Problem discovery framework explained with examples

Most discovery frameworks are a list of activities. Talk to users, map the journey, define the persona. They tell you what to do and never what would make you stop, so they can be completed in full while teaching you nothing.

This one is smaller. A problem statement is a bundle of claims. You test one at a time, cheapest fatal claim first, and rewrite the statement when a claim fails. That is the whole loop, and its value is that it terminates.

What to take away

• Break the statement into separate claims. A statement you cannot break up is too vague to test.
• Test the claim that would kill the idea, not the claim that is easiest to check.
• Every cycle ends with the statement rewritten or explicitly confirmed, dated. If nothing changed, say so in writing.

Split the statement into claims

Write the problem in five parts and each part becomes a claim you can check on its own.

• Who. A specific group with a trace in the world: a role, a license, a piece of software they must run, a place they are.
• Situation. The circumstance in which the problem appears, not the general condition of their life.
• Current method. What they do today, described well enough that you could do it yourself.
• Cost. What that method costs, in a unit somebody named out loud.
• Frequency. How often it happens, and separately, how often anyone acts on it.

Five claims. Any one can be false while the other four hold, and each failure means something different. The SBA's guide to market research and competitive analysis asks for the same components under different names, which is a reasonable check that you have not left one out.

Which claim to test first

Not the cheapest. The cheapest fatal one.

Ask of each claim: if this were false, would the idea survive? Usually two or three would be fatal and the rest would only reshape things. Among the fatal ones, pick whichever can be checked for the least money and time, and check that.

This ordering is what people get wrong. Effort drifts toward the claims that are pleasant to investigate, which are the ones about the current method, because people enjoy talking about their workarounds. The claim about who pays sits untested for months, because testing it involves an uncomfortable question.

The cheapest check for each kind of claim

Claim	Cheapest honest check	What it cannot settle
These people exist and are findable	Build a list of twenty, by name or by a repeatable route	Whether they will respond
They are reachable at a sane cost	Contact a small batch through a route anyone could use, and count what it took	Whether they will buy
The situation occurs	Ask several people to recall the last occurrence, with a date	How common it is beyond your sample
The current method is what you think	Watch it happen, or have them walk you through the last time step by step	Whether it is the same elsewhere
The cost is real	Get the figure from the person, in hours or money they name	Whether they would pay to remove it
Somebody already spends on this	Look for hiring, agencies, adjacent subscriptions, paid workarounds	Whether they would move that spend to you
Somebody can authorize a fix	Ask who signed off the last comparable purchase, then talk to them	Whether they will sign off this one

The right-hand column is the discipline. Each check settles one thing and leaves the next question open, and pretending otherwise is how three conversations turn into a business plan.

Run the cycle

State the claim in one sentence, so that a specific observation could contradict it.

Name the observation that would count as failure before you look. Not a feeling: something you could show someone.

Run the smallest version of the check that could still produce that observation. Most of these checks are conversations, and how you run one so it recovers the past decides whether the answer is worth anything. Where the check is written rather than spoken, the guidance on writing survey questions is the reason to draft the wording before you draft the answer options.

Write what happened, separating what you saw from what you concluded.

Rewrite the statement, or confirm it in writing with the date. A cycle that ends with no written change is where the record goes wrong, because in a month you will not remember whether the claim was tested or skipped.

Then pick the next claim. Most statements need four or five cycles before they stop moving.

When a claim fails

The failure of one claim is rarely fatal to the idea, and treating it as fatal is as much of a mistake as ignoring it.

• Who fails: you found the wrong group, not the wrong problem. Rewrite the who and recheck the rest against the new group.
• Frequency fails: the problem is real and rare. Look for the segment where it happens more often, or accept a different business shape.
• Cost fails: it is an annoyance. This one usually is fatal, and it is much better to find out in week two.
• Authority fails: you are selling to someone who cannot buy. Either find the buyer and rewrite the offer in their terms, or change who this is for.

The one thing not to do is soften the claim until it passes. A statement edited to survive its own test is no longer a test.

Where the loop ends

It ends when a cycle produces no change and you can predict the next conversation before you have it, which is the stopping condition problem discovery describes. At that point the remaining questions cannot be answered by asking anyone anything.

The next instrument is an offer somebody has to accept or refuse. That is a different loop with a different unit of evidence: see offer testing, and minimum viable offers for keeping the first one small without making it dishonest.

Common questions

Can I test two claims at once?

Only if a failure would tell you which one failed. Usually it would not, and you spend the week to buy one ambiguous number. If you can only afford one check, spend it on the fatal claim.

What if a claim cannot be checked cheaply?

Check something that correlates with it, and label the result as indirect. An indirect check is worth running and worth marking, so that a later decision does not treat it as the direct evidence it never was.

How is this different from just talking to people?

Talking to people is the method for several of these checks. The framework decides which check comes next and what would count as failure, which conversation alone does not. What happens when it is missing is cataloged in the discovery mistakes.

Does the statement ever get shorter?

Usually yes. Early statements try to describe everyone, and the useful ones end up narrower and more specific. That narrowing is the main output. A statement that got broader is normally a sign that contradicting evidence was absorbed rather than acted on.