What questions do you ask yourself when building a product vision?

• Every product is built to solve a user/ people problem or help solve a pain-point. This should be the main focus when building a product vision and the most important questions are ‘Who is this product for’ and ‘What problem is it solving’?
• These two questions should lead into ‘Why does this product solve it’ question. The third question is particularly important for category defining products. The iPhone, when launched, focused on the typical consumer who wanted a personal device to store pictures of loved ones and access the internet rather than the business user whose needs were well served by the Blackberry
• There are several simple frameworks that can be used to go deeper into this and Intuit’s Design for Delight is a simple but effective framework (http://www.intuitlabs.com/design-for-delight)

1. Who will I serve?

2. What problems do those individuals/businesses/target market face on a day to day basis?

3. What gaps exist in the industry today?

4. How are people solving pain points today?

5. Are people happy with current solutions?

I like my visions to be very focused on the customer and solving a clear problem. This will also help identify product-market fit early on, guiding development on principles and feedback.