Hello there,
Welcome to day 2!
Today, let's talk about some waves in UX research that you can ride to success...🏄🏽
Q: What's changing about UX Research?
Yesterday, I said that you will always be fighting the clock. ⏰🤺
I said that it's tough to keep up with the users' changing perspectives 💆🏾♀️ and behaviors 🤷🏾♀️.
But it's not all bad news.
Some trends are changing everything.
The 🌠🌠🌠 are aligned, and now is the time to get into UX research.
Today, I want to talk about these trends you can ride to success in your organization.
🌊 The Wave of "Product Discovery"
In 2007, Marty Cagan, a product consultant with a user-centric mindset, coined the term product discovery to help product managers realize their real job was discovery, not only delivery.
Discovery is the research work that helps us "build the right thing." The design and coding work that goes into "building the thing right" is delivery.
Cagan attacked the idea that product managers should invent "requirements" for product teams without research. The problem is that some "requirements" aren't well-researched. The lack of discovery before design work can cause lots of issues for designers (things like getting stuck in the Delivery Trap)
His 2007 book, Inspired, gave concrete ways for teams to run a Discovery Track alongside the Delivery Track.
Designers came to a similar realization a few years before in 2005, when the Double Diamond helped us realize that our real job was discovering problems, not only delivering solutions.
Product discovery helps reduce risk around product decisions and helps the whole team decide what gets built. It's the mindset of UX research but in lightweight research activities shared by the entire team.
In 2021, Teresa Torres, another user-minded product leader, released a book called Continuous Discovery Habits, giving teams even more reasons to start doing discovery alongside delivery work.
If product discovery seems familiar, that's because product discovery is the exploratory side of UX research under a new name owned by the product manager.
Understanding the product leader's perspective is essential because UX Researchers and designers usually sit under the product leader in the org chart. Research usually reports to product leadership. With the term "product discovery," this reality is just more explicit.
Before product discovery, nobody wanted to give designers time for research. Product leadership often saw research as a distraction from building stuff, and designers had to keep those expensive engineers busy coding design files.
Software companies are growing up 👶🏼→👴🏻 (awwwww). Today, if you don't design for the user, the company will fail (ask Jeff Bezos how his 🔥 phone is going).
Why should designers care?
I see the popularity of product discovery as a huge opportunity for a designer/researcher because product leadership suddenly cares about UX research. They care because they feel ownership for it.
Product discovery influencers like Teresa Torres and Tim Herbig emphasize that product discovery is for the whole team. In 2017, Marty Cagan re-defined product discovery as more than product management. He defined it as a role for "product leaders" and included design as an equal partner in the second edition of Inspired.
Software companies realize that research or "discovery" is needed to "design the right thing." Before, companies only cared that you "designed the thing right."
Product discovery is essentially the mentality of UX research but with one crucial difference: product leaders feel more attached to the outcomes when you call it "product discovery."
"Can we get more budget for discovery?" might work better on a product lead than "Can we get more budget for research?"
I've noticed that product managers who get into product discovery suddenly start to care more about the user's perspective and especially UX research methods.
Product discovery seeks to democratize research for the whole product team, and you can use that to start a movement.
Will you be the one to take product discovery to your company?
TL;DR: Product discovery is a product management concept that democratizes and creates momentum for UX research in product teams, and you can harness the term to get more time to do UX research for your product.
Curious about the next two waves?
🌊 The Wave of ResearchOps
🌊 The Wave of Knowledge Management Tools
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