instructor Hood's Key Ideas from Continuous Discovery Habits
by Teresa Torres

“It starts with defining a clear outcome – one that sets the scope for discovery.”

As a team, draw a shared experience map in five steps:

1. Turn each individual experience map into a collection of events and the sequential links that connect them.
2. Create a new map that encompasses all the group’s actions or events.
3. Combine similar events.
4. Redraw the links among events to capture any disruption in the flow of the experience, so that you support longer viewing spans. A disruption occurs, for example, when people can’t easily find the show they want.
5. Incorporate what the customer might be thinking, feeling or doing at each step.

To create branches that connect the remaining opportunities:

1. Group similar customer needs together on one level.
2. Look for the larger underlying need that encompasses this group of similar ones, and place that larger need above its cluster.
3. Seek similarities among the larger opportunities, and cluster those.
4. Repeat these steps until you identify a few top opportunities from which all the others descend.

1. Compare sets of similar customer needs by asking how many customers each one affects, and how often it affects them.
2. Consider how each opportunity positions you against your competitors.
3. Consider whether addressing the problem supports your vision, mission or strategic objective.
4. Focus on opportunities that lead to the greatest customer satisfaction.
5. Pick an opportunity.

When you evaluate your three chosen solutions, ask what assertions underlie them that must be either true or false for your solution to work. Look for five types of assumptions:

1. Desirability – Will your customers want to use your solution and gain value from it?
2. Viability – Does your solution create value for your business?
3. Feasibility – Is your solution technically workable?
4. Usability – Will customers understand how to employ your solution?
5. Ethical – Does your solution create any potentially harmful impact?

Start with small-scale tests that follow three rules:

1. Include a variety of people, but as few as possible. For example, survey 10 people from 10 different states.
2. Use product prototypes, one-question surveys or data mining you can complete in a day or two.
3. Simulate an experience that lets test participants behave realistically in accordance with your assumption. For example, to forestall vague responses, write surveys with short questions that require a yes or no answer.

When meeting with stakeholders:

1. State your desired outcome or goal.
2. Explain your interview process, guiding questions and the top customer opportunities you uncovered.
3. Show how and why you prioritized each decision.
4. Create empathy and understanding for the customer by sharing interview snapshots.
5. Show your solutions, and ask the stakeholders for their ideas.
6. Share your test results, and consider any feedback.