Digital product discovery process for product owners [Guide]

Why product discovery is a must

You have this genius idea of a digital product, but you don’t know how to actually start working on it. We bet you are reading a dozen articles that are all focused on how you should build your product or what technology to use, but we want to show you a different perspective. 

Well, you need product discovery. Before jumping into the development of your product and working on budgets and timelines, you have to know your product. Otherwise, it’s not going to work.

A product discovery process is all about figuring out if your idea can actually be a viable and profitable product by identifying and solving your main public’s issue. Because that’s what’s going to sell. 

What is product discovery?

Product discovery means linking customers, business, and technology in order to create the best solution. 

A product discovery process is definitely not a one-time thing. You have to know that there are 2 types of product discovery: The first one is initial product discovery, which represents the process of getting to know your market. There are 4 main questions you should be able to clearly answer during this phase: 

1. What problem is our digital product solving?
2. Who are we solving it for?
3. What’s the value of our product for our users?
4. How does our product fit into our target market?

And continuous product discovery, which is the continuous research and anticipation of your users’ issues and wishes, so you can keep giving them the best experience on your platform.

Product discovery process

In order to start the product discovery process, you have to follow some steps alongside your team. So, let’s see which of the product discovery steps you should go through:

1. Market Research

First, you’ll want to dive into thorough market research. This means understanding your target market, analysing your competitors, and identifying the market’s need for such a product. This research is a helpful process for defining your product’s position and ensuring you’re solving an actual problem in order to differentiate from the rest.

2. User Research

Next up is user research, where you get to know your potential users inside and out. Here, we recommend you hold interviews, launch surveys, or even go through forums like Reddit or Quora and search for your users’ raw opinions on the issue your product solves. You have to understand their needs, behaviours, and pain points in order to resonate with your audience.

3. Ideation and Hypothesis

This is the fun part—where the ideas start running in. You’ll come up with feature ideas, branding concepts, and even monetization strategies. You’ll also develop and validate product hypotheses—these are assumptions about your product that you can test and refine.

4. Feature Prioritization

With so many ideas on the table, it’s time to prioritise. Not all features can make it into the first release, so you’ll need to decide which ones are a must. Techniques like the RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) scoring model can help objectively prioritise features based on their potential value and feasibility.

5. Prototyping and Testing

Creating prototypes and wireframes is an essential part of visualising how your product will work. Keep in mind that in order to properly visualise your product, you need a UI/UX oriented design – it’s a must to put yourself in the shoes of your user and ensure that all menus and functionalities are intuitive. See how to do that in our previous article.  

6. Defining Technical Requirements

Finally, you’ll need to outline the technical requirements. This includes choosing the right technology stack (see ours), defining the infrastructure, and identifying any third-party services you might need.

7. Workshops

Workshops are extremely helpful when it comes to developing a solid foundation for your digital product, as they’re the perfect way to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned and that every aspect of the discovery process is transparent and well-documented.

Who should be involved in the product discovery process?

There are 3 main people that must be involved in the product discovery process: 

1. The Product Manager – to evaluate the market viability of the product.

2. The Product Designer – to design the product according to the evaluation.

3. The Lead Engineer – to develop the functionalities and features of the product.

You might be surprised by the positive outcome of your product discovery journey when you’re implementing a cross-functional team by gathering people from different departments.

Product discovery deliverables

If you’re doing it right, then by the end of your product discovery process, you should not only have a clear view of your digital product but also quite a handful of deliverables. These can be:

• A project roadmap;
• A user story map;
• Technical documentation and design;
• A test plan;
• A clear (ish) timeline and and estimated cost
• Proposed team structure for product development;
• A risk mitigation plan.

Product discovery workshop at BEECODED

To support product owners, we have put our knowledge and expertise into a comprehensive and fun product discovery workshop in order to establish a realistic foundation for your digital product. Let’s see what the MAVEN is about.

As we said, the MAVEN workshop is about getting laser-focused clarity and a complete overview of how your MVP (minimum viable product) should look, function, and behave in the real world.

By the time you finish this workshop, you’ll already have mapped out:

• Short-term & Long-term goals for your product;
• The Empathy Map;
• Your User Persona;
• Your User Story Map;
• Your Feature canvas;
• Your Product Vision Board;
• Your S.M.A.R.T. Indicators;

Contact us to get the MAVEN workshop and bring your product ideas to life.

We’ll define, draw, and provide you with the blueprint for a highly-scalable, maintainable, and solid product architecture. Everything from server infrastructure to the connection of all components within your ecosystem is included.

Ready to bring your vision to life? Let’s discuss your project!