Product Sense & Design

A product-design framework by Lewis Lin: Comprehend the situation, Identify the customer, Report customer needs, Cut through prioritization, List solutions, Evaluate trade-offs, Summarize your recommendation.

Clarify scope and goals before solutioning: confirm the product, the target user, the business goal, and any constraints. Never jump straight to features.

Distinct user segments with different needs, contexts, and pain points. Defining personas lets you scope the problem and prioritize solutions for one segment rather than 'everyone'.

A lens framing products by the 'job' a customer hires them to do. Focuses on the underlying outcome/progress the user seeks, not demographics or features. Classic phrasing: customers don't want a drill, they want a hole.

A pain point is a specific friction or frustration in a user's current workflow; a need is the underlying outcome they want. Good solutions target validated, high-frequency, high-severity pain points.

Classifies features by how they drive satisfaction: Basic/threshold (expected; absence frustrates), Performance (more is better, linear), and Excitement/delighters (unexpected, disproportionate delight). Categories decay over time.