Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

by Teresa Torres

You’ll want to continuously synthesize what you collectively know so that you maintain a shared understanding of your customer context.

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page. — Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs

It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.”

interviewing on a regular cadence is critical to the success of any product trio

the purpose of an interview is to discover and explore opportunities.

use your customers’ own stories to discover their unmet needs.

Direct questions require that we recall facts without context. This process is prone to cognitive biases—common patterns in mental errors that result from the way our brains process information.

you can’t simply ask your customers about their behavior and expect to get an accurate answer. Most will obligingly give you what sounds like a reasonable answer.

Distinguish Research Questions From Interview Questions

The key to interviewing well is to distinguish what you are trying to learn (your research questions) from what you ask in the interview (your interview questions).

Most product teams could generate an infinite list of research questions. There is always more to learn about our customers. We see some teams solve this by generating multi-page discussion guides. But this strategy assumes that you’ll be talking to customers only occasionally, therefore, you need to ask them everything right now. Instead, assume you’...

In any given interview, you’ll want to balance broadly exploring the needs, pain points, and desires that matter most to that particular customer and diving deep on the speci...

We don’t want to spend time exploring a specific opportunity with a customer if that opportunity isn’t important to them.

Our primary research question in any interview should be: What needs, pain points, and desires matter most to this customer?

Once we’ve explored the opportunities that matter most to the customer, we can dive into the specifics ...

You may have specific opportunities in mind, but you’ll want to let your participant set the ...

the best way to learn about their needs, pain points, and desires is to ask them to share specific stories about their experience.

You’ll need to translate your research questions into interview questions that elicit these stories. Memories about recent instances are more reliable than our generalizations about our own behavior

The scope of the story that you’ll want to elicit will change throughout your discovery process.

“Tell me about the last time you watched our streaming-entertainment service.”

This question will help you learn about pain points and challenges with your product.

“Tell me about the last time you watched any streamin...

elicit stories about your product but also stories about...

“Tell me about the last time you were...

a great way to uncover what your product category (e.g., streaming entertainment) competes with.

A narrow scope will help you optimize your existing product. Broader questions will help you uncover new opportunities.

The broadest questions might help you uncover new markets. The appropriate scope will depend on the scope you set when creating your experience map (see Chapter 4).

As the interviewer, you will have to work to excavate the story.

inform your participant that you would like them to share their full story with you, to share as many details as possible, to leave nothing out, and that, when they are done with their story, you’ll ask for missing details.

Temporal prompts are one of the most effective ways to guide the participant through their own story. You can ask, “Start at the beginning. What happened first?” You can use the experience map you created in Chapter 4 to help guide your participant.

“Where were you? Set the scene for me.”

“What happened next?”

“What happened before that?”

Thinking about their story as having a beginning, a middle, and an end can help y...

Use your customer-experience map to help you tr...

“Who was with you?” “What challenges did you encounter?” “How did you overcome that challenge?” “Did anyone help you?”

“What challenges did you face?” and they may respond with, “I usually…” or, “In general, I have this challenge…” You’ll want to gently guide them back to telling you about this specific instance. You might say, “In this specific example, did you face that challenge?”

“I always face this challenge”),

it’s critical that you remember the research on how poorly we perform at answering direct questions

The golden rule of interviewing is to let the participant talk about what they care about most.

Let your research questions guide your story prompts.

you might encounter some participants who simply don’t cooperate.

In these instances, you’ll want to do the best you can to capture the value the participant is willing to share,

An interview snapshot is a one-pager designed to help you synthesize what you learned in a single interview. It’s how you are going to turn your copious notes into actionable insights. Your collection of snapshots will act as a reference or index to the customer knowledge bank you are building through continuous interviewing.

Snapshots are designed to help you remember specific stories.

They help you identify opportunities and insights from each and every interview.

include a photo of the participant. Grab one from a social-media profile. Grab a screenshot from a video call. Snap a photo during an in-person interview.

a visual that will help you remember their specific story.

At the top of the snapshot, include a quote that represents a memorable moment from their story. This might be an emotional quote or a distinct behavior that stood out. Like the photo, the quote acts as a key for unlocking your memory of the specific stories that they told.

To help put a specific interview into context, you’ll want to capture some quick facts about the customer.