HOW TO DESIGN PRODUCTS THAT SOLVE CUSTOMER PROBLEMS

To create great products takes skill, intelligence, dedication and discipline. And it requires making bold choices. Innovating to achieve impact with a product makes us take big risks. And striking a balance between speed of delivery and quality of the execution is always tricky.

Understanding what to build and how well to build it can make a difference between coming up with a loveable product that scales or failing at solving a customer’s problem.

The first step of product thinking is to determine the problem that your users are looking to solve. That’s the reason that they will buy your product (as long as it actually solves the problem in a meaningful and valuable way).

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it gives an indication of the ways to understand customer problems better, come up with proposed solutions and why it all matter.

•  As a Product Manager, you should be managing a problem, not only its solution. This is because understanding a solution can only be as good as your understanding of the problem you’re addressing.
•  When you’re trying to build a product you can’t have it all. This is why people build Minimum Viable Products (MVP). MVP’s maximize validated learning but do so at the expense of lower quality. Minimum Loveable Products on the other hand, maximize love from early tribe members with the least effort.

Product conceptualization happens in many steps, one of which include:

Finding the right problem to solve by understanding the customer need. So when it comes to creating a solution, your product can be self-serving, fast, elegant, and cohesive so you create a great experience for your customers.

As product managers, we must, “Figure out how to build a product that forms a relationship for transaction and makes it convenient for both the business & consumer and solves the problem and needs of their consumers. When you remove the friction from a task with a tool, people will automatically use it more.” — Raymond Reddy, CEO of Ritual.

When solving customer problems, we must understand where the pain points of the customer are in their journey. For instance, you want to be able to plan in advance and sometimes even cook in advance so you could go to work with and come home to dinner that is healthy, that you cooked and put together ahead of time.

Problem: You want to plan meals ahead of time but need help with shopping, recipe hunting and planning.

Solution: Chefs Plate, “Cooking made easy with farm fresh ingredients and delicious recipes delivered right to your door”.

With the solution one can access to fresh food, eat healthy and do it all themselves while living their busy lives.

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