product-discovery-synthesis

Standalone Mode: This skill is part of the prepkit-product plugin.

• spec/product-context.md is optional — provide context inline or create one from the template.
• Output paths (research/, reports/) are relative to your current working directory.
• Facilitation routing is advisory — invoke any skill directly.

Product Discovery Synthesis

When To Use

• An incoming feature request needs reframing into a user problem
• The team is debating solutions before the job and pain are clear
• spec/product-context.md has weak or assumed discovery inputs
• Discovery evidence exists but has not been shaped into an opportunity worth mapping
• Discovery has interview evidence but opportunities feel fragmented across multiple touchpoints or phases

Key Concepts

• Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD): users hire products to make progress in a context
• Opportunity space: unmet needs or frictions that exist before solution ranking
• Switching forces: push, pull, anxiety, and habit explain why users change
• Outcome framing: opportunities should connect to user progress and measurable change
• Empathy mapping: collaborative synthesis artifact that organises interview observations into four quadrants — Says (verbatim quotes), Thinks (internal beliefs not spoken aloud), Does (observable behaviours), and Feels (emotional states). Use it after interviews and before JTBD synthesis to ensure the Thinks and Feels dimensions — which affinity mapping alone does not prompt for — are explicitly captured. Juxtapositions across quadrants (e.g. positive Does but negative Feels) often reveal the most actionable unmet needs. See references/empathy-mapping-synthesis.md.
• Customer journey mapping: visualisation of the user experience across phases — capturing what users do, think, and feel at each stage — to surface friction points and opportunity areas across the full experience arc. ODI Job Map (eight functional steps) is the right tool for deep single-job analysis; journey mapping covers multi-touchpoint experiences, emotional peaks, and cross-channel friction that JTBD interviews alone may not surface. The opportunities layer of a journey map is a direct input to OST opportunity nodes. See references/journey-mapping-basics.md.
• Design Thinking / HCD process framing: teams with design-background practitioners often use the Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test model (Design Thinking) or the ISO 9241-210 four-activity HCD cycle as their process reference. These are complementary framings alongside JTBD/ODI, not replacements. Empathize maps to JTBD interviewing; Define maps to empathy and journey mapping synthesis; Ideate maps to OST solution generation; Prototype/Test map to assumption-driven experimentation. JTBD and ODI remain the primary analytical frameworks in this skill; Design Thinking provides cross-disciplinary orientation for mixed teams.
• First-principles decomposition: when discovery is stuck, a framework produces conflicting signals, or the problem framing feels inherited rather than earned, decompose the core assumption to axiomatic truths before continuing. First-principles is a meta-tool that works alongside JTBD, HCD, RICE, and other frameworks — it clears the foundation so those frameworks produce better answers. See references/first-principles-thinking.md.