Start with the User’s Problem
A user problem is a specific obstacle, cost, delay, or unmet need experienced by an identifiable group in a real situation. Describe the user, situation, present workaround, and consequence before proposing features.
What You Will Be Able to Decide
- Explain start with the user’s problem in product and business terms.
- Apply this decision: Describe the user, situation, present workaround, and consequence before proposing features.
- Recognise this material risk: the team builds an elegant solution to an assumed or low-value problem.
- Ask a consultant for evidence rather than reassurance.
A founder is turning an idea into a brief that a consultant can estimate and build.
A user problem is a specific obstacle, cost, delay, or unmet need experienced by an identifiable group in a real situation.
A consultant can recommend and implement the technical approach. The founder still needs to decide which outcome matters, which risk is acceptable, and what evidence is sufficient.
Why This Decision Appears
A founder is turning an idea into a brief that a consultant can estimate and build.
The immediate question is start with the user’s problem. The technical label matters only because it changes a product decision, a responsibility, or the evidence required before launch.
Technical term
Start with the User’s Problem
A user problem is a specific obstacle, cost, delay, or unmet need experienced by an identifiable group in a real situation.
Treat it like a clause in a commercial agreement: its value comes from making expectations and consequences clear, not from sounding formal.
The Working Principles
Start with the product consequence, then choose the simplest technical treatment that protects it. A longer tool list is not a stronger plan.
For this decision, the useful standard is that a real user can complete the intended outcome and the result tests the stated assumption.
- Make the decision explicit: Describe the user, situation, present workaround, and consequence before proposing features.
- Ask what evidence would show that the chosen approach works.
- Name the person or provider responsible when the approach fails.
- Record the result in the MVP brief and acceptance criteria.
How to Choose Without Overbuilding
Describe the user, situation, present workaround, and consequence before proposing features.
The principal risk is that the team builds an elegant solution to an assumed or low-value problem. This does not require the most expensive possible solution. It requires the consequence to be understood and the control to match it.
- Describe the user or business outcome that must be protected.
- Identify the most credible failure and its consequence.
- Compare the simplest adequate approach with one realistic alternative.
- Set a review point for when the decision may need to change.
A Useful Proposal and an Impressive-sounding One
Warning Signs
- Nobody can explain how start with the user’s problem changes a user or business outcome.
- The proposal does not address this risk: the team builds an elegant solution to an assumed or low-value problem.
- The only evidence is a successful demonstration of the easiest path.
- The decision has no named owner, boundary, or review point.
- A provider-specific feature is being mistaken for a permanent product requirement.
Questions to Ask a Consultant
- What decision are we making about start with the user’s problem?
- Which user or business outcome does the recommendation protect?
- How have we reduced or accepted this risk: the team builds an elegant solution to an assumed or low-value problem.
- What evidence can I review without relying on the original implementer?
- What is deliberately deferred, and when will it be reconsidered?
- Who owns the accounts, data, documentation, and recovery process?
Key takeaway
Key Takeaway
A user problem is a specific obstacle, cost, delay, or unmet need experienced by an identifiable group in a real situation. The founder's job is to make the consequence explicit; the consultant's job is to recommend and demonstrate a proportionate implementation.