PRODUCT DISCOVERY AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN BUSINESS

Introduction

Creating and developing a product is a difficult task. No matter what kind of concept or product you want to develop, starting from scratch afresh will take a great deal of research, dedication, time, effort, and money. If services are developed and provided in a haste or even with improper methodology, they will not showcase the desired outcomes.

Product managers not being able to devote time to customer requirements occurs due to a lack of comprehensive understanding of the objectives and requirements, which could only be accomplished via product discovery.

What is Product Discovery?

Product Discovery is an important stage in the product development cycle because if organizations don’t accurately confirm or refute their beliefs and assumptions about their customers, they risk wasting time developing products or services that no one requires.

The approach and strategy for product discovery should capitalize on the company’s strengths and make use of current channels. Product discovery can be of great help, since it:

Ascertains that the team is enterprising and innovative

Makes sure that a clear-minded product manager is in place.

Attempts to record issues that customers are currently undergoing (generally through customer interview sessions or surveying and collecting data).

Depicts a considerable insight of an average consumer by encouraging cross-team development and feedback.

Delivers adequate time to the client’s issues and requirements.

Accumulates relevant feedback and responses on customers’ problems from as many sources as possible.

Guides in prioritizing items throughout the development procedure.

Helps investigate whether your assumptions about the customer are accurate.

Determine which products and/or features will be most beneficial in providing great customer service.

Product Discovery is the strategy of lowering confusion and ambiguity about a concept or problem progressively and gradually in order to ensure that we produce the appropriate product for the proper people.

Why is Product Discovery so important?

The product discovery process is critical because it allows companies to develop products and solutions that really are essential to their consumers rather than just good to have.

Let us have a look at a major example, as to why product discovery is so necessary and important.

The above visual illustration demonstrates the amount of daily unique visitors until a course of time, precisely, 2011. Notice the gradual decline of Google’s Orkut usage (indicated in deep blue) around the mid of 2010?

Yes, Orkut provided a strong and robust foundation, the very basics upon which a social media platform was based. It included:

1. Adding friends

2. Chatting services (G talk)

3. Theme customization

4. Community polls, etc.

But gradually, as days passed by, technology and its services enhanced at a rapid pace, Google’s Orkut, once founded in 2004, eventually came to a complete shutdown in 2014, after another application founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his team – Facebook, dominated the market.

Orkut’s collapse was mostly due to Facebook. Orkut couldn’t well qualify the market validation procedure.

Facebook has a sophisticated appearance to it. Orkut, on the other hand, had a shabby appearance.

Orkut provided users to group their friends into categories such as close friends, acquaintances, and other friends. This created whole new levels of confusion. Whereas, Facebook does not categorize its users. It is simply a list of friends.

Facebook has increased security protocols, as opposed to Orkut, making personal information vulnerable.

Problem Space vs. Solution Space

According to research conducted by publicity, almost 80-90% of the startups fail to operate, as soon as a new product is deployed in the market.

They fail to attract customers since the product was either deployed in a rush and chaotic timeframe, or no proper product discovery was conducted for market validation.

An essential product is one that satisfies a customer’s sincere demand to the point.

The benefit is evident: requirements are in higher demand, greater competition, and have a better rate of success.

While operating in both areas is required to please users and assist the business organization, companies frequently make mistakes in their time and attention allotment. Product discovery is primarily concerned with the problem space.

These stages could be roughly mapped out as follows:

1. Problem space defines why the difficulty is worth solving.

2. Solution space is as to why the remedies are worthy of consideration.

But make absolutely no misunderstanding about that. Just because there are more stages allocated to exemplifying solution concepts does not at all mean you should devote the majority of your time and effort to them.

Prioritizing, identifying, and comprehending the issue area is the focus of synchronization and investigation. Before you can go further into the solution area, you must first lay the foundation.

Values of Product Discovery

As a product team, you’ll always be engaged in some form of the Product Discovery phase. This is because, in order to be really customer-centric, you would like to introduce as many team members as practicable to customer reviews on a regular basis.

Departmental: Product discovery is a collaborative effort including people from many consumer development departments, brand management, customer success, consumer experience, and product management.

Expertise: Make use of skills and understanding to gather assistance for important product decisions.

Customer-centric: The product discovery phase allows the teams to develop a product that is essential to the customer’s needs.

Value: Product discovery adds value to the product team, the firm (for example, by avoiding spending precious resources chasing the incorrect ideas and building products that no one desires), and buyers (by offering something that they would consider essential).

Assurance: Product Discovery guarantees that product managers and organizations are on the correct track when it comes to prioritizing and developing a successful and profitable product.

You may minimize wasting so much of your precious time on dead-end products and features by including a robust product discovery approach within your project strategy and planning phase. When this phase is skipped, the outcome is an influx of usable but ultimately pointless programs and products. It is indeed a complete loss of time and money.

When is Product Discovery required?

Since there are various unknown factors regarding what the company requires to produce, for whom, and also why, product discovery is essential. It’s dangerous to develop a product based on theoretical data and self-made assumptions. You could wind up tackling an issue that has already been resolved, thereby squandering your precious business time, energy, and funds.

Here are several situations when product discovery is required:

1. New possibilities

Growing your company by releasing a service or product in a foreign country or for individuals from distinct categories.

2. Development of New Product

If you have a concept for a new product, it’s best not to start developing it until you’ve identified the target market, their wants, demands, and interests.

3. Improving products

Identifying and analyzing the problem before adding new functionality or features to your product.

4. Potential Problems

Product developers might have some substantial solutions and ideas that they might pursue and evaluate.