Product Discovery workshops are at the heart of what we do. They give us an environment to bring together Product experts with key decision makers. After all, to guarantee success, it’s vital you make the right product decisions early on.
Discovering your Digital Solution: An Interactive Workshop
We ran a live webinar on Thursday 24 February to showcase our Product Discovery process.
At Sonin, we believe in our process and we know it works. That’s why we wanted to share our knowledge with people considering a digital product for their business.
From start to finish, attendees participated in a collaborative walk-through of one of our Product Discovery workshops. Sophie Parsons, Head of Operations and Sarah Preston, Head of Product and Design led the session, whilst Tim Moore, Account Director facilitated the conversation. The Sonin team encouraged attendees to participate in the activities and gave tips on how they could conduct similar exercises in their own workplace, too.
Our attendees joined us from a range of companies in industries such as Space Travel, Professional Football and Healthcare.
What happened on the day?
We launched the audience into the full swing of the workshop via our favourite tool, Miro.
Using Miro in a live environment, the attendees followed Sophie and Sarah through a series of exercises. We decided to centre the activities around a fictitious training business called Fahrenheit. Sophie and Sarah discussed how Sonin would approach helping a company like Fahrenheit build a digital platform. Our intention was for attendees to apply the skills from these activities to their own businesses.
Part 1: The Business side of things
Traditionally, our workshops are ran in two halves. So that’s what we demonstrated during our live webinar, too.
Sophie led Part 1 with energy and enthusiasm, teaching clients how to approach Product Discovery by establishing their business objectives and North Star Metric.
“What I like about this stage is that everyone has to come together to make a group decision for the first time.”
Sophie Parsons, PHD, Head of Operations
After this pivotal decision was made, Sophie moved on to some building block exercises. In practice, these activities allow the facilitator to take the group back a few steps to understand where the business is currently. For example; who are the actors involved? What tools does the business currently use? What does the existing customer journey look like?
Part 2: All about the Users
For a digital product to create value, it’s essential to evaluate what the users want and need from it, as well as the business.
To reset the theme slightly, Sarah kicked off Part 2 by explaining the user research process.
“The second half of the workshop is all about feature ideas and feature prioritisation. However, you can never truly validate ideas for features, nor prioritise them, unless you have heard what the users have to say themselves.”
Sarah Preston, Head of Product and Design
User research had taken place prior to the live webinar, so Sarah explained how to create your product Personas from this information. Next, Sarah introduced the process for feature ideation and before closing Part 2 of the workshop, she taught the attendees how we prioritise features ahead of the app build.
Final thoughts of the day
“Our clients took to Miro, and our Product Discovery approach, like a duck to water. The engagement throughout the exercises that followed was superb – with clients’ contributing ideas and asking questions throughout.”
Tim Moore, Account Director