Continuous discovery habits, such as customer interviews, experiments, and co-creation, are key to creating innovative, customer-centric products that drive business value.

Continuous discovery habits are a structured set of practices that product teams can adopt to regularly engage with their customers. This engagement is crucial in understanding the needs, desires, and pain points of the customers, which in turn aids in generating solutions that effectively address these needs. One of the core practices of continuous discovery habits is interviewing customers. This involves having regular touchpoints with customers, ideally on a weekly basis, to gain insights into their experiences, preferences, and challenges. For instance, a product team at a tech company might conduct weekly interviews with a diverse set of users to understand how they interact with their product, what features they find most useful, and where they encounter difficulties. Another key practice is conducting experiments. This involves identifying assumptions behind ideas and testing them to quickly discard what's not working and iterate on what is. For example, a product team might run A/B tests on different versions of a feature to see which one resonates more with users. Co-creating with customers is another important habit. This involves involving customers in the ideation and development process, ensuring that the solutions created are not only innovative but also customer-centric. For instance, a product team might invite a group of customers to a brainstorming session to generate ideas for a new feature or service. These practices, when adopted and implemented consistently, can lead to the creation of products that not only meet customer needs but also drive business value.

Supercharged ideation is a cyclical process of individual creativity and team collaboration, pushing for quantity to ultimately achieve quality in problem-solving.

Supercharged ideation is a method that encourages the generation of a large number of diverse and original ideas to address a specific problem or opportunity. This process is not a one-time event, but a cycle of individual idea generation, sharing these ideas with the team, and repeating these steps until a sufficient number of ideas are generated. The process begins with individual ideation, where each team member independently generates as many ideas as possible. This approach leverages the brain's innate ability to incubate a problem and come up with diverse solutions. Research shows that the most original ideas often come towards the end of the ideation session, pushing past the initial, obvious solutions. Sharing ideas across the team is the next crucial step. This can be done in real-time meetings or asynchronously through digital chat channels. The sharing process allows team members to ask questions, provide feedback, and build upon each other's ideas. This collaborative process often leads to the generation of even more diverse and original ideas. The cycle of individual ideation and team sharing is repeated until the team has generated between 15 and 20 ideas for the target opportunity. This repetition is crucial as research shows that the first ideas are rarely the best ones. The goal is to push the team's creative output to find more diverse and original ideas. For instance, a study by Leigh Thompson, a professor at Kellogg School of Management, found that "creative teams know that quantity is the best predictor of quality." This supports the supercharged ideation process, emphasizing the importance of generating a large number of ideas to uncover the best solutions.

Dot-voting is a group evaluation method that ensures focus on the most promising ideas that directly address the target opportunity.

Evaluating ideas is a crucial step in the process of product discovery. It involves assessing the generated ideas to determine which ones best address the target opportunity. This process begins by asking if each idea solves the target opportunity. It's acceptable if an idea only partially solves the opportunity, but it's important to weed out ideas that don't address the opportunity at all. The next step is dot-voting, a simple method that facilitates group evaluation. Research indicates that while individuals are better at generating ideas, groups are more effective at evaluating them. In dot-voting, each team member is allotted three votes. The only criteria for voting should be how well the idea addresses the target opportunity. The aim is not to vote for the most attractive or easiest ideas, but the ones that best solve the problem at hand. Each person can assign their votes however they please, either placing all three votes on one idea or voting for three different ideas. After voting, the top three ideas that received the most votes are selected. This may require several rounds of dot-voting. If there's a clear winner after any voting round, it's set aside as one of the three to move forward. This process ensures that the team focuses on the most promising ideas that directly address the target opportunity.

Uncovering hidden assumptions can prevent potential blind spots and mitigate risks, leading to more effective solutions.

Identifying hidden assumptions is a crucial part of the discovery process. It involves uncovering the underlying beliefs or suppositions that are often taken for granted in the development of an idea. These assumptions can act as blind spots, potentially leading to negative impacts on the proposed solutions if not identified and addressed early on. For instance, consider a story about an affordable housing project in Portland, Oregon. The city invested millions of dollars into a condominium building designed to help displaced families return to their neighborhood. However, the project faced backlash as it was based on the assumption that these families wanted to return to their old neighborhood. This assumption, which turned out to be false, led to a negative impact on the project. Another example is a product team developing a new feature for a streaming service. The team assumed that subscribers would be okay with the service sharing viewership data with local channels. However, this assumption, if not tested and validated, could lead to potential backlash from subscribers concerned about their privacy. These examples highlight the importance of identifying and testing assumptions. One effective method for doing this is assumption mapping, a technique designed by David J. Bland. This involves evaluating each assumption based on the evidence supporting it and its importance to the success of the idea. The assumptions that carry the most risk, known as "leap of faith" assumptions, are then prioritized for testing. This process helps to uncover potential blind spots and mitigate risks, leading to more effective and successful solutions.

Visualizing the customer journey is a dynamic process that provides deep insights into customer experiences, enabling the creation of improved products and services.

Visualizing the customer journey is a crucial process that involves creating a graphic representation of the customer's interaction with a product or service. This process is not just about mapping out the steps a customer takes, but also about understanding their thoughts, feelings, and actions at each step. For instance, a team working on a streaming service might start by asking, "How do consumers entertain themselves with video?" They would then map out the customer's journey, from hearing about a new show, discussing it with others, searching or browsing for it, to finally watching it. This map would also include potential obstacles or challenges the customer might face, such as not being able to find the show or experiencing technical difficulties. The team would then add context to each step, capturing the customer's thoughts, feelings, and actions. For example, they might note that customers feel frustrated when they can't find a show they've heard about, or that they feel excited when they discover a new series. This visual representation of the customer journey is not static. It should evolve as the team learns more about their customers. For example, they might discover that customers often abandon their search for a show if they can't find it within a few minutes, and update their map to reflect this. By visualizing the customer journey, teams can gain a deeper understanding of their customers' experiences, identify opportunities for improvement, and ultimately create products or services that better meet their customers' needs.

Shifting from an output-focused to an outcome-focused perspective is essential for a successful product trio.

Shifting from an output-focused to an outcome-focused perspective is essential for a successful product trio, a product manager, a designer, and a software engineer working together to develop products for their customers. An outcome focus grants more autonomy and room for exploration, steering away from restrictive traction metrics except in two cases: with junior teams needing optimization experience, and when the traction metric is crucial to an already mature product. Product outcomes should result from a two-way negotiation between the product leader and the product trio. The product leader communicates the organization's overall business view and outlines an appropriate product outcome, rather than dictating solutions. This allows the team to adjust strategies, resources, and commitments to align with the outcome. If the outcome is challenging, the team can start with a learning goal (e.g., discovering opportunities) before shifting to a performance goal (e.g., increasing engagement by 10%). When a product trio is assigned an outcome for the first time, they require time to understand what moves the metric. Therefore, maintaining a stable product trio working on the same outcome over time is essential to avoid a learning tax when changing the team or outcome. Participation in setting their outcomes is found to lead to better team performance. Finally, while S.M.A.R.T. goals play a role, it is acceptable to start with a learning goal and work towards a performance goal. For teams assigned to deliver outputs without considering outcomes, understanding the business context and defining how an initiative impacts a product outcome is crucial.

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Continuous Discovery Habits - Book Summary (2024)

Teresa Torres

Continuous Discovery Habits provides a structured and sustainable approach to product discovery, teaching teams how to continuously engage with customers, conduct small research activities, and pursue desired business outcomes. It offers practical habits to help teams understand customer needs, generate creative solutions, test assumptions, and measure impact, ultimately leading to better product decisions and increased chances of success.

Key Ideas

In the book "Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value," the Teresa Torres shares her journey in product design, starting as a junior designer at HighWire Press, facing initial failures, and slowly learning to involve clients in the design process. The key message is to start small, iterate, and continuously discover by getting close to the customers and understanding their needs.

One of the main strategies is forming a cross-functional 'trio' consisting of a product manager, designer, and engineer, which can dynamically change according to the project. This team consults on key decisions, continuously iterating and improving the product based on customer feedback. The author stresses the importance of 'keystone habits', like regular exercise or making your bed, that lead to the adoption of other good habits. For product teams, continuous interviewing of customers is identified as a keystone habit.

Also, start working backwards when tasked with a specific solution, considering how the solution would benefit the customer and the business, and thereby uncovering implied opportunities. Other strategies involve story mapping to identify assumptions and post-release impact reviews with stakeholders. Regular retrospectives with the trio to reflect and improve on the discovery process are also encouraged.

The author emphasizes the power of individual agency and the capacity for a single person to effect change, regardless of the company's culture or norms. They advise taking a continuous-improvement approach, iterating, and evolving processes based on learnings and feedback. The underlying principle is that, to do good design work, one must get close to the customer.

Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres provides a structured and sustainable approach to product discovery. It emphasizes the importance of continuous customer engagement, team collaboration, and outcome-oriented thinking. The book offers practical habits and techniques to help product teams make informed decisions, create customer value, and drive business outcomes.

10 Actions to Implement Learnings:

Shift to an Outcome Mindset: Instead of focusing on outputs (features, products), focus on outcomes (business results, customer value). This shift in mindset can lead to more effective product decisions.
Engage with Customers Weekly: Regular customer engagement is crucial. Aim for at least weekly touchpoints to infuse daily decisions with customer input.
Involve the Whole Team: The team building the product should be involved in the discovery process. This includes engineers, designers, and product managers.
Conduct Small Research Activities: Regular, small-scale research activities can provide quick insights and help teams adapt to changes faster.
Visualize What You Know: Use tools like opportunity solution trees to visualize your understanding of customer needs and potential solutions.
Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions: Focus on identifying and prioritizing customer problems and opportunities before jumping to solutions.
Supercharge Ideation: Encourage the generation of a large number of ideas. Quantity often leads to quality in brainstorming sessions.
Identify Hidden Assumptions: Every idea comes with assumptions. Identifying and testing these assumptions can prevent costly mistakes.
Measure Impact: Regularly measure the impact of your work to ensure it's driving the desired outcomes.
Show Your Work: Regularly share your discovery work with stakeholders. This transparency can lead to better conversations and decision-making.