Finding an opportunity to build useful Products..

Building products is easy but making a business out of it is difficult. People buy products to get some job done. The humankind has been using different ways and means to get their job done. Over the years, we have created many products in the pursuit of making our job easy. We will continue to do it. We can innovate and build new products if we understand people’s job and pay attention to end to end experience in different contexts.

For example, I love listening to music. During ancient times, people listened to live music. There has been an evolution in the products that help us listen to music from phonograph to smartphones today. Well, I have been old enough to see the evolution from Radio to a tape recorder to Walkman to MP3 players to iPod to iPhone. I was delighted each time these products were launched as they solved a problem in a specific context.

If you want to build useful products, look around and see the jobs users do and explore their jobs end to end. How do I listen to music nowadays? I scout for good songs(not a big fan of movie songs), I listen to it couple of times to see if it fits my taste and then it makes it to my discovery list, once it becomes my go-to song it becomes part of my specific playlist(fusion heaven, fulfillment, Gym, drive).

How do I scout for good music, I keep my ear open all the times(in shops, bus, lounge, planes ). The moment I resonate with something, I use Shazam to capture the song.

What problem do I face today in capturing music today? There are a few:

1. If I’m doing something else like talking to somebody or buying something, I might miss pulling out my phone and capturing the music. Well, at times I may not be able to remember lyrics much, but I can undoubtedly hum the tune. Shazam doesn’t help here. If I liked a song and if I’m not able to find it, I lose sleep until I find it. So basically it’s important for me to capture music any time but not happy with the solution available now in the context of not having lyrics. That’s an opportunity for building a solution for users like me.

2. At times when there is high noise, I might have to use Shazam multiple times to capture the song. It’s important, and I’m happy with Shazam. However, if someone can reduce that pain of little bit time that I spend in high noise environments, I would go for it. That’s a differentiator.

3. Creating a playlist is not an important job for me. However, I’m not happy with the solution available on Apple Music to create a playlist as it consumes a little time. If there was just an easy way of adding something to a playlist using a couple of words using my voice, I might start liking creating a playlist. That’s more like disrupting status quo.

4. Generally, not all the songs in an album would be good. So seeing all songs in an album is not important and I’m happy with the way Apple Music shows the complete album. Even if there are much better solutions, I may not be interested.

By understanding what’s important for users in doing their job, how satisfied are they with alternatives and in what contexts they struggle, one can innovate and build useful products.

If you want to learn more about how to innovate using job mapping, await an upcoming online course on https://www.playscrum.com or join one of our Certified Scrum Product Owner courses at https://leanpitch.com/cspo-workshops/

You can also use https://startupplanner.io to create a job map and understand the opportunity.