Product Discovery Playbook: From Idea To Launch

Can a cake be baked without the help of the recipe? No, well, neither can apps succeed without proper product discovery.

Developing a new application is a big challenge. Starting from scratch involves lots of research, a significant amount of time, and a considerable investment.

The worst mistake is rushing through the development process, resulting in an app with cool features but lacking real value for users.  To avoid this, it's crucial to thoroughly understand what users need. That's where product discovery comes in. 

Let's explore why the product discovery process is important and take a closer look at the steps you should follow to build a successful application.

What is Product Discovery?

Product discovery is like getting to know your customers really well and understanding their problems before making a new product. It is a whole process of communication, validating ideas, and guiding how to design and deploy the product. This approach ensures that your overall product discovery process actually solves real problems for your users.

Back in the 90s, companies used to spend a lot of time and money convincing customers to buy their products without really listening to what customers wanted. This often led to expensive failures because the products didn’t meet actual needs. Over time, smart ideas like the jobs-to-be-done framework and early testing based on user feedback encouraged product teams to think more about what users really needed.

Nowadays, we call this whole process “product discovery.” it’s not just a one-time thing at the start of the project, it’s an ongoing effort to stay connected with customers and gather feedback throughout the entire development process. This continuous product discovery is like a habit that involves keeping the conversation going with users to make sure the product meets their needs.

When Do You Need Product Discovery?

You need product discovery when your team isn’t clear on what exactly to build. This happens when there’s no detailed plan or documentation specifying what the product should be, who it’s for, and why it’s needed. If any of this information is missing, like when you’re entering new markets or adding features to an existing product.

You should go through the product discovery process. It’s like a way to reduce risks and costs by making decisions based on solid information rather than assumptions.

When starting a project, especially for a new product, product discovery is the first step. It happens before creating roadmaps or strategies. In an agile approach, it can be an ongoing process called continuous discovery.

Even for improving an existing product, you might go through a similar process, which is called product rediscovery. It’s about making sure you know what you’re building and why right from the beginning.

Product Discovery Process

Each company has its own way of figuring out what customers need, called product discovery. It has to be customized based on what each business requires. Some companies can start out their plan in just a week, while others might take a whole month to make sure their business strategy is strong.

1. Establishing Goals

What is my goal?

What results do you want to achieve?

In product discovery, the involvement of everyone is important, and set clear goals from the start. At this early stage, all the people involved should work together to understand a user problem and provide enough information for the team to analyze.

The key is to focus on understanding the problem rather than immediately thinking of solutions. So, the job of a product manager is to create a process where everyone talks about the problems they see instead of suggesting specific fixes or features right away. It’s about describing the problems before jumping into solutions.

2. Research

Research is the biggest task for any product discovery. You need to research the struggles of your potential users and identify the problems your product can solve. Keep a short description to nail down the issues in one place.

You need to break down the research into categories:

1. Behavior: what people do?
2. Attitude: what do people say?
3. Quality: direct observation
4. Quantity: indirect observation

These are a few points you need to ask the focus group, as it will help you get accurate answers. 

You just need to learn how you can research and the best way is to create the survey, it will carry all the questions related to the problems one faces. That will be one of the steps for your product discovery phase.

3. Brainstorming Products

Once you research the market, then you can start to brainstorm in the product discovery. Your product will be the solution to the problems you just listed down.

It is true that nobody can get right in just the first go. The whole product needs multiple factors, like logo, UI/UX, platforms, programming language, and so on. Before thinking about these create a mood board and map the requirements you list down through the survey.

Try to incorporate the whole team to work on it because the more ideas, the better product it will be. Keep an open mind to the suggestions from the team, then everyone can vote for the better ones to incorporate in the product discovery process.

4. Reviewing, Finalizing, and Prioritizing

In the validation phase, everyone involved decides if we should move forward with the ideas and invest time and resources in making them real. Here, we check if our solution can actually solve the most important problems for users.

It's important to note that during this validation, we might not be able to test on many users. So, we need to carefully look at the results and only trust the data that gives us the most useful information.

5. Planning for Development

Once you've checked and approved some ideas, it's time to create a basic version of the product, known as the MVP or Minimum Viable Product. This is when you transition from figuring things out to actually delivering the product. 

Now, you make a list of tasks, prioritize them, and set deadlines for releasing the product. It's like turning your ideas into something real and usable.

Best Practices For Product Discovery

1. User-centered Approach

Instead of guessing what your users want, take the time to really understand them. Use methods like customer research, interviews, usability tests, and surveys. This research helps you know exactly what your users prefer and brings you closer to understanding their needs.

Having empathy for your users is important in the product discovery process. It means being open-minded and really getting what your users go through. Creating user personas, which are detailed profiles of your ideal customers, can help with this. They show you the needs, struggles, desires, and goals of your users. When you truly get your users, it's much easier to build a product that truly meets their needs.

2. Continuous Discovery

Continuous discovery means always learning and adjusting how you develop your product. It’s not like a traditional discovery that you do only once or occasionally, usually at the project’s start.

With continuous discovery, you’re constantly understanding your users, making sure you know their changing needs and preferences. By regularly making improvements based on this information, you stay ahead of the competition, and your product remains relevant. Businesses using this approach find it easier to keep current customers happy and attract new ones.

3. Personalized the Discovery Process

When you are doing product discovery, there are steps to follow, but you have the freedom to adjust them to fit your team’s style, strengths, and weaknesses. Customizing the product discovery process to match your team and complement your company’s unique qualities will make it work better.

Tailoring the process to your team’s skills helps you make the most of your strengths and resources. When your team is fully engaged, they contribute better, leading to a better final product.

4. Prioritize Customer Insights

In product discovery, doing user research and testing is important, but the main focus isn't just on the research process itself. What matters most are the insights you get from these tests. Rather than doing many complex tests, prioritize making each test meaningful. This means running only the tests that give you specific insights you're looking for.

For instance, in customer surveys, instead of asking too many questions, keep it short and ask only what aligns with your goals. These targeted questions will give you the answers you need to understand users and create the right product. In simple terms, product discovery, it's about the quality of insights, not the quantity.

5. Small-scale Testing

You don’t always need complicated tests. The small-scale tests are handy for checking new product ideas, features, UX design changes, or bug fixes. The goal of these small tests is to confirm your ideas and decide if your concept is worth developing further.

6. Feedback Loops

A feedback loop is like a continuous cycle. It starts by getting feedback, using what you learn to make improvements, testing those changes with more feedback, and then repeating the process.

The insights you gain from each feedback loop should be shared with your development team so they can use it to keep improving the product. It’s like a back-and-forth process to make sure you’re on the right track.

Benefits of Product Discovery

1. Establishing a Target Audience

In every product discovery process, it’s really important to clearly understand who your customers are and what they need. Sometimes, the people in charge of creating new products might skip this step and make assumptions that haven’t been tested. This can cause big problems later on.

Without getting feedback directly from your target audience, you might not fully grasp their needs. Taking the time upfront to learn more about your customers can prevent making the wrong decisions during development.

2. Reducing Production Costs

One of the biggest risks in mobile app development is the overall cost. If the product does not make money, all the time and resources spent on its development are wasted. To avoid overspending before even selling the product, it is important to reduce initial costs. This means focusing on features that are truly wanted by your target customers.

By spending enough time on product discovery early on, your team can figure out which features are essential for the product’s success and which ones can be added later. This helps cut down on unnecessary expenses and ensures you’re not wasting money on ideas that won’t make the product a hit with consumers.

3. Increasing Product Value

The success of your product is tied to how well it meets the needs of your customers. You need to understand what exactly your target customers want. Your product should make it simpler to create a strong value proposition right from the beginning.

By using product discovery, you make sure that you're building a product that holds value for the people you aim to sell to, not just those who are part of the development process.

4. Highlight and Eliminate Risks

There are various risks associated with developing new products that can make management hesitant. Product discovery is all about uncovering potential problems your team might not have thought about before starting development. These risks could include

1. Missing deadlines
2. Launching late
3. Low demand for planned product features
4. Getting into price wars with competitors because of a new product launch

These risks can seriously harm any new product effort, no matter how big the company is. Disappointing users with late releases or features they don’t want can make them lose trust in your company. By carefully examining your product discovery before starting development, you can identify and avoid these risky situations early on.

5. Fast Development

For companies wanting to take advantage of current market trends, it's crucial to bring products to market quickly. But sometimes, the development process goes beyond deadlines because of unexpected changes in features and design, slowing things down.

To avoid going in the wrong direction and wasting time on features customers don't care about, it's important to plan properly. By using product discovery early in the development process, you can surpass customer expectations and beat your competition by developing products faster.

Conclusion

Making decisions for your product can be challenging. There's always some uncertainty, and that’s where the product discovery is. You are making making sure your product idea makes sense and solves real user problems.

A way to create a solution that really fits what customers need, all while saving time and money. Skipping the product discovery step might seem like a shortcut, but it's a risky move that could end up costing you both money and time.

FAQs

Q1. What are the objectives of product discovery?

In simpler terms, product discovery is like a journey that helps product teams improve their ideas. It involves a true understanding of the problems users face and your product will solve those problems.

Q2. What can be the product discovery phase for a startup?

The startup’s discovery phase or we can call it scoping is like the first step in learning about the project. It involves doing initial research and collecting information about the project, its target market, and the people it aims to reach. This helps get a thorough understanding of the goals, scope, and limitations of the project.

Q3. What is the product discovery phase in agile?

In agile, the product discovery phase is all about removing uncertainties from an idea. The goal is to make sure that the solution or product being created is the right fit for the target audience.

Q4. What is discovery in app development?

The initial step in creating an app is the app discovery phase. This phase is like setting up the groundwork for designing, developing, and launching the app. Similar to planning a strategy, the main goal of the discovery phase is to create a common understanding of your vision and goals. This involves thorough research, discussions, and analysis of your app idea.