What Is Product Discovery: Definition, Benefits and How to Do it?

Developing, launching and promoting a new product or feature is not only time and energy-consuming but also expensive. This is why frustration is inevitable if the new feature of a product goes unnoticed or unused. 

To avoid that, companies must first understand market trends and customer needs to be able to create products that address them. This is where the product discovery process shows its power. 

In the following article, we will go over what is product discovery and explain its process and the benefits that your business can have if the product team performs it properly.

What is the Product Discovery Process?

The product discovery process is defined as a systematic customer-centric process of recognizing and validating new product or product feature ideas. It is often described as the opposite of product delivery, as it is used to explain the procedure of making decisions about building a new feature or product, while product delivery is the exact work you put into building a given product or feature. 

Continuous vs Initial Product Discovery

Continuous product discovery is an ongoing process of researching, recognizing, and validating new ideas. It includes analyzing market trends, collecting feedback from users, and refining the product to ensure that it meets customer and market needs and business objectives. Product management has the role of adapting each new product to changing customer needs and the market environment to drive long-term success. 

On the other hand, initial product discovery is the first phase of the product development process, where each new product idea is carefully evaluated. Initial product discovery includes various brainstorming sessions, user interviews, market research, etc. 

Although initial product discovery is a foundation for the further product development process, continuous product discovery is crucial for establishing a product’s relevance and competitive edge in the market. 

How to Do Product Discovery: Step-by-Step Instructions

The product discovery process involves several stages, where each aims to understand customer needs and market trends to the core so that the final result can deliver the best possible potential solutions. Now, let’s see the crucial product discovery steps or stages:

1. Identifying the problem
   • The first step includes identifying a certain problem that your target customers often experience by researching the market, trends, and customer feedback. 
2. Understanding the target audience/performing user research
   • Take time to define your target audience and understand their needs and preferences. The product discovery team should consider launching a product or feature that can solve their issues. 
3. Concept development 
   • Anything from brainstorming to leveraging customer feedback can help product managers and their teams generate new ideas and concepts. 
4. Creating the prototype
   • In this product discovery phase, the product development team should create a certain prototype that could be a basic version of the new product or feature that shows its value proposition and essential functionalities. 
5. Testing the prototype
   • In this stage, a product discovery team should test the product with users to get valuable feedback that evaluates the product concept. This data can help you identify potential weak spots and refine the product. 
6. Developing and launching
   • One of the crucial points in the product discovery framework is surely a stage where the team develops and launches a full version of your product. It is a good idea to perform beta testing before a full-scale launch. 
7. Tracking and analyzing metrics
   • After the launch, it is beneficial to track crucial metrics like customer satisfaction, user engagement, retention, and others. This valuable data can help the product manager and their teams pinpoint the areas that require further optimization. Customer success platforms like Akita can serve you as a hub where you store all your customer data, perform customer segmentation, and share the reports and analytics with the entire team within seconds. 
8. Refine the product or feature continuously 
   • One of the essential product discovery techniques is to analyze all the data continuously to ensure the product remains competitive on the market. Gather feedback, analyze the comprehensive data, and iterate on your product to maintain its relevance. 

Benefits of Product Discovery Processes

Having a relevant product roadmap is a first step toward developing an effective product strategy. However, having a well-established product discovery process can help shape and inform both the product roadmap and the product strategy in multiple ways. Let’s see some of the crucial benefits your product teams and your business can have from utilizing the given processes:

• Getting familiar with market demands 
  • Once you get familiar with market needs, you will know whether your new product or feature can address them. 
• Risk reduction 
  • If you manage to validate the product ideas in the earliest product development processes, you are automatically reducing the risk of investing in features or products that will fail to satisfy the current market trends and needs. The idea is that the given product meets the needs of the target audience, increasing the possibility of its success in the market. This is one of the greatest product discovery examples in action. 
• Boosting customer satisfaction
  • If you develop and launch a product that meets the customer’s needs, you can automatically improve customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. 
• Speeding up the product development process
  • By focusing on the best possible ideas, your product development team can develop products more quickly. 
• Driving business success
  • In the end, product discovery processes can help you develop great, successful products that ensure your business significant revenue growth and success.

What is Product Discovery? — Conclusion

Product discovery is an essential process in product development that includes recognizing and validating new product ideas. 

Understanding customer needs, market trends, and competition is crucial for developing a successful product. This is precisely where Akita can help you with its robust customer segmentation features. 

We, hopefully, encouraged you to include its processes into your business strategy and never fail to develop and launch a product that will satisfy the current market demands and bring your business new opportunities and growth.