What is Product Discovery and Why Does It Matter?

In today’s modern, fast-paced, and competitive business world, creating a product is not a piece of cake. When you want to create and launch your product; how do you know if YOUR PRODUCT is right? Not only that, when you go deeper, many questions come to your mind like:

• Why do you create this PRODUCT?
• Are you creating a RIGHT PRODUCT?
• Will your PRODUCT be a WISE decision or a DISASTER?
• Will this PRODUCT fulfill your CUSTOMER NEEDS?

Strange! These queries are just normal points that everyone thinks and do you know the answer to these questions? It is in just two words — PRODUCT DISCOVERY — a common and mostly used term in the Product world.

Product Discover: The Key To Building Solutions To Successful Product

Product Discovery — You might think that this is the initial stage of product development as most folks think. But, if I say it's not true. Yes! It isn't.

Essentially, discovery is based on two factors: one, as you already know — an initial discovery phase. The second is continuous discovery — a discovery that remains throughout the product development lifecycle. Let's take product discovery as the initial discovery and we will go deeper into continuous discovery later.

Product Discovery is the initial and most important stage in product development. It helps businesses to understand customer needs, validate ideas, identify market gaps, and reduce the risk of failure. Discovery not only guides the way you build your product but also enables you to decide whether it’s worth building. Product discovery reflects every decision you make throughout the product development process.

As you know, PRODUCT DISCOVERY is the key to opening the doors of product development. Therefore, I created a simple roadmap for you. So, dear readers, you can understand the discovery process easily and quickly.

The Main Takeaways.

• What is Product Discovery?
  • Product Discovery: Proving that the Problem exists.
• Why is Product Discovery Important?
• Product Discovery Process: Step-by-Step Framework.
• Who is responsible for the Discovery?
• Product Discovery Benefits.
• Consequences of Skipping Product Discovery.
• Best Product Discovery tools for SAAS.
• How does Biz of Dev help teams improve their discovery process?

What is Product Discovery?

Product discovery is the initial phase and process of identifying, validating, and refining ideas for a new product before significant time and resources are invested in development. It helps you to understand user problems and needs and then test your solution ideas. This initial phase involves various research, experiments, and collaboration between cross-functional teams — including:

• Product Manager
• Product designers
• Product developers
• Stakeholders.

Product Discover: Proving that the Problem exists.

Product discovery allows you to examine whether the problem you want to solve exists for your potential customers. Let's prove that the problem exists and you can solve it!

Ask yourself:

• Is the given problem worth solving?
• Will your solution work?
• Is your solution better than anything else out there?

If your answer to any of these questions is NO then you need to refine your idea by follow the following rule:

Product discovery involves continuous testing and collecting customer feedback. It enables you to explore the uncertainties behind your idea and allows you to solve problems. It helps you answer key questions such as:

• What problem you are solving — Identifying problems you can solve with your product.
• Who are you solving it for — Identify your visions and goals you'll achieve.
• How can you solve this problem — Like documenting everything, so you can execute the solution faster.
• Does this solution help your target audience — Figuring out the right solutions for your audience?
• How can you deliver this solution effectively — Analyzing all aspects of the market.

Why Does Product Discovery Matter?

Product discovery plays an essential role in the product or project's success for various reasons.

User-Centric Approach

Product discovery is about understanding and addressing customers' needs. Conducting in-depth UX research and involving users in the process ensures that teams can design products that resonate with the audience. This approach increases the chances of creating products that customers will love and find valuable.

Reducing Risks

The biggest challenge in the product world is, Building the product that nobody wants. Discovery helps you to minimize this risk and materialize five essential risks:

• Value Risk — Identifies that this given idea truly creates value for users.
• Usability Risk — Will customers figure out how to use it?
• Viability Risk — Can your business support it?
• Feasibility Risk — Can you build it with your current technology?
• Ethical Risk — Should you build it or not? Are there ethical considerations?

By exploring these points in the initial phase, you will avoid dead-end ideas. Additionally, you will validate your ideas early and ensure that your products solve real problems for real users. Not only that, discovery also reduces the chances of wasting resources and time on building failed products.

Market Relevance

By analyzing market and competitive research, product teams stay up-to-date with market trends and user needs. This ensures that products remain relevant in an ever-changing business environment.

Efficient Resource Allocation

Discovery enables teams to prioritize features and solutions based on their impact and feasibility. This allows teams to allocate resources efficiently and develop the most valuable feature first. Additionally, the discovery also reveals whether the product is impractical or unnecessary or not. This helps you save time and money.

Aligns Team and Stakeholders

Product discovery's collaborative nature ensures that — from developer to executive — all are on the same page. This alignment ensures smooth execution and fulfills organizational goals.

Encourage Innovation

Discovery encourages teams to find innovative ideas and solutions to solve user problems. This enables the team to develop unique, creative, and competitive products.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Involving users in the discovery process helps you to get valuable insights into their needs and preferences. Doing so enables teams to design products that increase customer delight and loyalty.

Reduce Cost and Save Time

Developing products without proper discovery can be a waste of money and time. Doing proper research and identifying potential issues early can help you reduce rework costs. Additionally, it saves you time and ensures that your efforts are focused on the right solutions and features.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Product discovery helps teams make data-driven decisions using user feedback and market data. These key metrics guide teams on feature development and product improvements. Well-defined user research helps create agreed-upon priorities and a clear roadmap of planned activities.

Continuous Improvement

Discovery is not a one-time thing. It involves two ways: initial discovery and continuous discovery. Initial discovery is the first stage of discovery. While continuous discovery is involved throughout the product's lifecycle. Continuous improvement allows you to adapt to changing circumstances, collect new insights, and make improvements as required. It enables your product to stay valuable and competitive.

Product Discovery Process: Step-by-Step Framework

Product Discovery — You may hear this process go by different names or divisions. However, the overall structure remains the same that most product teams use at startup. The framework for discovery is according to your projects. While the time frame for the product development depends on your methodology or product strategy. So, it is essential to understand and internalize it. Here we'll cover the specific discovery process for various situations and teams.

1. Define Strategies: Know Your Why

An essential and mostly used stage in which you ask questions from yourself. You also make sure that the discovered product strategy fits with your business goals or not. It is like:

• Why are you building this product?
• Why do you choose this product from so many options?
• Why do your targeted customers choose your product?
• What is this product's purpose?
• What do you want to achieve?

In short, defining strategy is important for you and your company's goals. At this stage, you are mostly familiar with your ideas and solutions and also try to refine them further for accurate results. As a product manager, you need to carefully define the whole strategy before the development process starts.

2. Identifying Possible Solutions: Learn About Users and Understand Their Needs

Now it's time to do overall research and learn about your users and their needs. Identify your user's problems and work on their solutions. Identify various areas like:

• Who are your target users?
• What problem does he/she have?
• How can you solve them?

Before diving into your product roadmap or trying to solve the problem from your end, spend your time communicating with your users. This practice helps you to focus on your user's actual problem. You can learn about your users and understand their needs as:

• Conduct qualitative user research: Surveys, interviews, focus groups, and reading user feedback.
• Conduct quantitative user research such as your assumptions. For example users' percentage work on mobile vs. tablets vs. desktops etc.
• Organize user stories into themes.
• Create user journey maps.
• Create user personas.

3. Decide Your Limits: Your Time, Money, and Resources

There are a lot of things that are limitless in the product world such as potential, innovations, and opportunities. However, your time, money, and resources are limited. Decide your,

• Time from 0 to 1 means your product is from building to successfully launching.
• Your budget for the product.
• Resources you have and will use.

It is best practice that you sit down with people from different areas for product development and go through the hard limits. Such as designers, developers, and marketers. Decide whether it is a launch date or resource allocation. All team members need to know what they have got to work with.

4. Identify the Risks: What Should You Do and What Don't

Everything can happen in the product world — Your product can be a success or a big DISASTER. So you need to be prepared for anything. Identify all possible risks with your team and how you can handle them. Separate your concerns into two categories:

• Things you can control — outline the steps to prevent them.
• Things you can't — create a simple contingency plan.

Most teams skip this step simply because they think it's a negative start. However, if a crisis hits, you'll be glad you're already prepared.

5. Prototyping: Proposing Specific Solutions

After you've gone through the initial stages, it's time for prototyping. In this stage, you propose specific solutions to your problems. You'll test feasibility by asking the following questions:

• How can you solve a specific user problem?
• What will be the effect of these solutions?
• Which is the best possible solution to the problem?

6. Verifying Ideas: What's your Customer Opinion

Write down your ideas and proposed solutions, so you evaluate them in detail. It's essential to communicate with your users at this point and get feedback. Conduct customer interviews to verify the ideas like:

• Are your ideas actually good for them?
• What do your users think about them?
• Can you actually solve your user's problems?

After verifying your ideas, it's best to check the similar solutions for your problems in the market. Conduct the competitive analysis for this purpose. Competitor analysis will help you to,

• Identify opportunities to outperform your competitors.
• Determine what matters most to your target audience.
• Understand industry standards.
• Discover the ways to make your solutions stand out.

7. Prioritization and Planning: Which and What Should You Deliver First

Strategy is defined, users are met, limits are decided, risks are identified, and solutions proposed and checked. Now it is time for prioritization and planning. Here you'll decide,

• Which proposed idea will you implement?
• Which features and functionalities should you deliver first?
• What is the scope of your MMP or MVP?

It is not possible to implement all the proven ideas at once. This is only possible in small projects or less effective ideas.

In the prioritization and planning phase, you gather customer insights and determine their pain points and frustrations. With this information, you can effectively create a product roadmap. Furthermore, you can move forward with development to deliver the expected business value.

8. Create Prototypes and Test With Your Users

After prioritization and planning, the design team creates low-fidelity prototypes. These are mockups of the selected solutions. Teams convert their designs into MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to collect user feedback and confirm the product concept.

Teams run tests, interviews, and surveys to check prototypes and collect insights. They check whether the product fits the target audience or not. Continuously collecting user feedback ensures that the product team remains aligned with user needs.

9. Iteration and Validation

Finally, the team refines the product in small chunks until it gets positive feedback and high satisfaction from test participants. Once everything is confirmed in the discovery phase, the design team moves the prototype to development.

The iteration and validation phase removes all kinds of uncertainties and confirms that the product will resonate with users.

Who is Responsible For Product Discovery?

Product discovery can vary depending on the organization. Sometimes the whole process is created by the design team. However, in large organizations, different departments are responsible for the discovery of products.

Product or Project Managers

Product or project managers are also responsible for product discovery. They are responsible for defining product vision, prioritizing features, and making essential strategic decisions. They also confirm that the development teams understand the product goals and customer needs.

UX Researchers

UX researchers collect insights into user pain points, needs, and behaviors by conducting tests, surveys, and user interviews. These findings help shape the direction of the product. This research is often incorporated throughout the development process to measure the impact of product changes and identify areas for improvement.

Product Designers

Product designers create prototypes, user interfaces, and mockups. They ensure the product's design meets customer needs and usability.

Developers

Developers collaborate with product managers and designers to understand whether proposed solutions are technically workable. The development team gives input on what the teams can build with the available resources and timeframe.

Stakeholders

In an organization, discovery may also involve input from various stakeholders. Such as marketing teams, executives, and user support.

Product Discovery Benefits

Product discovery is an essential stage in product development and provides various benefits. These benefits significantly impact the product's life cycle success. Let's take a look at the following discovery benefits.

Better Understanding of Customer Needs

Discovery allows companies to gather valuable insights into target customers through research, surveys, and user feedback. Using these insights they understand the audience's pain points, expectations, and preferences. This understanding ensures that the product aligns with customer needs not assumptions.

More Accurate Budget with Lower Risk of Overspending

Clear product discovery helps you create a detailed roadmap and reduces the risk of overspending. For example, if you're developing new software, a vague feature guideline can lead to cost increases due to last-minute changes. While a detailed discovery ensures that your project is aligned with your budget.

Avoid Wasting Money and Time

Just imagine, you're spending months developing a product, but in the end, it doesn't fulfill the user's needs. What's your reaction? Seems Frustrating!

Investing in a time of discovery helps you to reduce the risk of wasting money and time to develop a product or feature that customers find irrelevant.

Set the Product's Price Accurately based on its True Value.

Understanding your unique selling point (USP) and how it solves your user problems can enable you to set the right prices. For example, if your discovery reveals that your software has unique automation features. Also, this feature is not in your competitor's software. Then you can charge this feature more by setting this feature as a premium.

Discover More Valuable Ideas

Discovery helps you to discover more valuable ideas than the initial product concept. For example, you plan to design a fitness app, where your initial focus is to track workouts. However, your discovery shows that most users are interested in dietary tracking. Now you have both options to set in your app,

Ensure the Product Targets the Right Audience

Doing a discovery before designing the product ensures that the product targets the right users. Different insights in the discovery phase help to target exact groups effectively. It leads to more sales, satisfied customers, and better outcomes for stakeholders and OKRs.

Faster Time-to-Market

Understanding the solutions early allows companies to streamline the development process. Product discovery offers clear goals and priorities, so teams can work efficiently. It reduces unnecessary delays and faster product launches.

Consequences of Skipping Discovery

As you already know the importance and benefits of discovery. Now let’s talk about the other face of product discovery benefits — The consequences of skipping discovery. Skipping this crucial start leads most companies to costly mistakes and project failures. The risks of skipping the discovery phase are:

Building the Wrong Product

Imagine you build a product you invest your time, money, and effort into. However, when it launches in the market, you see the results that people are not interested in your product. This must be a shocking reaction for you and your company. But, why does this situation happen? Not other than, it is because of skipping the initial discovery phase. Skipping this phase can lead to building the wrong product that does not meet the user’s needs. This results in wasted time, money, and effort, and it is too late to realize that your product is not suitable for the market.

Potential Overspending and Need Extra Budget to Fix Errors

Let’s look at this scenario, where you launch a product. However, at the time of launch, you see that your product needs essential features. Furthermore, you realize that your product needs additional development. Now at this final stage, to stand out among the competitors and gain market share, you have to spend more on new features and development. All this is due to skipping the discovery process.

Poor User Experience (UX)

Understanding customer needs and behavior is essential to delivering a seamless product experience. Without proper user research and testing, you can design a product that has usability issues and frustrating user interactions. A poor user experience leads to negative user feedback and low retention rates.

Design a Product with No Clear Direction

Without clear direction and knowledge of who you are targeting as your customer, you will end up being pulled in all directions by customers and stakeholders. Without any clear direction, you'll be trying to cram all the features into one product and end up with nothing. At this point, your situation is exactly like the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Discovery helps you set clear goals and target precise customers.

Inefficient Resource Allocation

Skipping the discovery process leads to misallocation of resources in the development process. Because you are not clear about user needs and business goals, it will increase the cost of your project and reduce ROI. In contrast, proper discovery ensures that development efforts are focused on the top-priority features that provide real value to customers.

Best Product Discovery Tools for SAAS

As you know discovery involves the initial and continuous discovery. There are various types of tools depending on what kind of discovery you want. Here are the common types of product discovery tools:

• User research tools — Start discovery by hearing from real users through research, usability testing, and feedback (using interviews and surveys).
• Analytics tools — It involves quantitative and qualitative data of user research.
• Experimentation tools — They help you to test various product ideas and new feature designs. These tools measure user behavior and satisfaction impacts through different methods like A/B testing, feature toggling, and multivariate testing.
• Voice of customer tools — It is similar to user research tools. However, the difference is that voice of customer (VoC) tools gather and analyze direct customer feedback. Conversely, user research tools provide different quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect valuable customer insights.
• Project management and training tools — These types of tools are important for every product team. These tools help you automate workflow, organize tasks, and collaborate.

To stay aligned with discovery, your team may need various discovery tools. Here is a list of some popular discovery tools:

• Hotjar — Best for heatmap analytics.
• Google Optimize — Best for web analytics and A/B testing.
• Figma — Best prototyping tool.
• Contentsquare — Best for behavioral analytics.
• Productboard — Best Voice of Customer tool.
• Jira — Best for project management.
• Udemy — Best training tool for developing teams.
• Typeform — Best for forms and surveys.

How Does Biz of Dev Help Teams Improve Their Discovery Process?

Discovery can be initial or continuous depending on your product. Large companies follow both methods. Initial discovery involves user research, feedback, and testing to design a product that meets user needs. While continuous discovery involves innovations and encourages ongoing improvements.

Biz of Dev significantly enhances the discovery process by providing valuable user insights. We help teams to better understand their target customers and ensure that the product meets user needs. We offer user research, validation, and competitor analysis and enable teams to make data-driven decisions.

Hey readers, don't stop here — This is just an initial exploration stage. As most digital products demand continuous product discovery — So, keep your journey in a limitless game.