Problem Space
What is the problem space?
The problem space refers to the customer needs, pain points, and desires (opportunities) that teams explore before jumping to solutions. This is where opportunities exist—the problems worth solving for your customers.
Understanding the problem space requires continuously exploring, framing, and reframing customer problems through generative research like customer interviews. It's not a one-time linear step you complete and move on from. You capture your problem space on an opportunity solution tree and continuously refine it as you learn more.
Why do teams struggle with the problem space?
Too many people frame discovery as a linear process: start a new project, learn about your target customer, map out the problem space, and move on to generating solutions. If only the world were that neat and tidy.
The challenge is that teams often don't go deep enough to properly understand the problem space and jump to solutions too quickly. When teams don't linger in the problem space, it's more common to come up with obvious ideas and much more difficult to come up with truly innovative ones.
Framing the problem space is one of the hardest things product teams do. As you continue to learn more about your customers through weekly interviews, you need to continuously reframe your understanding.
How do you explore the problem space effectively?
Conduct weekly customer interviews. This is one of the best ways to explore the problem space. When teams adopt this weekly habit, all other discovery habits follow suit.
Reframe, reframe, reframe. How you identify and group opportunities on your opportunity solution tree is a great way to play with different ways of framing the problem space. Stay curious. Explore divergent perspectives. Keep defining and shaping the problem space.
But don't take it too far. You need to balance spending adequate time in the problem space without staying there indefinitely. Once you have a clearer view of the problem space, use those opportunities to generate new solutions.
Learn more:
- Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Know
- Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomes
Related terms:
- Opportunity Space
- Opportunity
- Generative Research
- Customer Interviewing
- Solutions
Last Updated: October 25, 2025