How do you know if you have a problem?

If you move to Ideation before the Discovery phase, you cannot be sure you are solving the right problem

Moving straight to product design without defining the problem risks providing a solution that nobody needs — and if they don’t need it, they’re unlikely to use it! Here is a recommendation for a book that teaches how to discover and define real problems, and ask the right questions to uncover hidden needs.

I was in a hackathon ideation session earlier, and I LOVE ideation sessions, but this one got my hackles up from the get-go.

We were asked to start generating ideas.

Before anyone told us what the problems were.

I pulled the organiser aside and said, “Over 90% of products fail due to lack of market need. How can I come up with ideas if I don’t know what the problems are?”

“Well, you’re a user too, aren’t you?”

True, and that’s what I did: generate ideas based on my own problems.

It’s what at least 90% of solution-generators do every day, who go on to produce beautiful products that fail in the market because their beautiful product solves an imaginary problem.

I was a late addition to the attendance list, and confirmed that this was a training session about the ideation process, rather than an actual real-life attempt to solve real-life problems, but we definitely agreed that, next time, we will include the real process of developing winning solutions:

You find real people

who have an actual problem

and you ask them about it.

I’m going to plug a book that I had no hand in creating and beg you to read it, and then read it again.

The Mom Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick.

I read it at least every year. I recommend that you do, too.

On behalf of users

everywhere.