The Power of Clarity: Streamlining Product Development with Generative AI and CRISP

There is no denying that AI is changing the world; it’s the revolution of our generation. Regarding Product Development and Entrepreneurship, Generative AI is a game changer. It allows you to develop ideas and iterate faster. If you read on, I will show you how I clarify my product projects in less than 10 minutes using GenAI.

Noah Kagan wrote about an exciting challenge in his book Million Dollar Weekend (highly recommended if you want to pick up a copy). He got challenged to sell beef jerky and make $1000 in profit in 24 hours. I will put GenAI to the test and see how it fares with Noah’s findings and steps.

The caveat of using GenAI is that you need a structured approach to reap the full benefits. It is all about the way and order that you prompt the tool. Here are some fundamental principles that the best prompt engineers use to ensure effectiveness:

1. Be Clear and Precise: Avoid vague prompts. Clearly state what you need from the AI to get relevant and accurate outputs.
2. Provide Context: Include background information to help the AI better understand the scenario.
3. Refine Prompts: Start with an initial prompt and refine it based on the results. Adjust wording and add details to achieve the desired outcome.
4. Test and Validate: Regularly check the AI’s outputs against known good examples to ensure consistent quality.
5. Ethical Awareness: Be aware of the moral implications. Avoid prompts that could lead to biased or harmful content.

For the past months, I’ve been working on a structured framework for Product Discovery called CRISP, which stands for Clarify, Research, Innovate, Strategize, and Pursue. These steps guide you through the critical stages of product discovery.  Imagine it as a roadmap that helps you navigate the often-challenging process of turning ideas into successful products.

This might sound challenging if you haven’t used GenAI tools as much, but I’ve been testing this framework with GenAI. With the structured prompts, it can be as easy as copying and pasting and seeing the magic flow.

The Clarify Step

Today, I’m focusing solely on the Clarify step, which involves defining the problem you’re trying to solve and deep-diving into customer needs and personas. With straightforward prompts and in less than 10 minutes, you can get all the information for the following steps.

1. We first determine the outcomes you are trying to achieve from three perspectives:
   1. Business outcomes: These metrics serve as a compass, guiding your overall organizational health. They often focus on financial performance, like revenue growth or cost reduction. Strategic goals can also be business outcomes, such as expanding market share or reaching new customer segments.  However, as with a compass, they provide a directional view and may not reflect immediate impact.
   2. Customer Outcomes: Unlike usage-focused product metrics, customer metrics offer a broader perspective on your customer base. They gauge customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the perceived value they get from your product or service.
2. Then, we define your target customers using the Customer Prism Framework. With this framework, we can see the complexity of our prospective customers, similar to how a prism breaks down white light into different colors. Here we see:
   1. Demographics
   2. Psychographics
   3. Behaviors
   4. Needs & Goals
   5. Challenges & Pain Points
   6. Decision-Making-Process
3. We combine all the data to create Customer Segments and User Personas. These serve as a map to validate your product ideas.

How Do We Start?

When developing new opportunities, everyone follows one of two approaches: Idea First or Problem First. Understanding these approaches can significantly influence the success of your product development efforts.

Idea First:

The Idea First approach is the most common and often the most challenging. Here, you start with a preconceived idea and then try to find a market fit. This method is driven by creativity and innovation, allowing you to envision a product or service you believe has potential. However, it can be a dangerous approach.

• Market Fit: One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that there is a market demand for your idea. This often requires extensive market research, customer feedback, and iterations to refine the concept.
• Biases: You may be strongly attached to your original idea, which can create biases that hinder objective evaluation and necessary changes.
• Resource Intensive: This approach can be resource-intensive, as it may take several iterations and pivots before you find a viable product-market fit.

Despite these challenges, the Idea First approach can lead to groundbreaking innovations when executed effectively.

Problem First

The Problem First approach starts by fully understanding customer problems before developing ideas to solve them. This method focuses on empathy and deep customer insights, making it more reliable in addressing real needs. However, it also presents unique challenges:

• Abstraction and Uncertainty: This approach can be more abstract and requires comfort with ambiguity. You may initially have a vague solution, which can be unsettling for some.
• Research Intensive: A thorough understanding of the problem necessitates extensive research, including customer interviews, surveys, and observations.
• Iterative Ideation: Once the problem is well-defined, you must brainstorm and test multiple ideas to find the best solution. 

This iterative process can be time-consuming but often leads to more effective outcomes.

Human Nature and the Quest for Answers

Humans tend to prefer having all the answers rather than facing many questions. This tendency can make the Problem First approach seem daunting because it requires embracing uncertainty and being open to continuous learning and adaptation. We are naturally inclined to seek certainty and quick solutions, which is why the Idea First approach, despite its challenges, often feels more straightforward.

However, both approaches can be enhanced using Generative AI. I will focus on the Idea First approach to avoid making this long article longer. It’s a perfect fit for Noah’s Jerky Challenge.

Stepping into Noah’s shoes – Tackling the Jerky Challenge

Noah has a clear business goal: He needs to make $1000 in profit in 24 hours and contact prospective customers as soon as possible. How would you do it? Do you get on the phone immediately and see if the idea sticks? That’s one way to do it.

The Clarify step of CRISP allows you to understand your prospective customers better. This approach provides a map that guides you to the correct type of customers while you learn their possible needs and pains.

I used Google’s basic Gemini and followed these steps for this experiment. I chose Gemini because it is free and connected to the Internet. The first prompt is the only one that needs editing. You need to provide the GenAI model in the proper context. The subsequent steps are from pre-made prompts that you can easily copy and paste. I will only show a picture of the results.

Step 1 – Framing the problem and determining outcomes

In this step, we frame the problem and give context and instructions to the model. We want it to provide business, product, and customer outcomes. Here is what I included in the prompt: 

1. We are working on developing an idea for a product/service, and we need to build our thinking
2. We have the opportunity to create a beef jerky product
3. Our values and promise to the customer is to deliver quality and tasty jerky
4.  We want to target anyone with this product
5. We are focusing on the United States
6. We want to provide our customers with quality jerky for a healthy snack
7. We have a constraint: We need to make $1000 in profit in 24 hours. We can sell a unit of jerky for $20 at a cost of $15. Only one person is selling and fulfilling orders.
8. Provide business and customer outcomes.

Steps 2 – 9 – Develop Customer Segments with the Customer Prism Framework

With these preformatted prompts, we get a series of tables detailing the steps in the Customer Prism Framework. During each step, you can see what the model is developing and take action if you feel it is deviating.  

Step 10 – Detailed Customer Segments

Once the AI model develops each side of the Customer Prism, it clusters similar segments and creates a table like this.

11 – User Personas

We asked the model to provide user personas to breathe more life into the Customer Segments. These help you understand your target audience deeper, fostering empathy for their struggles and aspirations. They are good tools for communicating who your narrow target users are.

These steps took me less than 10 minutes to complete in Gemini AI. The outcome provides a hypothetical map, allowing you to validate your idea with the right prospective customers and empathize with their possible needs. Once you go through the process, changing focus and adjusting the target segments and personas in the same Generative AI chat is easier. For example, you can tell it to repeat the process with B2B customers instead.

What’s even more powerful is GenAI’s iterative nature. You can continuously refine and adapt your approach based on real-time feedback and changing market conditions. If your initial assumptions prove incorrect or market dynamics shift, GenAI can quickly help you pivot by generating new insights and strategies.

In Noah’s case, he targeted a persona similar to one of those customer segments Gemini AI produced and successfully met the challenge. I highly recommend reading his book to see his process and understand how he approached the challenge.

Moving Forward with CRISP

Clarify is only the first step of the CRISP process. As you advance through the Research, Innovate, Strategize, and Pursue phases, you will further refine your product concept, ensure it meets market needs, and develop a robust strategy for launch and growth. Each step leverages the power of GenAI to streamline your efforts, reduce uncertainty, and enhance decision-making.

To fully benefit from this framework, it’s crucial to approach each phase with the same level of structure and clarity. As you become more familiar with Generative AI’s capabilities, you’ll find new and innovative ways to use it in your product development journey.

Stay Connected and Get More Resources

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated with my latest content and insights on leveraging AI in product development. For the first 20 subscribers, I’m offering a more detailed breakdown of my Customer Prism Framework alongside the specific prompts I used for this experiment for free. This exclusive resource will give you a head start using AI to clarify your product ideas.