Product discovery is the work of finding out what to build, and for whom, before anybody builds it. It is research, synthesis and a set of decisions, and it ends with documents rather than code.

The whole point is that lots of people start with an idea and then just build that idea. What discovery does is put the learning before the building, because when you start learning you are going to want to change.

The two halves

In my framework, the research splits into two stages that people often lump together.

Discovery research is about the problem and the people. You work out what the problem actually is, who has it, what they use instead today, and what comes up again and again across everyone you spoke to. It ends with a persona and a written summary of the problems you found.

Product discovery is about the solution. You compare what is already on the market, decide what your product is for and say that in one line, write it into a one pager, and test the solution concept before anyone builds it.

After those two comes defining the product, which is where the PRD and the design requirements get written.

The names matter less than the order. You are understanding the problem, then choosing a solution, then specifying it. Almost everything that goes wrong is one of those happening before the one in front of it.

What discovery is actually asking

At the start: what problem do these people have, what do they do about it today, and how do they talk about it.

Then: is there enough gap in the market around the problem you want to solve.

Then: if I build this particular thing, will it help, and how would I know.

Why starting here gives you a better launch

If you start as customer discovery, user first, then you have a very good chance of already having product market fit when you launch, because you built the product for specific users. Your challenge at that stage is getting the product in front of those users.

That is a much better problem to have than a finished app and no idea who wants it. Product market fit is really a hybrid between founder vision and customer discovery, and discovery is the half most people skip.

What makes it hard

You have to listen for what people do, not what they say they want.

If you ask people how they normally eat, there is a really good chance they will tell you they do their best to eat healthy, veggies as much as possible, and they try to limit sugar and not drink too much coffee. They will tell you what they try to do. If you ask what they actually ate, a lot of the time it is a very different answer.

When people respond that way, what they are telling you is aspirational. It is not necessarily the truth.

So ask about behaviour. You do not have to ask, do you write it on paper. You can just ask what they do with the information they get. Start with tell me about your job, tell me how you do your job, walk me through it, and then listen.

Everything you produce is a hypothesis

Your persona will evolve. What you build at the start is a starting guess, and every step in your discovery is going to teach you something new that might change it.

That is the process working. A persona that never changed across six weeks of research is a sign that the research was not allowed to land.

It stops being a phase and becomes a habit

Once you get really comfortable with this kind of product discovery process, you might find that you barely do a lot of the later steps, and this is the one you put most of your time into.

It also is not only for software. I gave a conference talk called Product discovery doesn't just work on software, and the whole thing was a case study in how I built this program using this process.

Keep reading

Problem Space vs. Solution Space

What Is a One Pager and What Goes In It?

How Do I Validate an App Idea Without Building It?

Learn this with me

Discovery is classes 1 to 6 of From Passion to Product, my free six-week live course: the problem work, the online research, the persona, the interviews, the competitive analysis, and shaping and testing a solution. Nothing about building is discussed until class 7, which is what makes it discovery rather than planning.

I teach the same four weeks to engineering teams, from a one day workshop to a longer program, for teams who want to run their own discovery instead of receiving its output.

Join the waitlist, get the App Strategy Workbook, or look at the team programs.