The Key Ingredient for Ensuring Your Digital Product Investment Pays Off

In today’s world, virtually every industry needs digital products. Banks must have great online portals, manufacturing companies must have great supply chain management systems, retailers need great mobile apps, and so on.?But what separates the “table stakes” digital products from the really great ones which make customers switch, build brand loyalty and skyrocket customer satisfaction?

The first step in building a great digital product is understanding the problem you are solving.? In spite of what your intuition says, your customers don’t want features or capabilities – they want to have their problems solved in a seamless experience. I’ve been in countless organizations - many who aspire or claim to be product organizations – and see plenty of teams delivering features without knowing the actual problem they are solving. It’s an easy slope to slide down. Marty Cagan summarized it best by saying:

“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” – Marty Cagan

Problem Discovery

Great products start with great problem discovery. The goal of problem discovery is to identify and define the core problem(s) that digital product should solve. What are the things that frustrate users, complicate their lives, and make them feel unsatisfied with their experience with your product??Problem discovery starts by focusing on understanding the user's pain points, needs, and challenges through:

• User Research: Gathering qualitative and quantitative data through methods like surveys, interviews, user testing, and analytics. This helps in gaining insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points.
• Market Analysis: Studying the market and competitors to understand existing products, trends, and potential gaps that the new digital product can fill.
• Persona Creation: Creating user personas, which are fictional representations of the target audience with their characteristics, goals, and pain points.
• Validating Assumptions: Product teams may have made certain assumptions about user behavior and needs. By validating these assumptions with actual customers, they can refine their understanding of the target audience and create a product that better meets user expectations.
• Problem Collection: Using all of the above to capture all of the problems which the product’s user base has.?We want to cast this net as wide as possible and resist the temptation to focus on areas where we or our competitors have focused before.

After “going wide” and collecting a large number of things we could focus on, we now need to converge on the problem that we should focus on.?Steve Jobs conveyed it best when he said:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.? But that’s not what it means at all.? It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.” – Steve Jobs

The second part of problem discovery is exactly that – saying no to most of the problems we observed to focus on the one, most important thing that we need to do now.?Converging on the right problem to solve during problem discovery is a crucial step because if we miss, everything we do after this step is waste!?There are varying strategies to converge, but here are some of the common elements to be successful: ?

• Prioritize the problems: Analyze the list of problems and prioritize them based on various criteria. Consider factors like the severity of the problem, its impact on stakeholders, feasibility of solving it, and alignment with organizational goals.
• Research and gather data: To make informed decisions, gather data and information related to each problem. Understand the underlying causes, potential solutions that have been attempted in the past, and any relevant metrics or data points that shed light on the significance of the problem.
• Group related problems: During the analysis, you may find that some problems are interconnected or symptoms of a broader issue. Group related problems together to see the bigger picture and identify overarching themes.
• Seek stakeholder input: Engage stakeholders, including end-users, customers, team members, and management, to gain different perspectives on the problems. Stakeholder input is valuable in understanding the real impact and importance of each problem.
• Eliminate non-critical problems: As you progress, eliminate or deprioritize problems that are less critical, not aligned to the product strategy, or not feasible with your current resources and constraints.

By utilizing these components, you can effectively converge on a subset or single problem to solve during problem discovery. Remember that problem discovery is an iterative process, and it's okay to refine and adjust the problem statement as you learn more throughout the problem-solving journey.

Solution Discovery

Now that you have today’s most important problem to solve, it’s time to figure out the best solution.?Not the most elegant, most robust, or most scalable, but the right solution for today given the value of the solution, our product strategy and our MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach. Similar to problem discovery, solution discovery starts by “going wide” on the possible solutions we could use to solve the problem.?Solution discovery is crucial and should involve a collaborative, innovative and iterative approach to generating, evaluating, and refining ideas that could become viable solutions for the product problem at hand.?Let’s start with generating potential solutions:

• Assemble a small, cross-functional team: Form a cross-functional team comprising designers, developers, product managers, domain experts, and other stakeholders. Diversity in perspectives and expertise will contribute to more valuable solutions and minimize surprises.
• Ideate: Have the team ideate to generate a wide range of solution ideas. Encourage participants to think outside the box and avoid judging ideas at this stage. Tools like mind mapping, crazy eights, or design sprints can be helpful during this phase.
• Prioritize Ideas: After generating a pool of ideas, prioritize them based on their potential impact on user needs, feasibility, and alignment with business goals.

Now that we’ve explored various ways to solve the problem across the feasibility, effort, and usability spectrums, it’s time to quickly narrow in on which specific solution we should build.

• Create Low-Fidelity Prototypes: Start converting the prioritized ideas into low-fidelity prototypes or mockups. These prototypes can be simple sketches, wireframes, or interactive mockups, which allow the team to visualize and validate the solutions more effectively.
• Conduct User Testing: Validate the low-fidelity prototypes with real users through usability testing or other user feedback methods (Wizard of Oz, Concierge, or A/B Testing). User testing helps identify usability issues and gather insights on how well the solutions meet user needs.
• Refine and Iterate: Based on the feedback received from user testing, refine, and iterate on the solutions. Continuously involve users in the process to make sure the solutions are meeting their expectations and requirements.
• Assess and compare value, usability, & feasibility: Work with the team to assess the value, usability, and technical feasibility of the proposed solutions. Address any technical constraints or challenges early in the process to avoid potential roadblocks during development.?Acknowledge any near-term tradeoffs or intentional technical debt being taken on so that the short and long-term costs of each solution are known.
• Validate Business Viability: Evaluate the business viability of the proposed solutions. Consider factors such as cost, potential ROI, sales strategy, market demand, and strategic alignment with the company's objectives.

Sometimes the risks remain too high. In these cases, you may execute another cycle through problem discovery to narrow the problem, or through solution discovery to consider other options, or you may need to shelve the problem until capabilities change or constraints are removed.?Ideally, you will have iterated towards a validated solution that contains the appropriate tradeoffs for today. Remember, you haven’t built the production solution – you’ve just gained agreement on the architecture, design & thickness of it in discovery. Your teams will now build out the details. By including the discovery process, you have ensured that what they are building is what your customers actually need.?

Final thoughts

Great digital products are key pieces to the success of most organizations today.?Regardless of whether they are internally or externally facing, all organizations must continually invest in their digital products in order to stay competitive.?To be a market leader requires great digital products. Incorporating effective product discovery is the key ingredient to ensure your digital product investments pay off.?Focusing on these key discovery elements and remembering to keep the user at the center of the development process, enables digital product creators like you to craft great products that meet user needs, exceed expectations, and stand the test of time in a competitive digital landscape.

About the Author:

Tony Shawver, Director - Motion Consulting Group is an experienced, practical leader who has been guiding organizations and teams to be more responsive and effective versions of themselves for over 15 years.?With a Mechanical Design and Software background, his passion for solving problems runs deep.?Tony has guided numerous clients across a wide range of industries to achieve more responsive Agile Delivery, more effective Product Development and more impactful Organizational Transformations. His pragmatic and holistic approach keeps teams, middle management and leadership aligned and growing throughout the journey by leaning on high transparency, effective collaboration, and decentralized control. Tony is a natural communicator, adept at bridging the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders, facilitating workshops and training, and fostering a culture of open dialogue and knowledge sharing.?He and his team at MCG consistently deliver the ability to navigate the uniqueness of the context, drive towards business outcomes, champion innovation, and ensure lasting change.