Alžbeta Ivanovičová

The basis of creating good products and services is a creative process called Product Discovery, also known as product exploration or discovery. The goal of the Discovery process is to deliver a working product or part of it to users as soon as possible, with the most tangible evidence that the product team will achieve the originally intended goal, and with the knowledge that the solution is technically feasible.

To make this happen, the product team seeks answers to the following questions:

 1. Will users want to use it?
 2. Will it bring business results to the company?
 3. Is it technically feasible?
 4. Will the interested parties support this solution?


How to start with exploration

In order to even start with Product Discovery, you need to have a lot of ideas at hand. Don’t be afraid of them, ideas are friends. Friends that need to be collected and categorized.

Ideas can come out of user interviews or research, your customer service or sales department. The insights of colleagues from the "first line" (branch employees) or other teams are also fantastic resources. Last but not least, you can also do data analysis and find patterns.

You can also find tips on where to look for opportunities in this article on exploration.

FOR DOWNLOAD: Product Discovery Guide


Prioritizing ideas

No matter where you get your ideas (opportunities, problems) from, it's good practice to store them in the Discovery backlog. You then have to choose the ones with the greatest potential. I recommend that you standardize the format by answering the following questions:

 * [What] What do we want to solve? What key problem or opportunity does the proposed idea address?
 * [Who] Who does it concern? Who is the target group in this case?
 * [Why] How will we know that we have solved the problem? What exactly do we expect and how could we measure it?

The selection of ideas or their prioritization can be done with the help of one of the prioritization techniques such as PIE, RICE, MoSCoW, etc. If more stakeholders are involved in decision making, the Bull’s Eye Diagram works well.

The prioritized ideas are then validated by the product team. They find out if these ideas make sense in terms of feasibility, demand and business performance, so you can decide which ideas make sense to invest in.

In Lighting Beetle*, we use the so-called Idea validation, but you may also be familiar with Business Problem Statement or Opportunity Canvas.


10 principles of Product Discovery

Before you start with the actual discovery, remember these 10 principles of the Product Discovery phase. I compiled them based on observation and research of successful and less successful exploration teams. They are inspired by the principles of exploration from SVPG from Marty Cagan's diary entries.

1. Customers don't tell us what they want. (As my colleague Michal Blažej says, you don't want the customer to design for you.)

2. The most important thing is to create value for the customer.

3. The goal is to validate ideas as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible.

4. We need to test ideas with real customers.

5. Development is hard, but UX is usually harder and even more crucial.

6. Functionality, design and technology are closely interconnected.

7. Technical feasibility must be verified during the Discovery phase.

8. Prototypes are a great tool in exploration.

9. During the Discovery phase, it is essential to involve all important stakeholders.

10. Most of our ideas won't work, and those that do need to be iterated.

These 10 principles should be the mantra of the product team in a Discovery phase, where a product manager, a UX researcher, an interaction designer and a data analyst should primarily be involved.

This team is tasked with constantly researching user behavior and trying to change it to generate results. For example, if Spotify users spend more time listening to music, their Spotify Premium retention will increase. The team's main goal is to eliminate the risk that the Product Delivery phase will be proposed a solution which will not work or perform as expected later on.

Do you want to find out if you need a product team and who should be in it? Read my previous article about building product teams and their impact on a company's customer experience level.

10 Commandments of Product Discovery

Michaela Koklesová


Creating seamless and engaging experiences is just as important in commercial business as it is in cultural institutions. But how can museums and galleries stay relevant or even exciting in the era of quickly bored visitors?

Join us for an evening at the newly reconstructed national gallery dedicated to the customer experience in culture, featuring experts from the Slovak National Gallery, MUSEUM BOOSTER and Lighting Beetle*. On Wednesday, 29 March 2023, our speakers will share insights and strategies for attracting all kinds of visitors – be it seasoned art goers or brand new visitors.

Whether you work in the cultural sector or are simply interested in the intersection of culture and technology, come and join us – ONLINE or IN PERSON – for the new edition of Lighting Talks*, a series of hybrid meetups organized by our CX studio Lighting Beetle* devoted to all things UX and CX.

The event will be conducted in the English language.

The seats are sold out. You can join us online, the live stream starts at 6 p.m.


Event details

Topic: Lighting Talks* on CX in culture
Date: Wednesday, 29 March 2023, 6 p.m.
Speakers: Slovak National Gallery, MUSEUM BOOSTER, Lighting Beetle* – annotations follow the registration form
Language: All talks will be conducted in the English language
Venue: ONLINE or IN PERSON at the Slovak National Gallery theatre in Bratislava, Slovakia, entrance from the Riečna street
Admission: Free, registration required – please, register below







Registration to this event was closed.










Three lightning talks:


The new SNG: Layers of Digital Experience


Michal Čudrnák, Head of Digital Collections and Services together with Katarína Vass, UX Researcher at Slovak National Gallery will guide you through their way of shaping the visitor's experience: before, during, and post-visit mixing digital, sound-based and haptic layers. All with the importance of inclusivity and accessibility in their minds.

About Slovak National Gallery
Considered one of the most important cultural institutions in Slovakia, Slovak National Gallery has been recognized for its innovative approach to presenting art. The gallery is known for raising cultural standards and embracing new technologies in its exhibitions, using a myriad of digital tools, smart chatbots, or augmented reality, to create immersive new experiences for visitors.


The Future of Museums


You can also hear Sofia Widmann, Founder & CEO of MUSEUM BOOSTER, sharing techniques and insights that help museums and galleries all over the world implement new digital strategies and boost the visitor experience plus their loyalty.

About MUSEUM BOOSTER
Research & consultancy group MUSEUM BOOSTER from Vienna, Austria helps museums and galleries with digital transformation, innovation, and museum boosting. Their long list of clients includes Centre Pompidou in Paris, MUMOK and MAK in Vienna, or Guggenheim in Bilbao to name a few.


A gallery or a website? A space you want to lose yourself in


Pavol Pružinec, Creative Director, and David Chmela, Art Director at Lighting Beetle* will let you peek inside the newly redesigned the website of Slovak National Gallery with an unusual concept: it encourages you to lose yourself in the content. Why is that a good thing? Come and hear it for yourself.

About Lighting Beetle*
Customer Experience studio that drives your business. A team of experienced professionals who love to guide clients on their journeys to better market positions, design processes, brand strategies, or tech stacks. We create digital products and design services that make the lives of millions of people easier.


Evening agenda

5:30 p.m. – Door opens for guests in the Slovak National Gallery
6:00 p.m. – Welcome and introduction (online stream starts)
6:10 p.m. – Talk by SNG: Michal Čudrnák & Katarína Vass + Q&A
6:45 p.m. – Talk by Lighting Beetle*: Pavol Pružinec & Dávid Chmela + Q&A
7:10 p.m. – Talk by Museum Booster: Sofia Widmann + Q&A
7:40 p.m. – Drinks, finger food & networking for guests in the venue (online stream ends)
9:00 p.m. – Event ends, Slovak National Gallery closes for the night


About the series

Lighting Talks* are a series of hybrid meetups organized by a CX studio Lighting Beetle*. The events cover topic from UX design, data analytics, engineering, customer experience, product management and more. The events are a fit for anyone who understands the value of a quality customer experience that drives businesses and is on a lookout for inspirations.

From agencies to corporates, from freelancers to managers – each time you can gather insights in two lightning talks and/or a panel tailored to a specific topic related to customer experience or digital product design. In person at our office in Bratislava, Slovakia, or from anywhere in an online stream. Records will be available shortly after each event on our Youtube channel.

Lighting Talks* on CX in culture

Dominika Babulicová

What is the purpose of this canvas?

The right questions don't usually pop up just like that. Especially during user research, every UX designer and researcher needs to have a process how to come up with smart questions.

Asking good questions is not just a skill for research purposes only. It is also important when we talk to stakeholders, clients and we enquire about their needs or work with them on workshops.

The ability to ask a question appears to be a uniquely human trait, one that:

 * saves us time and energy as we gather resources and information
 * allows us to develop empathy for others
 * creates bonds of trust, even among strangers.

Moreover, people who ask more questions are seen as more likable. And who wouldn't want that!


In this cheatsheet

You'll learn how to:

 * come up with good questions
 * execute the interview the right way
 * avoid mistakes and biasing the interview

Instructions for all steps can be found directly in the cheatsheet.







Get the User Interview Cheatsheet


First Name*





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Which one best describes you?*




Freelancer (I work as a freelance or an agency designer)


Product team member (I build or market products & services)


Product owner (I manage a product or startup lifecycle)


Corporate leader (I manage a division in a bigger company)


Academic (I am a student or a teacher)





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Slovenčina





Handout type

Validation handbook


Experiment toolbox


User Interview Cheatsheet


Assumption mapper canvas







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User Interview Cheatsheet

Viktor Šmidák

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

The faster you experiment, the faster you learn, the faster you’re likely to succeed. That means abandoning the popular waterfall approach. Why?

Imagine a manager at a fictional company. He approves a strict budget for a new product, the design team then creates the experience, later the developers take over and release a perfectly usable product. Everyone is happy and success is achieved.

Sounds like a dream? It is. Reality is, in most cases, poles apart. This is because with waterfall approach, you’re not reducing the uncertainty whatsoever. But there is a way.

Fit between what a company offers and what a customer wants is the number one requirement of a successful value proposition. - Strategyzer

More and more companies nowadays are starting to work with an agile approach. And even though the word "agile" has become a buzzword over the years, this approach has many advantages. Let’s illustrate this methodology in the same made up story.

In this case, the manager starts with exploring a challenge, whether it is a usability issue or a business performance.

If the research team does find the problem worth solving (sometimes there might not even be a problem to begin with), the creation phase begins. And once hypotheses are validated, the budget can be progressively increased.

Designers start concepting, developers start coding and copywriters start writing. They do this in sprints and share their progress (and issues) throughout the whole project. This way, designers don’t design something that can’t be coded and vice versa. Releasing happens more often and so does validating.


When to validate?



Before spending weeks or months building a first version of your product or feature, validate the core (or riskiest) ideas with a few experiments.

Here are 4 main stages in which you should validate. It is a good practice to identify which stage you’re in so that you can pick adequate experiments to validate with. The stages are:

1. Problem validation

Here you test whether the problem you came up with is worth solving. Is there a room for your idea or is the market quite saturated already? In this stage, you can use desk research or picnic on the graveyard method.

2. Solution validation

Here you will validate your solution to the problem. Is your solution ideal? Can it make money? You can leverage experiments like solution interviews or comprehension tests.

3. Building the minimum solution

A focus on releasing a minimum solution means that you can potentially avoid lengthy and possibly unnecessary work. In this stage, techniques such as fake door or A/B testing are helpful.

4. Continous build & measure

Your product is never finished. Constant iteration is necessary to make sure you stay competitive. Usability testing and product-market fit survey are just some of the methods you can use.

You can find a list of 30 experimenting methods like these in our Experiment Toolbox guide.


Holy grail of validation



Companies that are at the forefront of agile development use a dual-track agile approach.

Dual-track agile allows both discovery and delivery to happen simultaneously. This approach doesn’t require the Discovery team to fully define all features before the Delivery team starts building. The entire process is collaborative and involves teams’ key members (designer, developer, product owner).


Getting out



Building a product that customers want requires you to switch from planning to experimenting. Anybody involved in developing your product needs to get out of the building to directly experiment with your customers. Only once you have proven your riskiest assumption true, you should start working on delivery.

Transformation from waterfall to agile approach is a big challenge that can take years. Therefore don’t be discouraged and persist. In the end, your company will become more efficient time and money-wise and you will get a deeper understanding of your customer.


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Shift from building to experimenting

Minimum Viable Podcast #14: User experience in sound design

What is the purpose of this canvas?

Continuous product and service development requires the ability to implement quick agile changes. In order to avoid jumping into designing ideas “from the desk” or behind the doors of executive meetings, use this simple form to align all stakeholders.


Individual steps

 * 01—Problem (opportunity)
 * 02—Data
 * 03—Benefits
 * 04—Expected results
 * 05—Possible solution
 * 06—Hypotheses
 * 07—Personnel capacity

Instructions for all steps can be found directly on the canvas.







Get the Idea validation canvas


First Name*





Email*





Which one best describes you?*




Freelancer (I work as a freelance or an agency designer)


Product team member (I build or market products & services)


Product owner (I manage a product or startup lifecycle)


Corporate leader (I manage a division in a bigger company)


Academic (I am a student or a teacher)





What language do you prefer to read our emails in?*




English


Slovenčina





Handout type

Validation handbook


Experiment toolbox


Idea validation canvas


Assumption mapper canvas







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Personal data protection policy.







Newsletter opt-in






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Idea Validation

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

First, it’s good to settle the difference between project management and product management. As the name implies, project management operates on a project-to-project basis. Whether it’s a new feature being added or a research that needs to be carried out. All project-related tasks should meet the desired deadline, for example a release date.

Product management is a bit different. Take a bank as an example. One of the products a bank has can be a mobile app which the product team is responsible for. That means adding new features, researching customers’ needs etc. Everything the team does revolves around the product – the banking app.

And here is the key difference: While projects have deadlines or endings, developing a product is perpetuum mobile, a never-ending process. Deadlines are not as important. Making sure the app works from a business, usability and technology point of view is what matters more.


Do you need a product team?

If you have neither project nor product team right now, there is a chance you don’t need one yet. If you struggle with the points below though, you may want to reconsider.

 * Stakeholder driven roadmap – there is no one to oppose stakeholders + prioritization is in the hands of the HiPPO (highest paid person's opinion)
 * No product discovery process (or using single track agile)
 * Too much focus on dates / features
 * Not enough direct customer interaction – stakeholders are left in the dark, not involved in roadmaps or timelines
 * Not utilizing engineering or user experience early enough
 * Infrequent release cycles – development takes longer than expected, missing deadlines
 * Lack of focus, too many interruptions – struggling to prioritize tasks for developers or designers
 * Product architecture limitation / technical debt
 * Too many meetings / consensus culture
 * Poor developer morale

There are of course many things that indicate you need a product team. These are some I come across most often.


Product teams and customer experience

Apart from solving the issues listed above, a good product team is also beneficial for overall customer experience. How?

Nowadays, customers want consistent experiences. If they interact with one company, they expect the same behavior across all channels. If your product or service works differently offline and online, the customer becomes frustrated. This is mainly the role of CX departments but a good CX department should include product teams that work on this seamlessness.


Building an all-star product team

It’s important to note that a functional product team should be multidisciplinary. Building a good product team might be the toughest challenge. There is no universal rule or a formula but from my experience a good product team should include at least:

 * Product manager (responsible for managing tasks and priorities)
 * Developer
 * Designer
 * QA / Test engineer
 * Data analyst (optional, but highly recommended)


What’s next?

It is always a great idea to map your customer journeys. Once you have that, you can start thinking about assigning different products to different teams. One of the ways to do that is to assign one all products related to a particular customer journey to one team. This way, the team has a deeper understanding of the specific journey and can make relevant decisions.

Another great approach is to build teams based on related features. If you use the same or close to the same tech background for more products, you can use that to your advantage and build a team who will specialize in improving them.

And remember. Continuous product discovery and improvements should be the main responsibilities of your product team.

Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Want better CX? Start building product teams

In this free webinar, we show you three different ways we took to address customer pain-points connected to difficult portfolios of our clients. You will learn about our customer research methods and CX design strategies. You'll come away with clear steps to assess the best approach for your organization – whether it is a small or medium business or a large-scale corporate.

On examples from telco, banking and insurance, which suffer by the most unrecognizable products, our UX Researcher Dominika Malejčíková and Art Director Pavol Pružinec will showcase three different levels of intervention based on organizations' maturity in approach to customer experience.







Watch the LB*Webinar on-demand


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Product team member (I build or market products & services)


Product owner (I manage a product or startup lifecycle)


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Webinar: Product portfolio







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About the webinar

Many product owners are cursed with the mantra telling them: the more bells and whistles your product has, the better it is. They'd like to tackle all possible customers' wishes or competitors' benefits. However, we repeatedly see businesses going too far and overcomplicating their portfolio.

Tangled product offering is a painful experience for many customers, regardless of a phase of the customer journey they are currently in. And it does not even matter if the product belongs to a small, medium or large company or what segment it operates in.

Whether it is features or discounts, adding more frills to a bundle does not necessarily boost its value. On the contrary, it can eventually kill sales or customer's loyalty. Overly complex, feature-heavy products turn out to be counterproductive and confusing. But there is a way out – and it is based on knowing your customers as the back of your hand.


About the series

LB*Webinar is a series of 60-minute lectures followed by Q&A, where we share our expertise in helping companies design customer experience that drives their business. These events are most valuable for product managers, CX specialists and CEOs who want to make their product and services outstanding. Recordings will be available on-demand among our tools.

LB*Webinar: How to design desirable product portfolio

By now, design systems have become popular not just in progressive design teams. They are slowly turning into cornerstones for product development within organizations of all types and sizes. But what's the best way to start building one in your environment? How to maintain it, advocate for it and envision its futures?

We are thrilled to invite you to watch Lighting Talks*, new series of hybrid meetups organized by our CX studio Lighting Beetle*. In conjunction with a globally celebrated World Design Systems Week 2022, we dedicated our first event to the topic of design systems. The 80-minute recording of the meetup is here for you, whether you are a designer, a developer, a product lead or simply a fan of a systematic approach to customer experience design.


Lightning talks:

Adam Močkoř, Lead Front-end Developer at Lighting Beetle*
Project-first approach: A sustainable way to building design systems

Nathan Beddows, UX Copywriter for Škoda Auto
How to write award-winning design system documentation


Event details

Topic: Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Date: Tuesday, 20 September 2022, 6 p.m.

Venue: Online or Lighting Beetle* office in Pradiareň 1900, Bratislava, Slovakia

Admission: Free, registration required – register below







Registration to this event was closed.










Evening agenda

5:30 p.m. – Door opens for guests in the venue

6:00 p.m. – Welcome and introduction (online stream starts)

6:10 p.m. – Talk by Adam Močkoř and Q&A

6:40 p.m. – Talk by Nathan Beddows and Q&A

7:15 p.m. – Networking for guests in the venue (online stream ends)

8:30 p.m. – Lighting Beetle* closes for the night


About the series

Lighting Talks* are a series of hybrid meetups organized by a CX studio Lighting Beetle*. The events cover topic from UX design, data analytics, engineering, customer experience, product management and more. The events are a fit for anyone who understands the value of a quality customer experience that drives businesses and is on a lookout for inspirations.

From agencies to corporates, from freelancers to managers – each time you can gather insights in two lightning talks and/or a panel tailored to a specific topic related to customer experience or digital product design. In person at our office in Bratislava, Slovakia, or from anywhere in an online stream. Records will be available shortly after each event on our Youtube channel.

Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Michal Blažej

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

Companies that haven’t started working with their customers (more in my previous article about CX maturity) usually don't believe in customer research. The argument is simple and almost always somehow related to a popular anecdote: if Henry Ford asked his customers about their wants, they would say "We want faster horses". No car would ever be made, and that’s why we shouldn’t ask our customers for their solutions.

I want to show you two opposite views in regard to this anecdote, because I believe it makes better sense that way.


Customer’s POV: Do this, because it'll serve me better


Every customer will tell you things they dislike about your product or service. They would want it to be cheaper, faster, more reliable… And it makes sense. Everyone wants what is best for them. That’s why we shouldn’t expect solutions from our customers. We shouldn’t expect them to design for us.

Whether the anecdote is right or not, it does UX disservice. Especially if UX researchers don’t ask the right questions, the same as Henry Ford.

I would advise Mr. Ford to discover the needs of his customers. He would then realize that customers don’t need faster horses (solution). They need to move from point A to point B faster. And exactly this correct identification and isolation of customer’s needs inspires us to provide creative and diverse solutions.

And maybe, if Henry Ford asked the right questions, he wouldn’t come up with the car to replace horses, but invent a hovercraft or skateboard. And the world would look completely different now.


Business POV: If we only listen to customer’s solutions, we will go broke


Yes. If a company tried to satisfy their customers and invest heavily in their vision of perfect products, it would go broke. By this logic, we shouldn’t ask the customers about their ideas, because their ideas are biased and don’t make sense businesswise.

And yet, customers need to be heard a lot more. But the designer should not act only as the customers’ voice. The designer is there to solve problems.

A good UX designer is the person trying to achieve equilibrium between customers and what the business wants. Their task is not simply to address the customer's need, but also the context in which the solution is created – and that is the investing company.

Besides, UX design preaches that we should start with the customer. Or else we will get stuck in our own beliefs that don’t necessarily reflect in our customers.

At Lighting Beetle*, we push our designers to always look for solutions that address customers' problems, bring value to the business and are viable in the business context. This way sustainable and good solutions are made.

And how about you? Do you ask for customers’ solutions or needs?

Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

10 Commandments of Product Discovery

Lighting Talks* on CX in culture

User Interview Cheatsheet

Shift from building to experimenting

Minimum Viable Podcast #14: User experience in sound design

Idea Validation

Want better CX? Start building product teams

LB*Webinar: How to design desirable product portfolio

Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Think customers have solutions? This will change your mind

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‌‌

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‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

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Don’t miss out

Your journey
starts here

Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

10 Commandments of Product Discovery

Lighting Talks* on CX in culture

User Interview Cheatsheet

Shift from building to experimenting

Minimum Viable Podcast #14: User experience in sound design

Idea Validation

Want better CX? Start building product teams

LB*Webinar: How to design desirable product portfolio

Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Think customers have solutions? This will change your mind

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

Don’t miss out

Your journey starts here

Your journey
starts here