The Benefits of Using the Idea Brief Canvas to Link the User Problem to your Solution Features
Understand what are the main benefits of using a simple tool such as the Idea Brief Canvas to capture the problem users have and how your invention solution and features will solve it.
It is so fundamental to deeply understand what problems people have so you can define the right solution to solve it, and yet many companies fail due to no market need or wrong product.
“As important to understanding “who,” is knowing “why” and “what.” After all, consumers are getting by today without your product. “
I believe most entrepreneurs and startups actually do their research to understand users’ problems early on. Lean Canvas is a great tool to capture that when defining your business model. However, it is common that once they start building their actual solution, the focus on the problem starts to fade away and features and requirements hardly link back to the original problem.
In Abilista we have defined a tool that will help you connect features and technical requirements to the problem as you move into the solution development of your invention. We call it Idea Brief Canvas, which takes inspiration on the Lean Canvas, and will let you visualize in a single page the link between the problem and your solution details.
Now, how this can actually help you build your invention idea? In previous articles, we have shared our approach to building your product idea. As we explained there, the Idea Brief Canvas should be started before you begin developing your product idea. However, thanks to its lightweight format, it is intended to be completed and updated throughout your development. These are the main benefits of using the Idea Brief Canvas during your product development:
1. Define the right features
The most obvious benefit is that you will be able to define the features based on the User Needs which are extracted directly from the Problem the users have.
This link between the features and the problem is key and it is easily traceable with this canvas. If any feature defined is not linked to the user needs it will be clearly spotted by anyone having a quick look at the canvas. Therefore, the Idea Brief Canvas helps to define the right features and ensures they remain relevant as the product matures throughout the development.
2. Importance and prioritization of features
Even if you have the right features, knowing which are important makes a difference in the development. In the canvas the features, as well as the user needs, are prioritized. This should be based on your research about the problem that the user experiences and which user needs will have the highest impact. The user needs should be sorted in the canvas according to its importance and the linked features will then be automatically sorted out by its importance for the user.
Identifying different levels of importance for the features will make it easier for you and your team to define priorities for the development of the solution. Start, of course, focusing on the highest priorities first to implement in your first product versions and prototypes and continually integrate the rest as you progress.
3. Take the right decisions
The above prioritization has an additional benefit, not just for choosing the focus of the work, but also to make decisions during design and development. When conflicts appear and decisions have to be made in particular design aspects of the solution, looking at the canvas will help you identify easier which design decision will have an impact on which features or user needs. Therefore, choosing the decision that brings the biggest value, or has the least negative impact, for the most important features will in most cases be the right choice.
It will also help to make it easier to defend those decisions in front of other stakeholders or when looking back at a later stage to understand why certain decisions were taken.
As a bonus, having a single point of truth will help you keep everyone on the same page and collaborate more effectively by using a simple to understand format.
Learn how to use the Idea Brief Canvas in this short video.
Access to Free Resources
If you want to get started building your product idea with our simple framework, just access our free resources area and embrace a new approach for dynamic entrepreneurs and startups.
Click to get access to our free templates used in this article.
Abilista guides innovators to develop their product ideas from concept, prototyping and all the way to manufacturing following our own step by step framework. We are already helping several entrepreneurs and startups to build their ideas by giving them access to simple and agile tools and expertise on-demand.
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