Product Ideation Guide

Product ideation is what turns pain points into solutions that create happy, returning customers.

In this article, I’ll show you why product ideation matters, the stages involved, the techniques that work best, and how to validate your ideas before going all-in.

But first…

The #1 Problem with Product Ideation (and How It Can Be Misunderstood)

Many founders make the mistake of getting too excited about a product idea and building it without first validating it with potential customers. This often leads to disappointment when the product fails to gain traction, as it doesn’t address an existing need. Failing to understand customer needs is one of the top reasons why businesses fail.

Yes, ideation is supposed to be a fun and fulfilling process. But before that, it should be a data-driven approach based on relentless customer focus.

Why Product Ideation Matters

Innovation

Innovation comes in two forms: incremental, improving existing products, and radical, creating an entirely new market-disrupting product. Ideation is key to both, as it generates and refines ideas that push boundaries, whether through small improvements or groundbreaking changes.

For example, you could discuss how incremental ideation led to iterative improvements in digital painting apps, while radical ideation sparked the creation of entirely new categories like 3D sculpting tools.

In real life, you’d think of Uber as an incremental innovation: a better alternative to taxis, which were often too volatile and costly. You never knew what you’d end up paying by the time you reached your destination.

On the other hand, Facebook was a radical idea – it created a way to connect that we hadn’t seen before. 

Customer-Centricity

Many businesses fall into the trap of focusing on the product first and the customer second. It’s crucial to start by understanding the customer and the pains they’re facing, as solving problems later may require completely rethinking the product.

I like the straightforward way MailChimp put it: “Ideation strategies force businesses to think from the customer’s point of view to create products that meet their needs and address pain points.”

Here I want to add a disclaimer: develop products for the problems people are facing, and not products they think you should develop. Often, people will tell you what kind of product they need – only to realize that it won’t meet their needs at all. By all means, focus on their pains, but create the most effective way to resolve them. 

Competitive Advantage

In saturated markets, ideation helps you spot gaps and stand out with unique value propositions. 

When you keep a vigilant watch on the market, you know exactly which differentiator can make your product the no-brainer alternative. Be it cheaper, quicker, more convenient, functional, reliable, or durable.

The Stages of Product Ideation

While many articles focus on brainstorming as the first step in product ideation, the real starting point is problem identification.

I can tell you that the real first step is one a lot of product-focused founders ignore, after talking to over 200 early-stage founders who are validating, building, launching, and growing their products:

Problem Identification

Since this is the stage that will make or break the success of your product, I’ll spend a bit of extra time on it.

The first step for every product-focused founder, regardless of whether you’re improving an existing product or starting from scratch, should be problem identification. But for this article, we’ll consider a hypothetical scenario where someone is trying to build a successful product from zero.

So, where to begin?

I’d say: start by considering frustrations you’ve had in your areas of interest.

Let’s say you’re someone who’s struggled with digital painting apps throughout your art career. As a result, you want to build a solution to help artists like yourself. You know the problems you deal with, but you put on your customer-facing hat, remove bias from the process, and get to work.

You could go about researching problems to solve in a few ways:

• Googling your way through potential issues
• Analyzing reviews (both good and bad) from competitors
• Going guerrilla and having casual conversations with people in your target market
• Scrolling through platforms like Reddit

These are all great options, but the manual work can quickly become overwhelming. So you go to GummySearch to have all the above options in a single place – powered by raw, unfiltered Reddit conversations and reviews.

Since Reddit is bustling with digital artists and painters of all walks of life, you build an audience based on popular art subreddits such as r/Painting, r/DigitalPainting, and r/Art. All these communities have over 30 million members!

If you need help building your audience, check out my guide on finding subreddits.

That’s a huge number, and it would be a never-ending amount of work to sift through those communities and topics manually. 

But within GummySearch, you have an array of filters to choose from: Hot Discussions, Top Content, Solution Requests, Pain & Anger, and more.

Bonus tip: Ask AI to summarize the findings for you!

The research process isn’t linear because there are so many scoring-based themes. It’ll depend on what you’d like to discover.

So, if you wanted to cut down on research time, you’d try to discover which solutions people are already asking for inside “Solution Requests.” 

To your amazement, most mentions involve digital art devices, such as iPads, tablets, and others.

But still, you’ll want to validate the idea that the quest for better Digital Art solutions is currently a pressing problem. So you’d move on to “Hot Discussions” and look for Patterns (which GummySearch collects, sorts, and groups in a matter of seconds).

According to data, the outstanding topic is indeed digital art. Within it are several discussions about which affordable device is better, and which apps to use.

You already know that if you were to focus on a new device as a solution, you’d be competing with Apple iPads in terms of pricing and apps like ProCreate. However, you want to take an impartial look at what digital artists are saying about competing solutions.

That’s where you’d start a market gap analysis to uncover gaps such as usability issues, missing features, or accessibility concerns.

In the Audience dashboard, you’d go to “Products” to find out who your direct competitors are.

There you go! You can see the top products and look at reviews straight from GummySearch.

Thanks to your research, start thinking of problems to solve, and potential solutions. Let’s move on to the next step:

Idea Generation

Here, quantity matters more than quality. 

This stage is about exploring as many ideas as possible with methods like mind mapping, “How Might We?” questions, and good old brainstorming. So, even if you already have a product, it’s time to consider other solutions.

Start with the problems you’ve analyzed in your research. In the digital art scenario above, these could be:

• Problems when devices don’t work well with specific systems (e.g., MacBook Pro not being compatible with certain tablets).
• Devices having screens that are not bright enough or suffer from glare affect the quality of the drawing/painting experience.
• Artists resort to communities like Reddit to solve their problems, where they may not get the specialized answers they seek.

Now, here’s how you could start applying idea generation to solve the problems.

“How Might We?” Questions

Ask yourself or your team:

• How might we make the digital drawing process feel as natural as using physical tools?
• How might we help artists manage their workflow across different platforms more efficiently?
• How might we make collaborative art projects easier and more engaging?
• How might we help digital artists solve problems in real time and support each other throughout their creative process?

Brainstorming & Letting Loose

Set aside time to generate as many ideas as possible, no matter how wild.

• A holographic tool that lets artists sketch in 3D space using hand gestures.
• AI-powered brushes learn an artist’s style and suggest improvements in real time.
• A wearable glove that mimics the texture and feel of different brushes on a tablet screen.
• A community-based app featuring live Q&A forums or even direct connection features, so users can troubleshoot problems together in real time.

Mind Mapping

Use a central idea, like “digital art tools,” and branch out to related themes: ease of use, collaboration, creative inspiration, hardware, etc.

• Ease of use: Develop a voice-activated app that lets users change brush settings hands-free.
• Collaboration: A multiplayer canvas where multiple artists can co-create in real time.
• Creative inspiration: An app that analyzes trends and generates daily drawing prompts.

Realistically Evaluate the Ideas You’ve Generated

Now it’s the toughest time of product ideation: the reality check. It’s where you use prioritization frameworks such as RICE to evaluate ideas based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort.

Source: Plaky

Let’s say you need to measure the feasibility of a community-focused app for artists versus a brand-new digital art device. 

A community-based app offers higher reach, lower effort, and greater feasibility, making it a more practical choice compared to the resource-intensive hardware device, despite a new device having potential for high impact.

You decide to go for this idea. Great – but you’re not done yet!

Pre-Development Validation

Before you pour time and resources into development, you’ve got to make sure your idea is worth the effort. 

At this point, you’ve already used GummySearch to identify your audience’s frustrations, feature requests, market gaps, and more. The only difference is: that before, you were testing ideas. Now, you’ve already picked your idea, and you’re laser-focused on validating its potential. And GummySearch can help with that, too! 

Here’s how:

Once you have your idea down pat, it’s time to understand what your audience might be searching for on Reddit when looking for solutions just like yours. And there’s no better way to do this than by tracking the right keywords. 

On your GummySearch dashboard, click the 🔍icon in the left-hand sidebar to access the “Advanced Search” feature. 

Next, enter the audience you’d like to analyze and the keywords you’d like to explore. 

In our case, useful keywords would include “community apps” and “best digital art apps.” Think of this step as traditional keyword research for SEO, where you’re connecting existing searches to your solution. 

The awesome thing about this feature is that it’ll ping you whenever people start using your chosen keywords in a conversation. Just click the 🔔icon on the upper-right corner to track the keywords you judge important. 

This way, you don’t need to be on the edge of your seat, constantly checking if new mentions popped up. GummySearch will let you know! 

Watching real-time conversations unfold helps you confirm that your solution is something your audience is actively looking for. It’s a powerful way to validate your idea and confirm you’re on the right track before investing in development.

“Okay, but I’m new to this. How do I know the kinds of keywords to track for my specific product?” 

Don’t worry – I wrote a guide on keywords you should track on Reddit using the Advanced Search feature. If you haven’t already, give it a read. 

But also, open up to the following validation tactics:

Lean Methodologies for Product Ideation (and Validation)

Run quick and inexpensive tests to gauge demand. You can create landing pages describing your product, drive traffic to them, and measure interest. Crowdfunding campaigns are another great way to validate demand while securing funding.

Early Prototypes and MVPs

Once you’ve narrowed down your ideas, create a test and development plan.

Often, this begins with building a minimum viable product (MVP) to gather early feedback. For an app, this means focusing on the core feature – such as a community forum for artists to share their work and receive feedback – while skipping advanced functionalities for now.

Next, launch the MVP to a small group of target users (like a community of digital artists) and collect feedback through surveys or in-app forms. Use this input to refine the app and validate that the audience would pay for a product like it to solve their problems.

And there you have it! A brief yet comprehensive product ideation guide. If you’d like more insights, check out my other guides on finding problems to solve and validating your ideas. More guides are coming soon! 👀