The Problem Board
October 2020
Problem is probably one of the most common words that we use in our lives. There is not really a lot to do if you are not solving a problem. Every day we wake up and face our problems, and hope that what we do throughout the day will solve them – be it earning money, managing household chores or working through our relationships. Some of these can be solved by building solutions that can be productized and that is where consumerism comes into play. But we will not be talking about that, for now.
While we loosely throw around the word problem without thinking a lot, the most common feeling that we can attach to it is that of “discomfort”. The extent of discomfort signifies the impact of the problem, which can be different for different people. Higher the discomfort means greater the opportunity for adding value to the user, and in the world of consumerism this most often translates to a higher revenue window. What this essentially implies is that identifying the right problem to solve is more important than solving a problem.
Back in the good old days when social media had not taken over the world and Instagram was showing its potential, Facebook did everything they could to kill its rivals by copying their products (read: building solutions). None of them worked. But then came along Snapchat, which identified a “problem” where teens were becoming increasingly wary about what they posted on Instagram. Everything had to be top notch on their feed. Snapchat recognized this social pressure and offered teens a way to post their daily, maybe average, non-Instagram worthy content in the form of disappearing stories, and it took off. Snapchat made it more “comfortable” for users to share content on their social media.
There are countless examples of such cases where excellent solutions were designed, but the problems just didn’t exist or were not “discomforting enough” for the user. In our daily lives, many situations can make users feel such discomfort. Not feeling safe at night, urges them to get an intruder alarm. When someone feels uncomfortable in their body, they are motivated to go to the gym. Peer pressure forces some to purchase things they don’t need. But they still do it to feel comfortable amongst their ‘rich’ friends. What this implies is that different emotional theories could identify key emotions we feel as humans. These emotions define the feeling of discomfort for users, and in-turn help identifying the problem. Once this problem is solved, the user becomes more comfortable and thus feels happy.
Normally, once a problem is identified, its impact can be gauged by asking the below questions:
Why is it a problem? The answer to this question will reveal the emotion that the person is being subjected to because of the problem.
Why is it important to solve? This will answer the severity of the problem, or in simpler words how important it is for the person.
When does it have to be solved? This will answer the urgency related to the problem. Solving a tomorrow problem might not sell a product today.
Who is affected by it? This will answer the target group for whom the problem is relevant.
Now you must be thinking why are we talking about problems so much, and what does it have to do with our story? Well, Ananya had started using a “Problem Board” with her teams to formalize this form of thinking. The idea was for everyone to find situations of discomfort that they or someone they knew faced in their lives (usually with respect to the industry the team was working in). The team would then refer to this problem board when planning their roadmap. The key difference, as Ananya would explain, between a Problem Board and a Product Backlog is that a backlog has solutions on it. By the time an item is prioritized from the backlog the solution might not be relevant, and it will take the focus away from the original problem. It had worked exceedingly well for her and her teams and was now a mainstay of their organization.
Ananya was excited to start working on something of her own, but she needed to find a good problem to solve. It would maybe also help Vikram decide by finding something worthwhile to work on. She took a blank sheet of paper and her favourite fountain pen and started to write the problems that she faced. But the page remained blank.
Usually, these problems were specific to the product she was working on. But now, there was no box to limit her thoughts. She could think about anything in the world. Which was both exciting and surprisingly, blocking. When you are so used to looking straight ahead in a specific direction, you start to forget about what lies elsewhere. Ananya struggled to narrow down a problem. And turned to her phone to find inspiration in music. But she stopped. Her eyes almost sparkled. There was something that made her take a pause, and then after a few minutes, she took the pen in her hands again and wrote:
Selecting the first song is such a hassle. Too much thinking!
She knew that there was something here. Ananya reminisced about times in her childhood when listening to music just meant choosing a cassette or a CD and putting it on. That’s it. No more decision making. With digital music, while access to music became easier, the actual experience of listening to music became more complex – no thanks to the availability of so many features.
She parked the thought in her mind for the moment and moved on to adding more problems to the sheet. After she was done, the sheet looked promising. It was time to take a nap now. She was excited about meeting Vikram as things were about to change.
A leap of faith
After the phone call with Ananya, Vikram had accepted the feeling of inclination he had for whatever Ananya was planning to do. And as it may happen, the idea of quitting his job started to excite him and he started thinking about how things would work out. By Friday, he had something in his mind, and figured some drinks and a nice dinner with his wife would be a nice way to break the idea to her and take her views on it.
On Saturday, Ananya had reached the cafe before him and was working on her laptop. She greeted him with a smile and both of them awkwardly shared a side hug, not able to process the right protocol to greet each other in person.
Ananya: How’s it going stranger? Almost didn’t recognize you without the tie
Vikram: Didn’t need it. It’s you who is selling to me today. And mind you, you’ve just got one chance at it. (topped off with a sarcastic smile)
Ananya: Okay then. You already know that I enjoy the work that I do and am damn good at it. But lately it has become pretty boring because I am more “manager” than “product”. I have realized that working too long for any product will eventually land me in the same place. I guess that’s how the corporate ladders work.
Vikram: And are you tired of climbing it so fast?
Ananya: Well, I don’t mind climbing the ladder. What is bothering me is the distance I am putting between the work I used to love and myself as I climb the ladder. I want to keep working at the ground level. But since that would become tiring as well, I want to keep doing it with different products.
Vikram: Okay. Please continue.
Ananya: I want to start a firm that would keep churning out products regularly. The idea would be to identify a problem worth solving, productize its solution, scale it from 0-10, and then selling it to someone who would be happy to continue scaling the product to 100 from there.
Vikram: And you restart from there?
Ananya: Yes. I love working on the initial part of the product journey. Because with a matured product comes a lot of processes, big teams and even bigger targets. Scaling a product from 0-10 is like building and coaching a Sunday league team – it’s fun; whereas the journey from 10-100 is like taking that team to win the world cup and that is pure business & pressure.
Vikram: Hmm. I don’t know but the way you explain stuff just clicks with me. And I am assuming that you need me to develop the markets for these products.
Ananya: See. You already get it. We’ll get to the boring details later. Let me show you the problems I have listed down for our first product.
Vikram: Slow down yaar! At least buy me lunch first. And I mean literally. Lost my credit card last night.
Ananya: What happened?
Vikram: The damn kids at these clubs. Went out for drinks with Neha, but forgot it’s a Friday. Got pretty packed. Later I tried to get couple of drinks form the bar and was about to hand my card to the guy when someone knocked it off my hand
Ananya: Ooooo…Seems like a nice problem to add to our board!
They then proceeded to order some food. Ananya couldn’t wait; the moment their order was taken she jumped into showing Vikram her problem board.
Problems we can tackle:
● Selecting the first song to play is such a hassle. Too much thinking!
● I always forget where I store things in the house
● Speaking of things, I have so many old things, but I don’t want to sell them for money. What happened to barter anyway?
● Bored of adding my address and card details on so many websites
● I don’t know which areas are safe to drive at night. Whether they have a streetlight or not. What sort of locality is it. Can’t even think about how women who take the public transport do this!
● I want to tell the driver behind me to fuck off. Or say sorry. How?
● Why can’t Insta show me categorized content? I should be able to choose when I want to see news and when I’m in the mood for a cat video
● Is there a better way to pay at a club?
Vikram almost immediately went “Hain naaa!” after reading the 1st point, and they exchanged a quick glance. Vikram read through the list and acknowledged that the problems looked genuine, but he didn’t have any idea about what to do with them. Ananya calmly responded that it was sort of her forte. She continued to ask him if there was anything that excited him. They discussed a few of the problems that had a common resonance, and in principle both of them agreed to explore this further. Midway through the conversation, Vikram requested for a simple baseline understanding that anything related to product & operations would be Ananya’s, and anything related to business will be taken care of by Vikram.
Ananya was happy. She knew that Vikram was in unfamiliar territory and wanted to just safeguard his interests; he didn’t have malice or cunning behind his stand of defining who will have the final call over what. They happily discussed the nuances over lunch and formed a basic plan about what had to be done. The first step would be to research and define the problems; Ananya would work on that. Vikram would start with the logistics of getting a company setup. Product Catalyst was a go.
Little did they know that the first problem of simplifying music discovery will become MoodTuner and will make them multi-millionaires. The payment problem at bars will become TipsyNinja, and it will set the new default standard of paying at clubs and bars.