Finding the right problem to solve is crucial.
It can save you enormous time and money.
As an ex-founder of 3 tech startups, I’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience about building user-centric products.
Today, I’ll share my 2 step approach to outlining a concept for a problem into a clear and concrete problem idea.
I’ll also share 2 of my favorite templates for crafting a solid problem statement and discovery.
Step 1: Problem Statement Canvas
The first crucial step in the product development is clearly understanding the problem you aim to solve.
Here, you don’t think about the solution.
Our only goal is to develop a good and deep understanding of the problem.
With the help of the Problem Statement Canvas, you can dissect and analyze your target audience's core challenges.
You dig deeper into several key aspects of the problem:
- Context - When does the problem occur?
- Problem - What is the root cause of the problem?
- Alternatives - What do customers do now to fix the problem?
- Customers - Who has the problem most often?
- Emotional Impact - How does the customer feel?
- Quantifiable Impact - What is the measurable impact?
- Alternative Shortcomings - What are the “-” (disadvantages) of the alternatives?
By answering the questions above and filling in each section from the canvas, you will gain deeper insights into the problem, its pain points, potential customers, and its impact.
If you do this initial step well, you will get closer to tackling your user’s needs. You will understand the problem better, which is crucial for future product development.
Step 2: Lean Canvas
Now that you deeply understand the problem at hand, it’s time to distill our vision into a concise and actionable plan.
Here, you move from the problem to crafting our solution and the critical elements around it.
With the help of the Lean Canvas, inspired by the Lean Startup methodology, you create a one-page blueprint that guides you through thinking and describing your solution by identifying key aspects like:
- Problem - What are your customer’s top 3 problems?
- Existing Alt. - How are these problems solved today?
- Solution - What’s a possible solution for each problem?
- UVP - What does a single, clear, compelling message that turns an unaware visitor into an interested prospect look like?
- High-Level Concept - List your X for Y analogy (eg: Parknshare = Airbnb for parking spaces).
- Unfair Advantage - What can’t be easily copied or bought?
- Customer Segments - Who are your target customers and users?
- Early Adopters - What are the characteristics of your ideal customer?
- Key Metrics - What key numbers tell how your business is doing today?
- Channels - How are you gonna reach your customers?
- Cost Structure - What are your fixed and variable costs?
- Revenue Streams - What are the sources of revenue?
By filling in each section from the canvas, you will better understand your solution, which aims to solve the problem described in the Problem Statement Canvas.
📋 Recap:
- Problem Statement and Lean Canvases serve as a “live” reference point and guidance for your future product development.
- When you learn or understand something new about your users, problems, etc., you return to the Canvases and update them, keeping all recent learnings there.
- By filling out these two canvases, you will get more clarity on your problem idea and what you can do to tackle and execute it.