It’s me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
If only it were as easy (and comforting) as listening to Taylor Swift to find out the problem your product or feature should be solving.
If only it were as easy (and comforting) as listening to Taylor Swift to find out the problem your product or feature should be solving.
After building many products and using multiple frameworks in my career, I’ve found some core steps and skill sets are useful in building a successful product.
Whether it’s the double diamond, design thinking, lean start-up, or any other framework, they all start with identifying the right problem to solve. This is crucial to creating a successful and impactful product because if you’re not solving the right problem, users won’t use your product. It needs a balance of understanding both your business and users' goals.
Here are the steps that are crucial for defining the right problem to solve:
Understand your users
Start by understanding your target audience and their needs. Conduct user research through surveys, user & stakeholder interviews, and focus groups to gain insights into their pain points, and behaviors. This will help you identify multiple problems to solve.
Understand the business
When you understand the business and how it makes money, you can begin aligning your research findings with the business. What does the company want to achieve, and how does the product fit into these goals?
Define the Target Audience
Clearly define your target audience or user personas. Knowing who you are designing for will help you narrow down the scope to the problems that matter to them.
Prioritise the problems
Not all problems are of equal importance, and the likelihood is that you’ll find many problems to solve. In an earlier post, I wrote about managing risk in product design, and this same technique can be used for problem prioritisation. Using criteria like user value, feasibility, and business viability can help rank the problems and identify those that should be tackled early.
Exploration
Brainstorm the selected problems that your target audience faces. This is an opportunity to collaborate with other teams. Bring in designers, developers, and other stakeholders, to help identify solutions for the identified problem. Bringing others in early is a great way to get buy-in for the direction you’re taking.
Validation
Test any assumptions by validating the problems with real users. Present the problems and potential solutions to users and gather feedback. This step will ensure that you're addressing the right problems correctly.
This last step can and should be iterative. Refine your solutions and go back to your users until you’re clear that the problem you are solving has a usable solution.
Finding the right problem to solve is a continuous process that requires a deep understanding of your users and your business. It also needs a commitment to ongoing improvement. By following the above steps you can increase the likelihood of creating a successful and impactful product.
* And if it really helps, you can always put Anti-hero on in the background
Andy Chipperfield
