Playbook
The Product Discovery Guide
Discovery separates good PMs from great ones. This guide walks the modern discovery playbook: interviews, prototypes, and continuous evidence collection.
Continuous vs Project-Based Discovery
The shift
- Old: Discovery = 3-month project before build
- New: Discovery = weekly cadence, always running
- Weekly: 3+ user conversations, 1 prototype tested, 1 experiment result reviewed
- Quarterly: consolidate learnings into strategy update
User Interview Craft
What great interviews do
- Ask about past behavior, not future intent
- Use silence — let them fill the pause
- Ask "tell me more about that" 3+ times per session
- Never propose your solution during discovery
Prototype Testing
Prototype spectrum
- Sketch: 5 min → learn what people expect from name/concept
- Clickable Figma: 1-2 days → learn if flow is intuitive
- Coded prototype: 1-2 weeks → learn if UX works with real data
- A/B in production: 2-4 weeks → learn if metric moves
Related Resources
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