Ask HN: Best ideas for a customer discovery process?

[tommy_perchpeek]

Hi all, I am kicking off a new customer discovery program with a set of our clients (in the B2B space) and was hoping to lean on the experience of any Dev, design or product people. The plan at the moment is to conduct; 1:1 Interviews, Observations of current processes (via screen share), Concierge Testing and Story Mapping sessions. Would love to get your thoughts on any techniques/types of sessions that have worked really well for you lately, particularly now being remote? Any insights or info would be hugely helpful. Hope everyone is keeping safe and well.

[Goesby]

I'd start with reading any digital strategy or any published company's strategy. That will give you a sense of where the customer is and where they want to move to. The strategy will also help you cross sell your services to your customers.

If you are planning to work with the customer for a long period, please read about their vision and mission. You want to align your projects according to what the customer wants.

[this2shallPass]

Sounds good so far. Look into making personas, a sort of summary abstraction of types of users and their context.

Ask good questions. Read The Mom Test. Here's a summary: https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test

[tchock23]

Your current plan sounds solid, although I’d mix in some text-based ways of gathering qual feedback.

Some people are more comfortable communicating in text, and removing the interviewer can lead to more honest responses (by virtue of eliminating interviewer bias).