"What problem are we really trying to solve here?"

Your role as a designer is critical in avoiding bias, questioning assumptions, and making sure the user’s jobs, pains, and desired outcomes are fully understood. Only then can you design, test, and iterate a solution before investment is made.

This diligence is crucial, as shown in a recent Pendo feature adoption report based on aggregation of anonymised product usage data, which states that 80% of features in the average software product are rarely or never used. These underutilised features likely weren't well-aligned with genuine market needs, often resulting from insufficient discovery and research.

The challenge, however, is that gaining a broad understanding of market needs and gathering meaningful customer feedback can be difficult.

The reality of product discovery

Too often, internal conversations about where focus areas arise take too much time and energy. Coordinating with everyone on the team is hard enough due to availability, and speaking with the same willing customers over and over again doesn’t give you a broader feedback base.

But why wait and rely on others when the information already exists within your company? Instead, we should be synthesising feedback from user research interviews, usability tests, and product discovery calls that are already happening. These interactions provide a goldmine of information and should be leveraged to their fullest potential.

Efficient discovery leads to informed Decisions

Rather than manually gathering feedback and trying to connect the dots, automated tools can help synthesise all this existing data, significantly speeding up the process. This helps to know exactly "who" needs to be engaged based on previous insights captured during sales and customer interactions. Or being able to quickly evaluate existing hypotheses and generate new ones based on patterns and trends in the data already collected.

This level of efficiency not only accelerates product discovery but also ensures that it’s driven by real, actionable insights rather than assumptions. What if you could condense a week’s worth of product discovery effort into just three hours? By using tools that provide a comprehensive overview of customer feedback and broader market trends, designers can focus on ensuring nothing is missed—maximising the impact of every design iteration.

Make your product research count

Without this broader context, it’s easy to miss what matters most. Don’t let poor assumptions drive your product development. Arm yourself with a streamlined approach to product discovery and ensure your research efforts lead to impactful outcomes.