Product discovery is the most challenging yet essential phase of the development of a product. With the continuous increase of competitiveness in the technology market, contact with clients became more frequent and crucial to hear their needs to develop a product that will stand out in the market. We can say that communication is at the heart of successful product discovery.

It is especially important to use product discovery if you are developing a product or upgrading an existing one since it maximizes your chances of producing a commercially successful product. Its main goal is to guarantee the creation of a useful, viable, and worthy product capable of reaching clients and their necessities.

Why Product Discovery?

Cultivating a deeper understanding of customers helps teams create products that customers want and need. That is when Product Discovery comes into the picture. Product discovery helps a company refine its ideas by profoundly understanding real user problems and finding the best solutions to solve them.

Product discovery helps build vital products for customers since it plays a key role in helping teams decide which features or products to prioritize and build a product that will be successful. The main goal is to investigate information, opportunities, and solutions that are valuable for your target audience while being viable for your company. It answers four main questions in terms of value, usability, execution, and feasibility:

– Value: will the customer buy or choose to use this solution?

– Usability: will the customer understand how to use this solution?

– Execution: do we have the capacity to build this solution?

– Feasibility: does this solution work for our business?

Product discovery brings several benefits to your company while developing a product. First, it is cost-effective since it prevents the waste of money and valuable resources by pursuing the wrong ideas and developing products that do not satisfy users. Thus, the time dedicated to the development strategy minimizes the risks of failure and it allows to release the final product to consumers faster.

The key steps to Product Discovery

Alignment

The alignment stage is vital for the strategic vision of the business. In this first step of product discovery, you should take the time to know and understand your company at all levels. This stage is particularly important to ensure transparency among teams by aligning expectations, understanding the product and the processes, and defining priorities and objectives. It is the moment for the client to express his expectations and problems, while the developing team focuses on defining the critical problem and suggesting possible solutions.

Research

The research stage consists of an investigation based on quantitative and qualitative data about users. It is time to dive into the implications of the product, studying it from both the company’s and the client’s perspective. This stage focuses on User Experience Research by talking to users and understanding their needs and expectations of the product, so the team can gather numbers that can identify what the users’ problems are. After the discovery team understands the problems and intentions of potential customers, they can point out the priorities for the next steps.

Ideation

Once you have a strong sense of user problems you can start thinking about solutions. The ideation process is the phase of brainstorming and developing of a concept and solution. It consists in raising the maximum number of possible hypotheses for the creation of the product or functionality. Creativity is key in this process to gather as many ideas as possible.

Validation

The validation stage allows the team to discover the user’s perception about what was initially idealized and prioritized in the early stages of product discovery. Validating ideas internally may involve consulting with different stakeholders to determine the usability, feasibility, or technical solutions, but is also important to validate ideas with current or potential users. It involves the validation of the idea and the creation of a prototype as close as possible to the final version of the product.

Refinement

If the feedbacks from the previous stages are positive, the team may move on to the refinement stage. It is the final transition to what will be the final delivery of the product. To compensate for possible discrepancies between how users respond to a product idea and how they experience the product, you should test it by using prototypes. The team will define the product overview and create continuous solutions and improvements.

Developing a product is not an easy task. If you are searching for a high-skilled IT team to give you a hand on your project, we are here to help!