The more I look for the way to validate problem and solution, the more I feel this is important. To come up with the solution, we need to really understand about the problem that we will be solving. Once we identify the RIGHT problem, then solution comes obviously. So how to know that you are tackling with the right problem? Really knowing your domain is the only way!

Search for validating problem and solution

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Albert Einstein

It would be so good and time saving if you are already in the domain. But what if you are not? Nowadays, we have so many tools supporting us to search and learn. In that, you could try:

• Google Search: you already know how.
• Google Trend: https://trends.google.com/trends/ to look for the online trend that so many potential customers are looking for.
• or Google Keyword Planner: https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner to identify what is the exact keywords that people have already search.

For every documents, articles, research papers or reports, reading them carefully with the hunger of information in mind. You should alway know what question you are seeking for answer.

Even a small problem could be a big opportunity. You should also know alternative solutions out there in the market. How these alternatives work, their good job and bad job.

At this point of progress, you may have somethings in mind telling you that you are on the right way and with the right problem, and the possible solutions. At this time, it highly depends on product manager’s skills.

Seek for feedbacks and advices

You have already done your homework. It helps you have a good basement, knowledge for the next step to validate problem and solution: heading out for feedbacks. Feedbacks would come in various forms (in-person interview, survey, data – in case you can collect it) and sources (advisors, stakeholders and potential customers).

Since feedbacks and advices are collected, your solution improved a long the way. Keep collecting feedbacks until responses’ content started to repeat, that’s the time telling you that you have already reached threshold. Once you’re confidence enough, your solution backed by customers (willingness to buy), stakeholders (the feasibility, capability to support you along the way), it is the time to push this into product discovery phase.

For more detail of this, you can try Hypothesis-driven methodology.