Key Takeaways
- This book will help develop 6 mindsets: think about outcomes rather than output, impact rather than features; customer centricity; collaborative product development; be a visual thinker; be experimental; move from a project mindset to a continuous mindset
- Opportunity solution trees – Define the outcome, opportunity space, solution space, assumption test
- Product trio – product manager, designer, software engineer
- Drawing is such a helpful exercise – not to be an artist, but to see your thoughts in different ways. Get in the habit of drawing experience maps or any ideas you have
- Assumptions you need to test – desirability of product, viability, feasibility, usability, ethical assumptions
- Our goal as a product team is not to find truth but to mitigate risks
- To conduct continuous discovery, you can establish a framework that includes weekly, monthly, and quarterly activities. Here’s a suggested framework:
- Weekly Activities:- User Interviews: Conduct regular interviews with users to understand their needs, pain points, and gather feedback on your product or service.- Customer Support Analysis: Review customer support tickets or inquiries to identify recurring issues or common customer needs.- Analytics Review: Analyze user behavior and engagement metrics to identify patterns, trends, or areas of improvement.- Competitor Research: Keep an eye on your competitors’ activities, features, and customer feedback to stay informed and identify potential opportunities.
- Monthly Activities:- User Testing: Conduct usability tests with participants to observe how they interact with your product, identify areas of confusion, and gather insights on usability improvements.- Surveys and Feedback: Distribute surveys or feedback forms to collect quantitative and qualitative data from your user base to uncover trends and gather input on specific features or ideas.- Data Analysis: Review and analyze user data, such as conversion rates, retention metrics, or usage patterns, to identify areas for optimization or new opportunities.- Product Metrics Review: Evaluate product-specific metrics aligned with your key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success and impact of your product initiatives.
- Quarterly Activities:- User Persona and Journey Mapping: Review and update user personas and journey maps to ensure they reflect current user behaviors and pain points.- Ideation and Concept Generation: Engage in brainstorming sessions with your team to generate new ideas, features, or product enhancements based on user insights and market trends.- Prioritization and Roadmapping: Evaluate the ideas and concepts generated, prioritize them based on impact and feasibility, and create a roadmap for upcoming releases or iterations.- Stakeholder Review: Share the insights gathered, research findings, and proposed roadmap with stakeholders, such as executives or product owners, to align on priorities and ensure buy-in.
- Remember, this framework can be tailored to your specific context and needs. It’s important to iterate and adapt the process based on the outcomes and feedback you receive during each cycle.
What I got out of it
- The tools provided in this book give the stepping stones to creating a great product and business while ensuring you consider what the customer really wants. Do you see an area in your services that can be edited to better fit your target customer?
