Stop Fake User Problems

Anna Savranska
Bootcamp
Published in
4 min readOct 6, 2022

“Starting with a solution is like building a key without a door. Sure, you can build a great-looking key quickly, but then you spend a whole load of time searching for the right door to open. You might get lucky or brute-force your way in, but where you end up is usually not where you were expected to be.

If you simply flip this around and start with doors, or problems worth solving, key-building becomes a lot easier. You start building keys to doors that actually take you places.” (author of Running Lean, Ash Maurya)

It is widespread to jump directly to the solution when creating a new product. Sometimes we are so inspired by our fantastic product or feature that our brain generates a fake problem for this solution that convinces us that we are on the right track.

Also, we have another source of fake problems — competitors. It is common for companies to follow their competitors much more than their customers. It usually happens because they assume that these competitors have already researched and created the right solutions for users. But this approach leads to the wrong strategy of being a copycat.

When the team skips the discovery part (interviewing people) and jumps directly to the solution, there is a risk of losing time and money and creating the product/feature that nobody needs. Users don’t care about your solutions; they care about their problems.

Activities like creating user personas, customer journey maps, user testing, generative interviews, and writing problem statements help to prevent the whole team from wasting their time by solving fake problems.

Focus On Problems, Not Solutions

“The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you’ll be.” Ray Dalio (Founder & Co-Chief Investment Officer, Bridgewater Associates)

It’s good to have the competitive analysis matrix and keep track of what your competitors have, but it’s not as important as defining and tracking user problems.

You never know on what basis your competitors made their decisions, so copying them with closed eyes can hurt your business badly. Instead, try to flip this around and put on the first place User Problems. Create a culture where team members hunt not for solutions but for pain points.

One of the reasons why people are not testing their ideas with users is that they don’t want to be wrong in front of the team. Naturally, we want to be proven right, but this mindset stops us from discovering real user problems and will affect the business in the long run. (This idea isn’t mine, I learned it from the book “Running Lean” by Ash Maurya)

Keep User Problems On The Radar

After conducting user interviews, highlight user problems on the 2x2 Prioritization Matrix. It will help your team focus on user problems and prioritize them on weighted criteria.

This matrix is commonly used to prioritize solutions, but there is a risk that you will prioritize solutions based on fake problems. So let’s flip it a little bit and prioritize user pain points first.

User problems are the engine of your business. So let them drive your decisions

Let’s have a closer look at this 2x2 Prioritization Matrix:

  • Strategic — high value for customers, low value for the business. Put here problems, the solutions of which will not affect your business today or tomorrow but, in the long run, will bring you outstanding results as they deliver a high value for customers.
  • High Value — high value for customers, low value for the business. These problems, when solved, will bring high value for both — business and customer in the short term. Include the high-value problems in your roadmap, and results will follow.
  • Luxury — low value for customers, low value for the business. Luxury problems, the solutions of which are “nice to have.” They lead to minor changes for the product that your customers will enjoy, but they aren’t crucial. You can leave these problems for a better time.
  • Low value — low value for customers, high value for the business. These problems are minor for customers, but solving them will provide high value for the business.

Make this matrix a place you frequently visit and update, as this is a helpful tool for Strategic Planning. Let the problems inside the high-value and strategic sections lead the game. And once again —the way to bit competition is to stop following competitors and start following customers.

Thanks for reading!

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Published in Bootcamp

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Anna Savranska
Anna Savranska

Written by Anna Savranska

Product Designer 👩‍💻 > > annasavranska.com Talks about #leanstartup, #productdesign, #ux, #strategy

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