Using the Product Discovery Canvas, Part 3: Know Your Users and Customers
Fig 1, Product Discovery Canvas. (colorblindPICASO / Foter.com / CC BY-NC, Alex E. Proimos / Foter.com / CC BY-NC, cuirbouilli2 / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA)
Card SafeZone is a mobile app that informs users if it is safe to use their credit card or debit card for on premises purchases. We developed this statement as our Elevator Pitch during the previous post. Now let’s investigate Discovery Box 2 on the Product Discovery Canvas. Here we will develop answers to the questions, “Who the product targets” and “What value they will obtain”. We will then use the canvas to create create personas for the users and customers. We will conclude this post with an investigation into customer validation.
Discovery Box 2 – Know Your Users and Customers
Obsess over discovering your users and customers! As a product manager in an established organization or as a founder of a startup, you should have detailed focus on understanding the users and customers of your product and what they want. The customer’s experience with your product should be front and center of each and every discussion and decision regarding the product.
In Discovery Box 2, there are two questions that a product manager should have the team investigate:
- Who are you building this for?
- What value will they obtain?
The next step is to have the team create Personas, fictional characters representing different user types, that describe the users and customers, their values and their actions using the product. We identified and created a chart of four Personas for Card SafeZone: Consumer, Retailer, Banker and Sys Admin.
As a means of developing deeper user/customer understanding, have the team discuss Pirate Metrics, AARRR: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue and Referral. A brief discussion of these areas should foster their deeper understanding of the users and customers.
Deeper Dive
Customer Discovery is a broad topic that is thoroughly explored by renowned Silicon Valley startup expert Steve Blank. He is a recognized catalyst of the “Lean Startup” movement and author the break-through book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany. The book offers the sensible and proven four-step Customer Development process which helps reveal flaws in product and business plans and correct them before they become costly. The activity in Discovery Box 2 of customer feedback and testing customer assumptions is derivative of Steve Blank’s Customer Discovery process. His insights are invaluable to startup entrepreneurs and established organizations.
Examples
Download these Card SafeZone examples to guide your own product discovery: Personas for Card SafeZone and a Product Discovery Canvas for Card SafeZone. A blank Product Discovery Canvas is also available.
Next Post …
The next post continues using the Product Discovery Canvas for product discovery on “Card SafeZone” and moves into Discovery Box 3, 4 and 5 where we explore Goals, Success Measures and Timeframe for Discovery. See you next post.