issues that will impact the product discovery process, it’s helpful to place questions in different categories. Below, you will find some examples of different product discovery questions and where you can start the research.
| Category | Product Discovery Questions | Where to find the answer |
|---|---|---|
| Industry Developments | Are there any important technical shifts? Are new regulations making waves? Are there certain social trends that have an impact? | Trade Shows, Online communities (e.g. LinkedIn), Conferences |
| Competition | Are big players launching new features? Are there any new startups to keep an eye on? | Websites, Job Postings, Catalogs |
| Internal Change | Has the business model changed? What about the marketing strategy? Budgets? | All-Hands Meetings, Management, Team-Meetings |
Tools for Product Discovery play a crucial role in facilitating the process of ideation, validation, and decision-making throughout the product development lifecycle. From user research tools like surveys, interviews, and usability testing platforms to prototyping tools such as wireframing software and mockup tools, a diverse array of resources exists to support product teams in gathering insights, validating ideas, and iterating on solutions.
Additionally, data analytics tools, customer feedback platforms, and collaborative workspace tools enhance communication, data-driven decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration within product teams. By leveraging these tools effectively, product managers can streamline their discovery process, mitigate risks, and ultimately build products that resonate with their target audience.
Productlane focuses on closing the feedback loop with your users and customers. This makes it easy to assess user feedback from different sources like Slack, email, and video calls and, therefore, different teams, such as customer success managers, sales, and product teams. All the gathered insights will be stored in a searchable research repository, where you can even link Linear issues and make the feedback and future roadmap for features available to all stakeholders and even your teams.
While unquestionably vital for product development, the product discovery process - outcome, opportunity, and solution - is not an easy task and can be pretty challenging. It involves navigating the complex landscape of user needs, feature prioritization, and more, which can quickly overwhelm product managers and their teams. Plus, it is an ongoing journey. Fortunately, there are a few product discovery activities that teams can easily focus on to make their discovery run more smoothly:
User interviews are a crucial element of product discovery. With that, a product manager can better understand their customers' pain points by getting their feedback and creating solutions.
The opportunity space is ever-evolving, influenced by new competitors, technological advancements, and code releases. Regular customer interviews will, therefore, help teams stay attuned to these changes.
If you want to know more about user interviews, check out this article that will show you how to conduct user interviews best.
Assumption testing plays another pivotal role in the product development process. Rather than relying on extensive project research that may involve significant upfront work, your team can also employ rapid assumption tests to assess different solutions quickly. These assumptions usually fall into five categories: desirable, viable, feasible, usable, and ethical.
Story mapping, for instance, can be a valuable tool for product managers to uncover these assumptions across all categories. Data collected from assumption tests enables your team to compare and contrast different solutions effectively.
Throughout product discovery, product managers should also be able to determine which feature idea is most important to users and which ones will provide the most value. They should leverage tools like opportunity solution trees to prioritize features that directly address user needs and pain points. Plus, you should adapt to changing user feedback and market conditions by regularly revisiting and adjusting your product priorities.
Aligning your product roadmap with user personas and their primary objectives is also essential. Simply as it sounds, set clear monthly, quarterly, and annual roadmaps to align with your business goals and allow flexibility for unexpected work. Some teams also adopt n-week cycles to establish a healthy routine, enabling the completion of significant features without overwhelming teams.
Last but not least, effective product discovery involves collaboration between different teams, including product, design, engineering, and marketing. Cross-functional collaboration is, therefore, essential for creating a successful product.
For such collaborations, make sure to foster open communication. Teams should communicate openly and frequently to ensure everyone is aligned on the product's goals and objectives. Product teams should also encourage ownership and experimentation and be willing to take risks.
And try to celebrate your wins as well: lots of companies create changelogs where they can shout about their achievements in product delivery as a team.
You’ve got it: Product discovery is a continuous process involving efforts from everyone in the product team, and it is crucial for successful product delivery. It should be THE very first stage of the product development cycle because it helps your product team understand their users' needs so they can build products or features that add value. Of course, it requires a lot of research, commitment, time, and money. But, with practices such as user interviews, prioritization, and consistent collaboration, the benefits of following the discovery product process are significant: you can increase your customer satisfaction, reduce product development costs, and eventually increase revenue.
Moreover, at Productlane, we are committed to helping you through the product discovery journey. As we have highlighted, it can get complex, but there should be tools to help you through product discovery and make it easier for everyone on the product team. We've built a product discovery platform with seamless integration with issue trackers, enabling you to track your user insights better. These features make Productlane a compelling choice for product teams seeking a more accessible and more collaborative research platform for successful product discovery.
To start a product discovery process, you have many possibilities. Regardless of the approach, you’ll need to do intense customer interviews, determine a product strategy, set priorities, develop a prototype, and test it.
We do product discovery to ensure that our product effectively responds to users’ needs and wants. In addition, it helps us create a more effective workflow and gives us the gratification of developing a valuable product.
Product discovery includes an exploration phase and a validation phase. The exploration phase can be broken up further into user research, ideation, and evaluation. As for the validation phase, we create a prototype (MVP = minimum viable product), test it, and then learn from the test results.
The overall goal of product discovery is to create a product or find a product idea that best responds to users’ needs and also drives business value.
Conducting user interviews is one of the most powerful tools for developing your product. Because it's simply the easiest way to understand what your product’s opportunities are, that is what your customers want or need but haven't got yet. However, it’s also a tricky approach as we’ve also realized ourselves that it can get quickly overwhelming to understand users.
Andrea Ramsbacher
Growth Manager
Before starting Productlane, we talked with countless companies like Stripe, Linear, Cron or Superhuman to find out their secrets behind building world-class products. Opinionated products that are powerful but feel very simple at the same time. All these companies had certain product discovery habits how to collect feedback, plan their product work and decide which features to build next. We identified many common patterns among them and implemented them into Productlane. So more companies can adopt these habits easily. We would like to share them in this article.
Raphael Fleckenstein
Co-founder & CEO
It’s a fact: getting feedback from customers is always a great way to improve your product. A simple “I like this feature a lot,” “Maybe you could change this,” or “I have not found that feature” can help you understand which problems they face in their daily lives and what potential solutions you could build. That’s why you should always try to get more customer feedback. But you'll ask: how should I do it? Which method should I apply to get more of it?
Andrea Ramsbacher
Growth Manager
