discovery-interviews-surveys_skill

Overview

This skill helps teams validate product assumptions and uncover real customer needs before building. It provides structured interview guides, survey templates, JTBD probes, bias-avoidance techniques, and analysis frameworks to turn conversations into evidence-based product decisions. Use it to move from guessing to prioritized work backed by user insight.

How this skill works

I guide you through a six-step discovery workflow: define objectives and hypotheses, recruit target participants, choose interviews or surveys, design instruments that avoid bias, conduct research using behavior-focused techniques, and analyze findings with thematic coding or statistics. Templates and patterns cover problem discovery, JTBD switch interviews, concept testing, and quantitative validation so you can scale from deep qualitative insight to population-level evidence. The approach emphasizes past behavior, show-me requests, careful screening, and systematic analysis to reduce confirmation bias.

When to use it

• Pre-build validation of product ideas and feature bets
• Understanding user pain points, workflows, and current workarounds
• Jobs-to-be-done research to identify hiring/firing triggers and desired outcomes
• Concept or messaging testing before launch
• Scaling insights with surveys to prioritize roadmap items
• Ongoing continuous discovery to detect early signals of churn or expansion

Best practices

• Ask about past behavior: start with “Tell me about the last time…” not “Would you…?”
• Use show-me requests and screen-sharing to observe real workflows and artifacts
• Recruit and screen participants to match your target persona and avoid selection bias
• Pilot interview guides and surveys, then iterate before full launch
• Record and transcribe interviews (with permission), then code themes systematically
• Look for disconfirming evidence; don’t cherry-pick quotes that support your hypothesis

Example use cases

• Run 8–12 in-depth interviews to surface unmet needs and prioritize the top pain points
• Conduct switch interviews with recent adopters to map JTBD triggers and anxieties
• Show a landing page or mockup in 10–15 interviews to test positioning and pricing anchors
• Deploy a 100–500 respondent survey to validate interview findings and segment demand
• Set up weekly 15–30 minute customer conversations for continuous discovery and early warnings