This is a great article Ash.

Identifying Pain Points, defining Goals and developing concrete solutions is a very effective and powerful method. For me personally, Pain Points consist of user needs, desires, limitations, frustrations and even user expectations and suggestions.

In my work I use this approach not only for existing products, but also after conducting primary research on new product ideas or concepts. This method has great potential, for example:

Recently, I worked with the SFM research department to develop a Trello based system that allows us to streamline member feedback, which we currently receive through emails, support tickets etc. There is a lot of data that needs to be processed and until now this information has not been utilised efficiently.

The idea was to use PGS to create a system that make it easy for each department to process feedback and to come up with solutions more quickly. The goal for us is to simplify the process and to give departments more time to focus on developing solutions, rather than spending hours reading and analysing feedback.

The research team now receives the feedback directly, reads through the comments, extracts the Pain Points and defines the Goal/s. Each department has access to the Trello board and can use the PG to develop solutions.

This information is very compact and to the point, helping the departments saving valuable time.