Originally Published on November 16, 2015
The first post in this series made these startling assertions, “building successful products that customers really want and love is really hard” and “most product efforts fail!” But we can engineer success! Let’s begin using the Product Discovery Canvas by exploring Collaborative Chartering — a means for teams to gain early shared understandings about the product. As was previously revealed, the Product Discovery Canvas consists of 8 discovery boxes, with boxes 1 – 5 dedicated to chartering activity. Discovery Box 1 on the canvas is the Vision Statement. Let’s start with a discussion of “why it is valuable” then examine the canvas for “how to create it” and actually create a Vision Statement for our idea, “Card SafeZone”.
Discovery Box 1 – Vision Statement
Say you’re the founder of a boot-strapped tech startup and find yourself on an elevator with Marc Andreessen, Jenny Lee or Jim Goetz. Perhaps you’re a product manager in a large organization and you’re in the elevator with the company president who probingly asks your name and what you’re working on. In both instances the elevator door will open to the ground floor in under 25 seconds. What do you say?
If you’re prepared you look them in the eyes and deliver your “elevator pitch”. The elevator door opens and you step off knowing they understand your product and its value. If in fact you are a start-up founder you were wise enough to exchange business cards.
In Discovery Box 1, there are two questions that a product manager should have the team investigate:
- What are you building?
Card SafeZone is a mobile app for credit card and debit card, on premises, fraud detection.
- What value does it provide?
Card SafeZone informs users if it is safe for credit card and debit card purchases within an establishment.
Combine the the answers to those two questions to form the Elevator Pitch for your product.
Cards SafeZone is a mobile app for credit card or debit card perimeter fraud detection that informs users if it is safe to use their card for purchases.
A Vision Statement, often called an Elevator Pitch, provides a product manager and organization with a declaration of a product’s objectives. It is intended not only to articulate product goals but it serves as a road map for what the product can become. A Vision Statement provides the team with product focus.
Examples
The Product Discovery Canvas for Card SafeZone can be downloaded and used as an example as you continue discovery for your own product idea. A blank Product Discovery Canvas is available.
Next Post …
The next post continues using the Product Discovery Canvas for product discovery on “Card SafeZone” and moves into Discovery Box 2 to explore Users and Customers. See you next post.