01 · Territory · Understand people and problems
Discovery
Are we solving a real problem for the right people?
Map32 skills
6 capabilitiesClick a tile to open a skill
- 01.1User understandingKnowing who the users are, what they are trying to get done, and the situations they are in. It is the shared picture that every later decision about the product leans on.
- 01.2User researchMethods for learning directly from users: talking to them, watching them and asking them at scale. The aim is reliable evidence, gathered cheaply and often.
- 01.3Problem identificationPinning down what the problem actually is, how much it hurts, and what causes it. A clearly stated problem is half of a good solution.
- 01.4Market researchUnderstanding the market around the product: competitors, alternatives, trends and size. It puts a user problem in the context of what already exists.
- 01.5Opportunity validationTesting whether an opportunity is real before investing in it. Cheap experiments that produce evidence instead of opinions.
- 01.6Domain understandingKnowing the industry the product lives in: how work gets done, the language people use, the rules and the people involved.
About Discovery
01Discovery is the work of finding out what is actually going on before deciding what to build. Who has the problem, how often, how badly, and what they do about it today. A product engineer who can do some of this directly writes better code for the right reason, cuts features that nobody needs, and notices when a request is a symptom of something else.
What a product engineer should be able to do here
Independently investigate an opportunity and produce an evidence-backed explanation of the problem, who experiences it, and why it deserves attention.