The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
What is Product Discovery?
What is product discovery?by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, So, there's this secret term that product leadership uses to describe your work behind your back. And today, I want you to be crystal clear on what it is. It's a word they use to describe it when you do extra research to ensure you're designing the best possible idea. It's a phase of work that you might call UX, but they call it something else. They call it "product discovery." What is Product Discovery?The term comes from consultant and author Marty Cagan [source]. It was invented in 2007 to help product managers understand that their real job is discovery, not delivery. Product discovery is the opposite of product delivery. It's deciding what should be built collaboratively (ideally) using whatever data you can gather or generate.
For designers, product delivery is designing the product, and product discovery is deciding what to design.
It's where you decide what problems are worth solving and which solutions are worth designing. Since it's a term that comes from product managers, the scope of work is bigger than you might be used to as a designer. When Marty coined the term in 2007, there was a perception that a product manager's job was to create requirements and tell everyone what to do. Sadly, some product managers still act like that in 2024. Some product organizations skip discovery altogether and make all the designers and developers deliver poorly vetted ideas. Product discovery is about letting the entire team vet ideas before assuming they will be 100% successful. Since the product team decides what gets built, this can be very good for designers, who would have more say in the process. What part of my work as a designer is discovery?This is a bit awkward, but um... If you're a UX designer, service designer, or a design researcher, all of it might be discovery. Your entire process might involve getting ideas ready for delivery, a.k.a. handing them off to UI and devs. Some things you might do in discovery:
These are product discovery activities because they help ensure that you are "building the right thing" (product discovery), not "building the thing right" (product delivery). Hopefully, you realize that product discovery is another word for the research that prepares us to deliver a well-designed experience. To learn more, check out the full article:
Source
Until next time, y'all! ✌️
|
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Level-up your critiques in 3 questions By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, You know the critique that starts with “quick feedback” and ends 45 minutes later with five conflicting opinions and no next step? Or the one where a senior voice speaks first and the room quietly aligns, even when the data points elsewhere. Here’s a simple pattern, adapted from Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), that pulls critiques out of taste debates and into clearer decisions. What VTS is (in 60 seconds) VTS is a...
The Summer Edition(and a Free Masterclass) by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, I'm taking some time off for summer, and I hope you are, too. When I'm off, I end up watching a lot of YouTube, so... A Free Masterclass on YouTube If you've ever wondered about design strategy, this masterclass has you covered. It's called "What is Design Strategy?" The toolbox of the design strategist is incredibly powerful, but it's not well documented. See what it looks like when the designer's sphere of influence...
A Workshop Agenda No One Wants By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Last week, I posted a fake workshop agenda on LinkedIn. The kind we’ve all been in that drains your will to collaborate. I shared it as a joke. It reached 100,000+ people • 800+ likes • 100+ comments • 20+ reposts But the comments weren’t just laughs. They were…grief. People didn’t just say “ha ha, I’ve seen this.” They said: “Oh no. I’ve run this.” The real takeaway? We’re not bad at facilitation, we have to break the status quo. We...