Product Discovery
Jacob Duval
•
May 27, 2025
Intro
This article dives into the basics of product discovery, a fundamental part of product management. Learning how to correctly do product discovery will immediately put you ahead of most companies. If you embrace product discovery as a core part of your culture, then the sky is the limit.
What is Product Discovery?
Product discovery is the process of finding out what your customers need before you build anything. It's about asking questions, listening to feedback, and testing ideas to make sure you're creating something people actually want.
Think of it as doing your homework before taking a test. When you skip product discovery, you risk building things nobody wants to use. This wastes time and money, and leaves everyone feeling frustrated.
Why Product Discovery Matters
Many teams jump straight into building products without checking if anyone wants them. They spend months working on features that end up unused. This happens because they skip the discovery step.
Good product discovery helps you understand what problems are worth solving for your customers. Not every problem needs a solution, and not every solution is worth building.
With discovery we can build confidence in our decisions. With evidence from your discovery work, you can move forward knowing you're on the right track.
Getting access to customers
Discovery is not possible without talking to people. We are of the opinion that broad survey-style discovery is vastly inferior to speaking to people face to face. In order to start discovering your (current or future) customers problems, you first need to ask yourself if there are any barriers preventing you from talking to them. Those barriers may be technology, culture, process, etc.
There may be people inside your organization who control those barriers, and you will need to get alignment with them in order to access the people you need to speak to.
If you can't get access to current customers, you may be able to speak to prospective customers as part of the sales process. If that doesn't work, you may be able to speak to lost deals or churned customers.
If all else fails, you will need to build your own pipeline, and find people within your target market that you can speak to.
The Right Way to Do Product Discovery
Most product teams ask customers what they want, show them mockups and ask if they'd use them, and believe what people say they'll do in the future. This leads to building products nobody uses.
The truth is people are nice. They don't want to hurt your feelings. When you show them your idea and ask if they like it, they'll say yes even if they'd never use it.
Good product discovery isn't about pitching your ideas and collecting compliments. It's about learning the truth about your customers' lives, problems, and needs before you've invested in a solution.
The Right Way to Do Product Discovery
The Mom Test gives us a better way to learn what customers actually need.
Talk about their life, not your idea
Don't start by explaining your product. Instead, ask about their current workflows, frustrations, and how they solve problems today. When you talk about your idea first, you've already biased them to tell you what you want to hear.
Ask about past behavior, not future intentions
"Would you use this?" is a useless question. People overestimate what they'll do in the future. Instead ask "How do you solve this problem today?" or "When was the last time you encountered this issue?" Past behavior predicts future behavior.
Look for specifics and stories, not generalities
When someone says "I usually" or "I typically" they're often telling you what they wish they did, not what they actually do. Push for specific examples: "Tell me about the last time that happened" gets you truth. General statements get you wishful thinking.
Examples of good discovery questions
The quality of your discovery depends entirely on the questions you ask. Here are examples of bad questions that fail the Mom Test, and better alternatives that pass it:
Bad: "Do you think this is a good idea?"
This question begs for a compliment, not insight. Your mom (and most people) will say yes to be nice.
Better: "Talk me through how you handle this task today."
This reveals their actual workflow and pain points without biasing them with your solution.
Bad: "Would you pay for something that does X?"
People overestimate their willingness to pay in hypothetical situations.
Better: "What have you already tried to solve this problem? Did you pay for any of those solutions?"
This tells you if the problem is painful enough that they've spent money to fix it.
Bad: "What features would you want in a product like this?"
This puts them in solution mode rather than helping you understand their problem.
Better: "What's the hardest part about doing this task right now?"
This reveals actual pain points that might be worth solving.
Signs You're Getting Good Discovery Data
They're talking more than you are
In good discovery, you ask short questions and get long answers. If you're doing most of the talking, you're pitching, not learning.
You hear specific details and stories
When people share detailed examples from their actual experience, you're getting real data. "Last Tuesday I spent three hours trying to reconcile our inventory spreadsheets" is gold compared to "I sometimes have trouble with inventory."
You hear unexpected information
If everything you hear confirms what you already thought, you're probably asking leading questions. Good discovery should surprise you and challenge your assumptions.
They mention concrete constraints
When people tell you about budget limitations, approval processes, or technical constraints they face, you're getting honest insights into their reality. These constraints often kill products that looked good on paper.
How we do discovery at Rough
Our target customer is software companies between 20-120 staff with either no product team or only one or two product people. Rough is org-wide, meaning that we need to talk to many different people inside a company to get a good idea of their problems.
That said, we ask one question in all of our discovery conversations in order to get started.
"Can you walk me through how a feature goes from in someones head, to on production"
This question works for all roles, and let's us focus on where the pain points are depending on who we're talking to. It's narrow enough that we don't waste the persons time, but broad enough that we can uncover problems that we might not be aware of.
Next Steps
If you have questions about discovery, feel free to reach out to us. We always love talking about product and we're happy to fill in gaps that we've missed here.
Otherwise, your next steps are to put this in action. Good product discovery is a skill, and you probably won't nail your first interview. Get one in your calendar, then another, then another. Eventually this skill will become second nature and you'll wonder how you ever built products without it.
We always try to promote getting everyone involved in product decisions. It's not enough for one person to know how to do product discovery. If other people are interested in this process, include them. If people inside your company are passionate about solving problems, nurture those feelings and they will grow into something amazing.
