How to reduce risks and build the right product?
Why do some companies fail and others don’t? Is it possible to predict what people want so the success rate can be increased?
These are only a few of the questions that show up when you analyze business and products of success. In this article, you will discover how to take decisions capable of reducing the risks and building the right product.
About the lessons that brought us to this moment
As an entrepreneur or an aspiring business owner, there is no doubt that, just like us, you’re willing to run the extra mile of the pains and pleasures that come with the role. Venturing into tech demands the understanding of a new digital ecosystem that, during the last decade, was marked by a disruptive movement of rising connectivity, changes in client preferences, and newer and more accessible technologies. On one hand, we live in an era surrounded by opportunities that shape and redesign industries, on the other the challenges are bigger than ever.
In the last few years, we’ve seen many passionate entrepreneurs dazzled by the potential of their projects and the promises of this innovation cycle. Most of these products, however, didn’t survive the test of the market. Can you imagine dedicating hundreds of hours of work, dozens of days, and thousands of dollars in investment in a project that simply doesn’t succeed? Unfortunately, this is the reality for many. It’s not unusual to find news about companies that run out of business and this is something to, rightfully, worry about.
During our first years working with projects in the tech market, we questioned the causes that led these businesses to fail. The context we found motivated us to seek a way to reduce the risks to our clients and guide them toward creating the right product. But first, it was necessary to understand: Why does a business fail?
Businesses fail because they solve the wrong problems.
Solving problems that don’t really matter to the clients, instead of their real needs, is one of the main causes for a business to go under.
Our first learning about successful products was: it is critical to identify and solve the right problems. Otherwise, you will have a solution without a problem in sight. If you want to make strategic decisions, reduce risks and build the right product, the first step is to forget about solutions and focus on identifying the right problems.
You might be asking yourself: How to solve the right problem?
Our experience shows that identifying the right problem and knowing what the user needs is possible through research. It reduces uncertainty, excludes decisions taken based on suppositions, and focuses the efforts on a more successful outcome. When decisions are made based on suppositions and guesses, the failure rate is not even close to a fifty-fifty situation, your odds will be much more comparable to the lottery or any other gambling game, considerably raising the risks of the project.
Research guides us toward the paths of greater potential.
It’s unlikely that your product will be able to fulfill the needs of your client if it is solely based on feature sheets and top-down decisions, without understanding the user.
Planned research leads to valuable data, information, and insights, capable of illustrating the ecosystem in which the product will perform and predicting the best way to employ your resources, combining both business and user necessities.
Deeply understanding the problem before solving it.
We learned and validated that investigating the user’s problem and diving into the business ecosystem can be efficiently done through the Discovery Journey.
At Espresso Labs, the Discovery Journey is composed of a series of steps focused on reducing the uncertainty of the digital product by acquiring data and information related to problems that are worth solving and solutions that are worth building.
What is the Discovery Journey’s goal?
The Discovery goal is to find the what and the why, always based on user and business necessities, building the right product instead of a simple working product.
A consistent product design process started with research and consolidated in a product roadmap can be the difference between a great and an ordinary product.
HOW ESPRESSO LABS CAN HELP INCREASE THE SUCCESS RATE OF YOUR DIGITAL PRODUCT?
Understanding what your clients need, and deeply empathizing with their journey, is what allows us to find the problems that genuinely must be solved.
The deliverables made by our Product Design team are the key to reducing risks and building the right product, capable of generating growth for the business, changes to the world, and real upgrades in people’s lives.
If you want to make better strategic decisions, reduce risks and build the right product: Come talk to us, we want to know more about your project.
