How can you identify potential product features or enhancements through customer discovery?

Customer discovery involves understanding needs, analyzing feedback, and iterative prototyping. For instance, a mobile banking app identified a common pain point – users struggling with bill management. Through feedback, they developed a prototype with enhanced bill features, incorporating user suggestions for a more seamless experience. Continuous feedback ensures products evolve in line with customer expectations.

Problem-solving for targeted customers. Unique differentiation from competitors. Customer-centric hypothesis testing. Utilize value proposition canvas. Clear articulation of product benefits.

Open-ended questions reveal insights. Understand goals and frustrations. Uncover underlying needs and motivations. Utilize jobs-to-be-done framework. Employ five whys technique for depth.

While taking customer interviews, it is important to not expect them to give you a requirement list with features to build. The goal is to understand their problems and come up with an innovative solution. Asking open-ended questions ensures you get stories from their experience, understand how they make their decisions,what challenges they face. It can give you helpful indicators of their behavior, even with their non-verbal cues. To understand the customer's problem, meet them right where they are, in their moments of struggle to understand how you can best create value for them. Aim to understand their problem, define it from their perspective, so you don't end up framing a problem statement that's your version of their problems.

Real-time insight into behavior. Identify pain points and workarounds. Understand actual workflows and actions. Utilize user testing and analytics. Ethnographic research for contextual understanding.

Measure satisfaction and loyalty. Capture opinions and expectations. Utilize surveys and reviews. Analyze comments and complaints. Quantify feedback with scoring systems.

Value, feasibility, alignment criteria. MoSCoW method for prioritization. Kano model for customer satisfaction. RICE score for evaluation. Validate with customer feedback.

RICE is my preferred framework to rank different feature ideas. It helps to bring some objectivity in the prioritisation process which is otherwise often guided by personal (and biased) opinions. Make the scoring collaboratively with the different stakeholders to reach alignment across all teams. MoSCoW is particularly useful to split up a bigger epic in multiple parts. The 'must haves' are prioritised first in the version 1. 'Should haves' and 'could haves' can be tackled later and will be scored against other initiatives.

The MoSCoW analysis can help create a hierarchy of priorities. Dai Clegg, a software development expert, designed this framework during his time at Oracle. MoSCoW stands for - 1.Must-have: The non-negotiable, core features of your product. 2. Should-have: These features add significant value to your product, but it can still function without them. 3. Could-have : Nice-to-have features, but not central to the product. 4. Won't-have: Non-essential for the product now.

Prioritizing product features requires a sophisticated blend of customer need, market opportunity, P&L impact and regulatory foresight. Employing a data-driven approach, assess each potential feature against its ability to satisfy emerging customer demands while adhering to or anticipating changes in the regulatory landscape (v. important in fintech space).

Continuous improvement through iteration. Lean startup cycle for testing. Build-measure-learn loop for adaptation. Agile methodology for flexibility. Ongoing customer discovery for insights.

Continuous improvement through iteration is important for making your product more relevant for your customers. It's important to focus on a cadence of discovery and deliver, rather than just delivery. This is not a one day process, you constantly learn from iterations as you evolve.

Understanding how the team currently conducts activities and the challenges they encounter is paramount. Identifying areas for improvement and pinpointing specific pain points are crucial steps. Once we have a clear understanding of the situation, it becomes easier to identify Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that address these needs effectively.

When working on product development for an existing product, become a user of the product yourself! Experience the pain points of your users first hand. Putting yourself in the users' shoes is the best way to understand their pains and needs.