PMs Urged to Triangulate User, Market, and Analytics Data
On a recent episode of *Lenny's Podcast*, product leaders from Notion, Duolingo, and Calm advocated for a continuous discovery process. They advised PMs to use a three-lens framework for product discovery, triangulating insights from direct user feedback, behavioral analytics, and broader market trends. This approach favors ongoing, lightweight experiments over infrequent "big bet" launches.
- The "triangulation" framework encourages product managers to validate insights by combining multiple data sources, which can include both primary research you collect and secondary research that already exists. This method of cross-verification helps to reduce bias and increase confidence in the findings. - A key tenet of continuous discovery is the involvement of a "product trio," typically consisting of a product manager, a designer, and an engineer, who are all engaged in the ongoing process of learning from users. Product thought leader Teresa Torres advocates for, at minimum, weekly touchpoints with customers by the team building the product. - Duolingo's product teams are organized around specific product problems rather than concrete metrics, such as a "Connections" team focused on making the app more social. To gauge the success of new features, they use a mix of qualitative and quantitative signals, including usage and buzz among their own employees, who are avid daily users of the app. - Karri Saarinen, the CEO and co-founder of Linear, takes a craft-centric approach to product development, prioritizing quality and intuition over a heavy reliance on data and A/B testing. Before founding Linear, Saarinen led design at both Airbnb and Coinbase. - The triangulation of data is not just for product development; it's also a powerful tool in marketing for a more holistic understanding of performance. By combining methodologies like multi-touch attribution (MTA), incrementality testing, and marketing mix modeling (MMM), marketers can get a more accurate view of what's driving results. - There are numerous established product discovery frameworks that can be used in conjunction with the triangulation method, including Design Thinking, Jobs To Be Done (JTBD), and the Opportunity Solution Tree. These frameworks provide structured approaches for identifying and validating user problems before building solutions.
