Product design discovery techniques - Current state analysis

[Original video] Hiking around Joven Weap in Eastern Utah, a few hours drive from Durango Colorado, is a great way to explore the landscape and appreciate the ancient Pueblo culture. This culture has a kindred notion to how we build software, evaluate data, and look for product market fit. In this article, I will discuss current state discovery, a technique used when entering a new body of work with an existing product.

Heuristic Analysis

Heuristic analysis is a great way to start current state discovery. This involves documenting all the screens, looking at contrast ratios for accessibility, type sizes, design consistency, and the information architecture. This can be used to make low-level basic accessibility and usability evaluations of the product.

Data

If you have a data analyst, analytics expert, or data scientist on your cross-functional team, you can look at the instrumentation in the product and see what can be read from it. This could include looking at how people flow through the product, where they drop off, where they're going, and where they're coming from.

Usability Testing

Usability testing with a small cohort of people who use the software can be a great way to observe how they use the product and what tasks they are trying to complete. You can also ask them questions such as what they would do without the product, who they would recommend it to, how they would suggest improving it, and who they think uses it outside of themselves.

Conclusion

Current state discovery is a great way to dive into a body of work and see what is happening. It is important to go into it with an archaeological mindset and try to understand the motivations behind using the product. This will help you come back with interesting insights about where things are currently at and help drive what you might work on with regard to improving, iterating, and updating the product.