Every product team talks to customers. We run interviews, we observe users, we discuss findings with colleagues. And when someone suggests we could improve our research process, the typical reaction is defensive: we already know how to talk to customers. But as Timoté Geimer, CEO of dualoop, pointed out at PR_D_CT DAY 2023, the problem is not that teams are doing the wrong things. The problem is that they keep reinventing the wheel instead of drawing on over a century of established qualitative research methods.
Timoté's central argument is disarmingly simple: product discovery sits at the intersection of sociology and psychology. We are trying to understand groups of people who share certain characteristics in order to solve their problems through technology. The social sciences have been refining methods for exactly this kind of work since the late 19th century, yet most product teams operate as if qualitative research was invented alongside the lean startup movement.
The talk does not ask teams to abandon what they are doing. It asks them to do the same things with more method, more awareness of bias, and more rigour in how they collect, analyse, and communicate their findings.
