Cheat Sheet
Quick reference for the key terms and frameworks across every module.
1. Intro to Product Discovery
- Discovery
- The process of deciding what to build, validated by evidence.
- Delivery
- The process of building and shipping the validated solution.
- Value risk
- Will customers choose to use/buy this?
- Usability risk
- Can users figure out how to use it?
- Feasibility risk
- Can we build it with our time/skills/tech?
- Business viability risk
- Does it work for legal, finance, sales, marketing?
2. Understanding Users
- Segmentation
- Dividing a market into groups with shared needs or behaviors.
- Needs-based segmentation
- Grouping users by the job/problem they're solving.
- Persona
- Research-based representation of a key user segment.
- Behavioral segmentation
- Grouping by actual usage patterns.
3. User Research
- Qualitative research
- Small-sample methods answering why/how (interviews, observation).
- Quantitative research
- Large-sample methods answering how many/how much (surveys, analytics).
- The Mom Test
- Ask about life and past behavior, not your idea or hypotheticals.
- Contextual inquiry
- Observing users doing real tasks in their natural environment.
- NPS
- Net Promoter Score — one-question loyalty metric.
4. Problem Discovery
- 5 Whys
- Repeatedly asking 'why' to move from symptom to root cause.
- JTBD
- Jobs to Be Done — people hire products to make progress on a job.
- Problem statement
- Evidence-backed, solution-free description of a user problem.
- Opportunity
- A problem/need whose resolution creates meaningful value.
5. Customer Journey Mapping
- Journey map
- Visual of every step a customer takes, with actions, feelings, and touchpoints.
- Touchpoint
- Any point of interaction between user and brand/product.
- Friction
- Anything that slows, confuses, or frustrates a user's progress.
- Handoff friction
- Friction that occurs between teams or channels.
6. Market & Competitive Discovery
- TAM/SAM/SOM
- Total / Serviceable / Obtainable addressable market sizing.
- Primary research
- Research you conduct yourself with your own audience.
- Secondary research
- Existing third-party reports and public data.
- Benchmark matrix
- Table comparing you vs. competitors across consistent criteria.
7. Opportunity Assessment
- Opportunity Solution Tree
- Outcome → Opportunities → Solutions → Experiments map.
- Opportunity sizing
- Estimating impact via reach × frequency × severity.
- RICE
- Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort scoring framework.
- Risk vs. reward matrix
- Plots impact against confidence/risk to guide prioritization.
8. Solution Discovery
- Diverge then converge
- Generate broadly without judgment, then evaluate and narrow.
- Crazy 8s
- 8 sketches in 8 minutes to force idea quantity.
- SCAMPER
- Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Reverse.
- Solution evaluation matrix
- Scoring candidate solutions against shared criteria.
9. Hypothesis Creation
- Hypothesis
- Testable, falsifiable statement about a belief, with a metric and threshold.
- Leap-of-faith assumption
- The assumption that breaks the idea entirely if false.
- Assumption map
- Plots assumptions by importance vs. evidence to prioritize testing.
- Desirability/Usability/Feasibility/Viability
- The four assumption types mirroring the four risks.
10. Validation & Experimentation
- MVP
- Smallest solution version that tests the riskiest hypothesis.
- Concierge MVP
- Humans manually deliver the service before automating.
- Build-Measure-Learn
- Lean Startup's rapid experimentation loop.
- A/B test
- Randomized test comparing a control and variant for causal effect.
- Fake door test
- Shows a non-existent feature to gauge click interest.
11. Discovery Metrics
- Outcome metric
- Business/customer result discovery should drive (e.g. retention).
- Process metric
- Signal of discovery health (e.g. customer contact frequency).
- North Star Metric
- Single metric capturing core customer value, aligning the team.
- Vanity metric
- Measures activity, not real impact on outcomes.
12. Stakeholder Discovery
- Stakeholder interview
- Same rigor as customer interviews, focused on internal context.
- Assumption workshop
- Surfaces stakeholder assumptions to test, not assume true.
- Evidence over authority
- Resolve disagreements with data, not seniority.
13. AI-Assisted Product Discovery
- AI synthesis
- Using AI to summarize/cluster research data, validated by humans.
- Synthetic user
- AI-simulated persona — useful for ideation, not validation.
- Hallucinated pattern
- A confident but false AI-invented insight not grounded in data.
14. End-to-End Product Discovery
- Continuous discovery
- Overlapping, recurring discovery cycles, not a one-time phase.
- Weekly touchpoint
- Regular cadence of direct customer contact.
- Living OST
- Opportunity Solution Tree updated continuously with new evidence.
15. PRD Creation
- PRD
- Product Requirements Document — what, why, and success criteria, handed to delivery.
- Scope (in/out)
- Explicit boundaries to prevent scope creep.
- Outcome-based requirement
- Stated as a criterion/result rather than prescriptive implementation.
16. Discovery Deliverables
- Deliverable toolkit
- The full set of artifacts discovery produces across all modules.
- Scaled rigor
- Matching depth of deliverables to the size/risk of the decision.
- Connected narrative
- Each artifact should cite/build on the one before it.