What is the role of Product Discovery in mobile app development?

What does Product Discovery entail? How does it contribute to mobile app development? What steps are involved in the Product Discovery process? Why is it essential?

  • What is the role of Product Discovery in mobile app development?
    1. Feature Strategy
    2. Development Strategy
  • Which feature should be prioritized over others?
  • What are Offensive features?
  • What are Defensive features?
  • Should every mobile app undergo a Product Discovery phase?
  • When should Product Discovery ideally be undertaken in the development cycle?
  • Who are the key participants in Product Discovery?
  • Proven methods for Product Discovery.
  • To wrap things up

Have you ever wondered why some mobile apps achieve success while others vanish from the market? Beyond good luck, there are specific techniques that help businesses create custom mobile apps.

Product Discovery is a powerful technique that not only identifies target users but also empowers teams to determine the essential features needed to create an appealing mobile app. It’s a key factor that separates successful apps from the rest, giving teams a sense of confidence and capability.

Just as a factory produces hardware, a software company develops digital products. Many product management concepts are similar in both realms.

If you’re a Business or Product Owner, this article can be useful for gaining a deeper understanding of Product Discovery.

What is the role of Product Discovery in mobile app development?

In custom mobile app development, Product Discovery is the first step in the development journey. It ensures that you deeply understand your target audience and that your app addresses a market need, making your audience feel valued and integral to the app’s success.

The essence of Product Discovery lies in the continuous testing of solutions and ideas and the learning process that follows. This commitment to understanding and meeting users’ needs is what makes a dedicated team effective in implementing your ideas.

Product Discovery is not mandatory, but does it make sense to begin expensive development without thorough research?

According to the Theory of Quality Management, there is the ‘1:10:100 rule,’ which emphasizes that prevention costs less than correction and correction costs less than failure. This rule enlightens us about the cost-effectiveness of Product Discovery.

It’s more practical to invest $1 at the project’s outset than to spend $10 fixing mistakes during development, not to mention $100 post-launch.

Prevention is more sensible than correction. Product Discovery costs you nothing compared to launching a useless application.

In essence, Product Discovery is the phase in which we focus on creating the right thing rather than just creating it correctly.

What does the Product Discovery process look like?

There are numerous approaches to Product Discovery, and each one should be customized to fit your specific business needs.

We typically divide it into two broad strategies: feature strategy and development strategy.

Feature Strategy.

  • Core Value Proposition (Prop): What fundamental value does the product offer, and how does it address the main problem?
  • Hook: Which Feature can effectively convey this core value and allure users within the mobile app?
  • Time to Value: How quickly can users experience the product’s value?
  • Stickiness: Why will customers continue using the product? What mechanisms ensure user retention?
    Development Strategy.
  • Prototyping: What are the use case stories we are solving? What would the complete feature flow look like ideally? What will be the flow for Version 1?
  • Prioritization. Which features need to be implemented initially?
  • Planning. What is the scope of our Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Feature Strategy.

Let me explain the concept through two examples first :

Application to Twitter:

  1. Core Value Prop: Connect with people and stay updated on current events instantly.
    Explanation: Twitter allows users to follow others, share updates, and get real-time information on various topics.
  2. Hook: Follow Elon Musk, Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi etc.
    Explanation: Twitter’s hook is simple, and its immediate feed of updates from followed accounts, trending topics, and news is evident.
  3. Time to Value: Quick setup and instant access to a personalized feed.
    Explanation: Creating an account and following a few accounts takes minutes. Users immediately see tweets and updates relevant to their interests.
  4. Stickiness: Continuous updates, notifications, and the addictive nature of real-time engagement.
    Explanation: Users keep returning to Twitter due to constant notifications, trending topics, and the engagement of real-time interactions. The platform’s simplicity and the ability to quickly consume content make it highly sticky. As you gain followers or want to fight for your ideas, you start seeing who is liking them.
    Application to Naukri.com:
  5. Core Value Prop: Find the best job opportunities and advance your career.
    Explanation: Naukri.com connects job seekers with employers, providing a platform to search and apply for jobs, upload resumes, and get noticed by recruiters.
  6. Hook: Find your dream job or Find your employee at the lowest salary.
    Explanation: Naukri.com’s hook is straightforward and resonates with its users’ and employers’ primary goals—securing employment.
  7. Time to Value: Realizing value takes a significant amount of time, whether for a job seeker or an employer.
    Explanation: Users can quickly sign up, create a profile, and start browsing job listings, making the initial experience rewarding and valuable.
  8. Stickiness: Job alerts, resume views by recruiters, and career-related notifications.
    Explanation: Naukri.com keeps users engaged through regular job alerts, notifications about who viewed their resume, and career advice. The continuous feedback loop and updates ensure users keep returning to the platform.

Here, we’d like to discuss the time to value, which plays a crucial role in shaping your marketing strategy.

For example, Twitter has a very rapid time to value compared to Naukri.com. It’s quick to log into Twitter and set up a profile, whereas finding a job or hiring an employee through Naukri.com takes considerably longer.

So, Twitter’s marketing strategy has become viral.

We chose the Naukri example because it’s particularly intriguing.

It has relied on virality for job seekers, whereas for employers, it has relied on face-to-face salespeople.

Products are designed to align with channels; channels do not conform to products.

Please take a moment to reflect on this statement because it holds significant importance.

Products are designed to align with channels, not the other way around. The rationale behind this is that channels set their own rules to which products must adhere.

For instance,

  • Facebook establishes guidelines for the content and posts that appear in users’ feeds, as well as the types of activities permitted through their APIs. They also control the selection and pricing of advertisements.
  • Google determines the content displayed in its top ten search results and dictates their appearance. They also manage the advertisements shown and the pricing rules governing them.
  • Email services like Gmail decide what constitutes spam, how promotional emails are categorized, and the formatting requirements for email content.
  • We could apply this to every significant distribution channel available.

You have control over your product but not over the channel.

You must adjust the elements within your control to align with those beyond your control.

What are some common product elements that align with various channel categories?

Virality. For virality to excel as a high-ceiling channel, a product must have:

  • Rapid Time To Value: Virality benefits from short viral cycles.
  • Broad Value Proposition: The product’s value proposition should appeal to a significant portion of a user’s network (branching factor).
  • Network Effect: The product ideally enhances its value as more of the user’s network joins.
    Examples: WhatsApp, Evernote, Dropbox, Slack.

Paid Marketing. To ensure product-channel fit with paid marketing:

  • Rapid Time To Value: Users expect quick results when clicking on an ad.
  • Medium to Broad Value Proposition: The value proposition should not be as broad as needed for a viral product.
  • Transactional Model: The product is designed to generate transactional value to support paid marketing efforts.
    Development Strategy.

Once the optimal solution is defined, the next step is to prioritize features and outline the scope of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Prioritization.

Which feature should be prioritized over others?

We’re using the terms ‘offence’ and ‘defence’ here, borrowed from sports: Offensive strategy aims to score points for your team, while defensive strategy is geared towards preventing the opposing team from scoring.

The same concept applies when we extend this distinction to your feature prioritization strategy.

In product terms, your ‘offence’ refers to any investment that advances the business. This includes initiatives strategically important for driving current business returns or progressing your strategy to achieve significant future returns.

Your ‘defence’ refers to investments made to mitigate potential risks for the business. Neglecting these defensive investments can endanger the company, although defensive strategies typically do not generate additional upside on their own.

(The image Offensive vs. defensive feature)

When it comes to offence, the more you invest in it, the bigger the returns you’re likely to see. On the other hand, defensive bets come with a diminishing returns curve: There’s an amount of investment required to de-risk the situation you’re defending against, but any investment beyond that point doesn’t generate value.

What are Offensive features?

Identifying offensive strategies is usually easier than defensive ones.
Offensive strategies typically:

  • Significantly impact business outcomes like acquiring customers, retaining them, or boosting revenue.
  • Use leverage and build on themselves over time.
  • Align with long-term business goals, even if they don’t show immediate results.
  • Ideally, a focused strategy should have only a few key offensive goals to succeed well.

Examples of offensive strategies include:

  • Enhancing growth loops, such as encouraging more user-generated content or increasing engagement triggers.
  • Expanding product-market fit into new platforms, like Yelp did with mobile apps during the rise of iOS.
  • Reaching new customer segments, as Eventbrite did by adding features for frequent event organizers.
  • Investing in future success, such as Slack with cross-organizational networking or Facebook with video uploads.

Investing in expanding your product’s market fit to prepare for future challenges should also be seen as an offence. While it defends against competition and market changes, it strategically prepares for future growth.

Identifying offences is simpler than identifying a defence, but not everything that isn’t an offence should be considered a defence.

What are Defensive features?

Defensive efforts are primarily focused on reducing risks and potential downsides for the business.
Defensive work typically falls into three main categories:

  1. Preserving your core value proposition: Continuously enhancing your product or experience to stay ahead of competitors.
  2. Scaling infrastructure such as technical capabilities, addressing technical debt, and optimizing people and processes, but only as much as needed.
  3. Protecting against risks: Your defensive strategy must address issues related to risk management, fraud prevention, regulatory compliance, and ensuring trust and safety.
    Before achieving product-market fit, your primary focus should be on mapping the core value proposition, hook, time-to-value, and stickiness capabilities of the mobile app.

After achieving Product Market Fit and shifting focus to growth, continuous improvements in your product’s core value proposition and user experience remain essential to sustain your competitive advantage.

Once your vision aligns with goals, feature research, and hook, you can proceed with the following:

Product Roadmap: How and when will you execute the strategy within a defined timeframe? Have you established milestones or target release dates?

Product Backlog: What actions are necessary to reach your business goals? Are there any obstacles? Do you have a clear understanding of the priorities?

(Image Product Development Cycle)

Should every mobile app undergo a Product Discovery phase?

It’s not strictly necessary, but why skip a step if you’ve already learned from the ‘1:10:100 rule’? While rushing into development might seem tempting, being first to meet a market need effectively can be quite fortunate.

Yet, are you willing to leave your app’s success to chance, knowing that relying solely on intuition could be costly?

It can be disheartening to realize during or after development that your product features are outdated and need upgrading, Flutter doesn’t align with your app’s design, or competitors have outpaced you with more appealing products.

When deciding whether product discovery is always beneficial, the answer is undoubtedly worthwhile.

When should Product Discovery ideally be undertaken in the development cycle?

Naturally, the initial instinct is to customize the product during the project’s early stages. However, it’s advisable not to confine Product Discovery solely to the initial phases of the Product Vision process.

But if your mobile app is struggling with growth, it can be implemented later as well.

Who are the key participants in Product Discovery?

There’s often a temptation to keep the development team focused on coding and not burden them with tedious value propositions or business goals.

However, Jcentrix values understanding the product strategy from business owners. This knowledge helps us develop features. Over the years, I’ve been involved in numerous mobile app launches both internationally and in India. These experiences have greatly enhanced my understanding of product strategy and feature development.

In addition, team members can take on more responsibility for the product, shifting from being contractors to becoming creators.

The entire team takes ownership of the process and feels empowered and accountable for the outcomes.

Lastly, empathy in the Product Discovery phase helps team Jcentrix understand users better and increases the chances of meeting your needs.

Proven methods for Product Discovery.

There are many approaches to Product Discovery, each offering a variety of techniques.

Design Thinking is a recent trend, as it combines the best practices from human-centred design.

Additionally, you may find other techniques valuable. Experiment and blend them in a manner that best suits your business.

We are also great fans of Jobs to Be Done, OKR and Domain Storytelling.

Feel free to blend and experiment with various tools to customize your product most effectively.

To wrap things up
There are several approaches you can use to determine if your mobile app idea adds business value.

Preventing mistakes is always more cost-effective than investing heavily in correcting or abandoning a flawed app.

Product Discovery is the project phase where you get to grasp your users’ needs and customize the product to meet them.

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