Mastering Discovery Framing Techniques: Unleashing the Power of Product Discovery

Framing techniques provide us with a framework to quickly assess an opportunity and identify the underlying issues that must be tackled during product discovery.

When presented with a potential solution, it is crucial to clarify the underlying problem at hand. We need to tease out the risks and determine where it makes sense to focus our time. Additionally, understanding the alignment between our work and that of other teams is essential, particularly for larger projects and initiatives involving multiple teams.

To emphasise once again, the purpose of framing our discovery work is to:

• Establish Alignment and Clarity of Purpose: It is crucial to reach a consensus on the business objective we are targeting, the specific problem we aim to solve for our customers, the intended user or customer segment, and the metrics that will determine our success. These elements should align directly with the objectives and key results of your product team.
  

• Identify significant risk: In the realm of discovery work, it is crucial to identify the significant risks that need to be addressed. It's common for teams to gravitate towards risks that they feel most comfortable with or are more familiar with. For example, some teams may immediately focus on tackling technology risks, such as performance or scalability, while others may zoom in on usability risks. While these risks are valid and important to address, they often represent the easier challenges to tackle. However, it's essential not to overlook other risks that may arise:

  1. Value Risk: Assessing whether customers truly desire a solution for the specific problem addressed and if our proposed solution is compelling enough to convince them to switch from existing alternatives.

  2. Business Risk: Ensuring that our solution aligns with different parts of our company and addresses common aspects such as financial feasibility (Financial Risk), compatibility with business development partners (Business Development Risk), brand consistency in marketing (Marketing Risk), sales team capability to sell (Sales Risk), and compliance with legal (Legal Risk) and ethical standards (Ethical Risk).

In cases where the product manager, designer, and tech lead do not identify significant risks, the team can proceed with delivery, acknowledging the possibility of occasional mistakes. This approach is preferable to excessive conservatism. Dedicated discovery time and validation techniques are reserved for situations with significant risks or team disagreements, ensuring a balanced approach to product development.

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

Framing techniques consistently reveal a common tendency among people to focus on solutions rather than the underlying problems. This applies not only to users, customers, and stakeholders but also to startup founders who often ponder potential solutions for extended periods before taking action.

However, one of the most crucial lessons in our industry is to prioritize falling in love with the problem rather than fixating on a particular solution. Why is this so important?

“Because, more often than not, our initial solutions don’t solve the problem—at least not in a way that can power a successful business” – Marty Cagan

It typically requires multiple iterations and approaches to discover a solution that truly resolves the root issue at hand. Conventional product roadmaps can exacerbate the problem, as they tend to prioritize features and projects without a clear understanding of their effectiveness in addressing the underlying problem.

Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of the product organization to diligently uncover and ensure that the delivered solution genuinely solves the core problem. By investing time upfront to frame and communicate the problem, significant improvements in outcomes can be achieved.

Opportunity Assessment Techniques

An opportunity assessment is an extremely simple technique but can save you a lot of time and grief. The idea is to answer four key questions about the business objective, key result, customer problem and target market.

When should we use it?

Opportunity assessment technique is best employed for smaller and typically sized efforts, particularly when adding new product features to existing products. This simple technique works effectively in such scenarios as it is quick and easy to perform.

How does it work:

Answer these 4 questions with regards to the opportunity that you wanted to assess.

Customer Problem:

Our focus is always on benefiting our customers, and this question helps us clearly articulate the problem we aim to solve for them. Even if we occasionally assist internal users, we strive to connect it back to the ultimate benefits for our end customers.

Business Objective:

The first question should align with one or more of our team's assigned objectives. Whether it's driving growth, reducing onboarding time for new customers, or minimizing monthly churn rate, this work should directly address our assigned challenges.

Key Results:

From the start, we need to establish the measure of success. For instance, if our goal is to reduce churn, what percentage improvement would be considered excellent versus insignificant? The second question should align with at least one of the key results assigned to our product team.

Target Market:

Product work often fails when attempting to please everyone, resulting in pleasing no one. This question clarifies the primary intended beneficiary of our work. It could be a specific user or customer persona, target market, or a specific job to be done. Narrowing our focus ensures a more effective outcome.

Key Benefits:

• Efficient Evaluation: The technique allows for a quick and efficient evaluation of potential opportunities. By applying a structured approach, teams can assess the viability and potential of ideas in a streamlined manner. This saves time and resources by focusing efforts on the most promising opportunities.

• Informed Decision-Making: The technique enables informed decision-making by providing a framework to analyze and prioritize opportunities. It helps teams consider various factors, such as customer needs, feasibility, and alignment with business goals.

• Provide alignment: Product Manager should be the one preparing the answers, however, she can share this with her product team and key stakeholders to ensure everyone is kept on the same page.

Press Release & Customer Letter Techniques

Hypothetical press release technique involves the product manager setting the stage for the team by crafting an envisioned press release that outlines the impact and benefits of the product once it is launched. This imaginative exercise focuses on how the product enhances the lives of customers and the tangible advantages they gain. While similar to a real press release, this version is entirely fictional, describing a future state we aspire to achieve.

Amazon is renowned for incorporating this technique as part of their "working backward" process, where they initiate projects with a pretended press release.

Another variation is the Customer Letter technique, where instead of a press release format, the benefits are communicated through a letter addressed to a specific user or customer persona associated with the product. This approach offers a personalized perspective on the value proposition.

When should we use it?

The Customer Letter technique is particularly valuable when undertaking a somewhat larger effort that involves multiple reasons, various customer problems, or a range of business objectives to be addressed. This technique allows for effective communication of value by going beyond the four questions outlined previously.

A typical scenario where the Customer Letter technique proves beneficial is during a redesign project. In such cases, there are likely several objectives associated with the redesign, aiming to enhance the experience for existing customers while also catering to the needs of new customers.

How does it work?

The technique of creating a pretended press release or customer letter is very similar to the real one.

For example, in the customer letter technique, the hypothetical customer letter, sent to the CEO from a very happy and impressed (hypothetical) customer, explains why he or she is so happy and grateful for the new product or redesign. The (hypothetical) customer describes how it has changed or improved his or her life. The letter also includes an imagined congratulatory response from the CEO to the product team explaining how this has helped the business.

A few tips on generating a good customer letter:

• Identify the Target Persona: Select a specific user or customer persona that represents the intended audience for your product or feature. This persona should be well-defined, considering their characteristics, needs, goals, and pain points.

• Understand the Perspective: Put yourself in the shoes of the chosen persona and gain a deep understanding of their perspective. Consider their motivations, challenges, and expectations when using the product or experiencing the proposed solution.

• Introduce Yourself: Begin the letter by addressing the persona as if you were writing directly to them. Introduce yourself or the company,

• Acknowledge Their Challenges: Recognize the challenges or problems the persona may be facing. Demonstrate empathy and understanding of their pain points to establish a connection.

• Highlight the Benefits: Articulate how the proposed solution or product addresses the persona's challenges and improves their life. Clearly communicate the specific benefits and advantages they can expect to gain from using the product.

• Provide Examples and Use Cases: Support your claims with examples or use cases that resonate with the persona. Paint a vivid picture of how the product solves their problems and positively impacts their daily activities or experiences.

The customer letter variation is very similar to Amazon’s imagined press release, and it is intended to drive much the same type of thinking. Sometimes the customer letter does an even better job of creating empathy for the customer’s current pain and more clearly emphasises to the team how their efforts can help the lives of these customers.

Key benefits:

• Shifting the Focus to Outcomes: Product teams often fall into the trap of solely listing features without considering the true benefits for customers. This technique aims to counteract that tendency by keeping the team focused on the desired outcome rather than the mere output.

• Product Evangelism: The intended audience of this press release is the product team, as well as related or impacted teams, and leadership. It serves as an effective evangelism tool—if the value is not apparent after reading the press release, it indicates that the product manager needs to put in more work or reconsider the effort.

• Creating Empathy: The technique helps the product team to deeply understand the problem at hand, fostering a sense of empathy that drives their commitment to finding solutions. The visceral understanding compels them to seek ways to provide meaningful assistance.

Startup Canvas Technique

The Startup Canvas, its close cousins the business model canvas, and the lean canvas , serve as valuable and lightweight tools for early risk identification and proactive tackling. This powerful tool empowers aspiring entrepreneurs and startups to transform their business ideas into well-defined and actionable plans.

The Startup Canvas is a powerful tool that helps aspiring entrepreneurs and startups shape their business ideas into well-defined and actionable plans. It provides a structured framework for analysing key aspects of a startup, including the problem it solves, target customers, value proposition, revenue streams, and more.

By filling out the canvas, entrepreneurs gain clarity on their business model, identify potential risks, and align their strategies. It serves as a visual representation of the startup's core elements and facilitates communication and collaboration among team members and stakeholders.

When should we use it?

The technique is most suitable for challenging situations that require a comprehensive framing approach. For instance, in the early stages of a startup, when you're exploring new product ideas to drive a fresh business venture. Similarly, in larger enterprise companies, it becomes relevant when tasked with pursuing entirely new business opportunities.

In such a scenario, you encounter a wider range of risks to address. These include validating your value proposition, devising a monetisation strategy, developing effective distribution and sales channels, estimating production and selling costs, establishing relevant metrics for progress tracking, and assessing the market's size to ensure business sustainability.

In essence, the focus is not on improving an existing product, but on inventing a completely new one.

While you can employ a canvas for any product change, you may realize that once you already have an established product and business, much of the canvas remains unchanged and merely duplicated. Sales and distribution models, monetization strategies, and cost structures are already well-defined. In such cases, the emphasis shifts towards creating additional value in the solution. This is when considering earlier framing techniques may be more appropriate.

How does it work?

Step by step instruction on writing a start up canvas

• Customer Segment: Begin by adopting a customer-centric approach and identifying your target customers or users. Clearly define the specific segment you will be focusing on.

• Problem: For the identified customer segment, outline the top 1-3 problems that they are seeking solutions for. Understand their pain points and challenges.

• Value Proposition: Craft a clear and compelling message that communicates your unique value proposition. Highlight why your solution stands out and why it is worth investing in.

• Solution: Adopting the Lean Canvas approach, briefly sketch out the top 3 features or components of your product that address the identified problems.

• Market: Evaluate the market size and determine if it is new, existing, or re-segmented. Understand the potential scope and opportunities within your target market.

• Channel: Explore marketing channels, both inbound and outbound strategies, that will enable you to effectively reach and engage with your customers. Consider pricing strategies as well.

• Revenue Model: Define the revenue streams and describe how your pricing strategy aligns with your business model. Consider the breakeven point and potential for profitability.

• External Risks: Briefly outline the top 3 external risks that your startup may encounter. Identify potential challenges or uncertainties in the market or industry.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Determine the key metrics that will indicate success and guide your progress. For example, one financial KPI could be revenue growth. Set clear objectives and targets.

• Team: List the key members of your team, including founders, co-founders, partners, investors, advisers, and other essential employees. Highlight their roles and contributions

Key Benefit:

• Concise and visual: The Startup Canvas offers advantages over traditional business plans due to its concise and visual nature. It focuses on key elements of the startup, encourages flexibility and adaptability, promotes collaboration, and enables quick iteration. It's a practical tool that aligns with the dynamic and fast-paced nature of startups.

• Clarity and Focus: It provides clarity and focus by offering a structured framework for analysing and defining critical aspects of the business. By filling out the canvas, entrepreneurs gain a comprehensive understanding of their target customers, value proposition, revenue streams, and more. This clarity allows them to make informed decisions, set clear goals, and effectively allocate resources.

• Communication and Collaboration: By visually representing the startup's key components, it serves as a shared reference point for team members and stakeholders. This promotes discussions, aligns perspectives, and fosters a shared understanding of the startup's vision and strategy. The canvas becomes a collaborative tool that drives effective communication, ensuring that everyone is working towards common goals.

• Risk Mitigation: By thoroughly analyzing various aspects of the business, such as market dynamics and competitive landscape, entrepreneurs can identify potential risks and challenges early on. This enables them to develop mitigation strategies, make necessary adjustments, and increase the likelihood of success. The canvas acts as a risk management tool, guiding entrepreneurs to build a solid foundation for their startup venture.

Summary

In conclusion, the Discovery Framing technique provides a valuable framework for product teams to effectively identify and address key challenges in the early stages of product development. Among the various techniques within Discovery Framing, the Opportunity Assessment, Customer Letter, and Start Up Canvas techniques stand out as powerful tools for generating insights and driving success.

The Opportunity Assessment technique, best used on smaller and typical product efforts, enables teams to efficiently evaluate potential opportunities, make informed decisions, and mitigate risks by considering market demand, customer needs, and feasibility. This approach helps prioritize efforts and focus on the most promising opportunities.

The Customer Letter technique fosters empathy and enhances understanding by articulating the value proposition from the perspective of specific user personas. It aids in shifting focus to outcome, evangelising product benefit and motivate product development towards meeting customer needs.

For early startups or completely new initiatives, the Start Up Canvas technique provides a structured framework for shaping business ideas, analyzing key aspects of a startup, and aligning strategies. By filling out the canvas, entrepreneurs gain clarity, identify risks, and foster collaboration.

By leveraging these techniques, product teams can navigate the complexities of discovery, make informed decisions, and increase the chances of building successful products that meet customer needs and drive business growth.