SEEK: Next Level Discovery

SEEK's product team was already strong in user research and discovery but struggled with consistency and structure. Despite conducting customer interviews and running experiments, they were doing discovery on an ad-hoc basis, interviewing customers only every few weeks, and had difficulty translating research insights into prioritized business opportunities. Their experiment cycle was slow (4-6 weeks), they over-engineered prototypes, and lacked a systematic framework for identifying what to build next.

Working with discovery coach Teresa Torres, the team implemented continuous discovery practices focused on adding structure and regularity to their existing capabilities. Key changes included automating customer recruitment to increase interview frequency, adopting story-based interviewing techniques that required less preparation while extracting more context, and using opportunity solution trees to map and connect customer problems with potential solutions. They also learned to be more specific about risky assumptions and structure their experiments more effectively.

The transformation moved the team from strong but sporadic discovery to true continuous discovery with regular weekly activities. Customer interviews became more frequent and valuable, experiment cycles shortened, and the team developed better frameworks for prioritizing opportunities and sharing insights across the organization.

**Key takeaways for PMs:** Structure and routine are crucial for scaling discovery practices. Automate recurring activities like customer recruitment to reduce friction. Use visual frameworks like opportunity solution trees to connect problems and solutions systematically. Focus on making discovery activities lighter and more frequent rather than comprehensive but infrequent.