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Problem discovery or opportunity discovery is an important function of a product team. Discovery requires empathy with users and buyers. The best way to build empathy is to actually do their job. Next best is to shadow them (or do ethnographic research). The most popular is, of course, interviewing your users and buyers, because it is efficient.  

To make discovery interviews effective too, “Do, More, Else” are three questions that will always help you in the moment.

  1. “Do” question: What would it do for you? … 
  2. “More” question: Say more about … 
  3. “Else” question: What else? Who else? … 

 

“Do” Question 

Professor Bernard Roth of Stanford d.school explained how useful this question is in uncovering the real problem and the customer’s job to be done. Vary the question, for example “what would it do for your business or your boss or your coworker?” to get a comprehensive perspective. In the response, look for not only the economic or tangible benefit, but also the emotional or intangible benefit. This is a super-productive question to ask when a customer says they want a specific feature in the product. 

“More” Question

Use this question to explore wider or deeper, or even switch topics. You can also go deeper by asking 5 whys. You can ask the user to “show more” about their goal or problem. You can ask “say more about when and where …” to get more context on the situation.  

“Else” Question

This question prompts the interviewee to explain comprehensively, consider perspectives of their business or coworkers, or reflect a bit to share other relevant information. While the most common types of this question are “what else?” and “who else?”, other question types such as “when else?”, “where else?”, “why else?”, and “how else?” are useful too.

It’s generally known that discovery questions should be open-ended and not “leading the user”. In the rapid flow of a time-bound discovery conversation, the “Do, More, Else” questions are easy to remember, easy to ask, and easy for the user to answer. (The purpose of a discovery interview is to learn, so feel free to use the occasional direct yes/no question.)  

PS: Check out more articles on building products. I write to pay it forward and to clarify my thinking.