Canvas your way to product vision
While living in Sydney I participated in a brainstorming exercise that was based on Roman Pichler’s product canvas. This workshop helped shape the direction of our future product development. At the time, I don’t think I fully understood the value of our brainstorm. But, the artifact from that workshop proved to be incredibly useful for aligning our team and communicating with stakeholders.
Over the years, I’ve drawn inspiration from that workshop and related product management templates, and I developed my own version of the product vision canvas (scroll to the bottom for alternatives). Each section in the canvas will provide the prompts for a workshop you can facilitate with your team. When you’re done, you’ll have a clear product vision with supporting evidence that can be used with your team and stakeholders from discovery through to delivery and growth.
I strongly believe that this workshop is like a Swiss Army Knife for product teams. The same format and prompts can be adapted for framing upcoming feature development, brainstorming a new product idea, or conducting a 3-year envisioning exercise.
The Product Vision Canvas
Your workshop can be run in person, using a huge wall, washi tape, and some post-it notes, or online using a virtual whiteboard tool like Miro or Mural (get the Miro template). I like to block 4- or 6-hours so that the activity doesn’t feel rushed. This will provide plenty of time for working in small groups, discussing, sharing back, affinity mapping, and then coming to alignment. Additionally, I like to combine this workshop with other activities to create a perfect kickoff week (there’s a list of ideas at the end of this article).
Here’s how I facilitate:
- First, invite all potential collaborators, including management-level colleagues
- Break your team into small groups of 2–3 people
- Give the groups 5-7 minutes to brainstorm against the prompt and discuss together
- Then, ask your groups to share back — you can expect moments of clarity and agreement, but also fierce debate
- When you’re done discussing, move to the next prompt
- Each prompt should build on the one before
If you’re running this workshop virtually, I recommend splitting your facilitation into an async brainstorm and a sync share back. You can allow participants to brainstorm ahead of time using your virtual whiteboard tool, or to reduce bias, you can collect responses to the prompts using a tool like Google Forms. Ahead of the workshop, affinity map the post-its added and label the clusters by theme. At the start of your workshop, give participants enough time to read the responses and add new stickies to build on top of what’s already there. Focus your sync time on discussing sections without clear alignment.
Regardless of your facilitation format, your brainstorm will start with the problem statement. Next, move on to your target audience, their needs, and features that might solve those needs. Then, look at your product’s unique value proposition, how you’ll measure success, and what happy users would sound like. Finish by coming up with experience principles and your product vision statement.
The Product Vision Workshop
To illustrate how to run this workshop, we’re going to follow an idea about a new news app concept. Imagine you’re asked to solve this problem: “Help our readers engage with news in a more transparent way.”
The product vision canvas and accompanying workshop will help you get started.
#1: What problem are we solving?
Start your workshop off by defining the problem space. You’ll want to agree on a single problem to solve before moving along to the other prompts. For some teams, defining the problem will be the most difficult part of the canvas. When companies are used to spending time in the solutions space, they may be less comfortable exploring and identifying problems to solve.
Following through with our news app example, these are two examples that are NOT problem statements:
- Make people read news with different viewpoints.
- Give people access to diverse content.
These are solutions and not problems. A problem statement is not a solution phrased another way. The more specific your problem statement, the better.
And here’s one example that IS a problem statement:
- Casual newsreaders who typically read whatever appears in their social feeds are not proactive enough to seek out diverse sources.
Stanford’s d. School says that a good problem statement:
- Provides focus and frames the problem
- Inspires your team
- Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas
- Empowers your team to make independent decisions
- Prevents you from creating concepts that are all things to all people
I don’t recommend templated formats for problem statements, vision statements, etc., but if you get stuck here are two templates you can try:
- I am (persona) trying to (complete X JTBD) but (X is in persona’s way) because (reason), which makes me feel (emotion).
- (Persona) needs a way to (solve X need) because (pain point).
If your team is struggling to identify and align on a single problem, then more research or discussions may be needed. You can continue with the workshop if you have several options for problem statements, but it’s important to align on one clear problem before beginning implementation.
#2: Who are we solving this problem for?
Once your problem is defined, consider your audience. The aim is to identify a single group or a maximum of 2 groups who will be using your product to solve the defined problem. These groups are typically different to segments or roles but could align with persons.
If you don’t define the problem and users upfront, you risk building the wrong solution.
#3: What does your audience need?
Now consider what those users need from your product. What are their pains or Jobs to be Done? I like to encourage my team to write on their stickies using “I statements” to build empathy with the users.
#4: Which features would solve these needs?
Prompt #4, features, is usually the most fun part of the workshop because it creates a wild flurry of stickies. I’ve found that this prompt is the easiest for teams, especially when they’re more used to being in solutions mode. Ask your team, what are some features or services that would solve the users’ needs?
Keep in mind that what’s defined here doesn’t translate 1–1 onto your roadmap. These features are the starting point for prototyping and research that would typically be done as part of a discovery phase.
#5: What’s the unique value proposition?
Once you’ve identified features, the unique value proposition is next. Try to come up with maximum 2-3 UVPs which will shape your future go-to-market plans.
Ask your team:
- What makes your product special?
- How is your product better than what users are already doing?
- Why should they use your product?
- Why should they pay for it?
#6: What does success look like?
Now jump ahead to the future — what metrics should you track to know that your product or feature is successful? What is the expected value for the user, for the business?
#7: Happy users say…
And then look at success from another angle — what would happy users say about your product? Similar to the needs brainstorm, I like to write these as quotes from the point of view of the user.
#8: Experience Principles
Once the main prompts of the board are filled in, it’s time to come up with your experience principles. Experience principles, sometimes called design principles, reflect your product’s core values and priorities.
Ideally, your experience principles would be based on research and incorporate what the team has already learned about users’ needs and wants. They should also reflect an understanding of the business needs and brand positioning.
Why do we need experience principles?
Experience principles help teams align, make decisions, and focus. You can use your Experience Principles to support your decision-making and reduce misunderstandings within your team and with stakeholders.
Following along with our news app idea, here are some example Experience Principles. Like the needs and quotes, I like to phrase these from the user’s point of view, to continue to build empathy.
Example experience principles:
- Make it open, unbiased, and non-judgemental
- Make it part of my routine
- Help me see the other side
I recommend coming up with 3 experience principles for your product. More than that will be too hard to remember and will become overwhelming to use to make decisions within your team.
It’s ok to start with one set of principles and then refine or adjust when more information is available, for example, following user research.
#9: Product Vision Statement
And last, it’s time for your product vision statement. A good product vision is both aspirational and actionable. It should describe the why behind your product and illustrate the value your product brings to your users.
Alongside the experience principles, a clear product vision statement will help you and your team make decisions, focus, prioritize, and work towards your goals.
You can use a templated approach for your product vision statement. But, I would advocate for something shorter and therefore easier to remember, like this one: “Our vision is to burst filter bubbles with equal, unbiased access to news.” A great vision statement can be recalled by every member of your extended team.
It’s ok if your vision statement isn’t perfect on the first try. Like the experience principles, the vision statement can be refined as your team begins to work on defining and delivering the product experience.
Further reading about writing product vision statements:
- https://medium.com/the-heroic/why-your-product-vision-might-be-more-critical-than-your-company-mission-ac29dc44e15c
- https://www.productplan.com/glossary/product-vision/
- https://www.clearvoice.com/blog/difference-between-mission-vision-statement-examples/
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/10-tips-product-owners-product-vision
After the workshop
Ok, so you ran this workshop, but what now?! I like to create a digital one-pager of the canvas, where I summarize and prioritize the ideas from the brainstorm.
You might be wondering — why a one-pager?
The reason is simple — it’s hard to get all of the ideas into a single page, even if you cheat a bit by reducing the font size. Summarizing the content for the canvas will help you prioritize and form a point of view about your product, feature, or company vision.
Distilling big, complex ideas into a simple and readable artifact that the whole team can use is part of what makes the PM job fun, right?
The Completed Product Vision Canvas
After you’ve created your canvas, let it sit for a day or two and then re-read it. Does it accurately reflect the discussion? Does it tell a story? And will it inspire your team?
Once you’re happy with where you’ve landed, share it with your team and stakeholders and proactively ask for feedback. Your product canvas should become a living document and a reminder of what you’re working towards and why.
I’ll leave you with one final tip for facilitating this workshop, and it’s about timing. You could run this workshop as soon as a new idea comes up, and then validate the assumptions in your canvas as part of discovery. Or, you could come into the workshop with insights from product analytics and user research, and build the canvas around what you already know about your users.
Personally, I like to run the workshop twice — first after a new idea is presented, when there’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm. And then I like to facilitate a second time after we’ve run more in-depth research to validate whether we were on the right track. Don’t be afraid to refine your canvas as you continue with your discovery and planning.
The product vision canvas can be an important tool for you as you move into the delivery phase. For example, I like to refer to the canvas frequently, especially when making critical decisions or aligning with stakeholders.
Complementary activities
If you’re interested in running the product vision workshop as part of inception or similar project/feature kickoff, I recommend combining with these activities:
- Analysis of product analytics, customer support/success insights, user research, market research, etc.
- Get everyone in the right headspace by going over these brainstorming rules from IDEO
- Empathy mapping for key personas (max 2–3)
- Brainstorm: Problem and opportunity space
- Brainstorm: JTBD with pains and gains
- Brainstorm additional statements to support your product vision statement, including: customer opportunity statement, customer value proposition, business opportunity statement, business value proposition (These extra statements are particularly helpful when user opportunities might differ from business opportunities)
- Sketching sessions, like Crazy-8s
- Journey map the ideal version of the core experience with boxes and arrows
- Show & tell sessions with presentations from business, design, research, and engineering
- Trade-off sliders
- Brainstorm: Looking ahead to your go-to-market plans, you can run the Product in a box, Project poster, or Amazon’s press release activities
- Hopes & fears exercise, or sailboat retro (adapted for kickoff)
Additional product management canvases
As mentioned above, I’m a huge fan of canvases as an easy-to-understand and easy-to-share vehicle for communication and alignment. There are many product management canvases that have shaped how I work with my teams and stakeholders. Perhaps the canvas closest to the one I’ve detailed above is the product vision board, independently developed by Roman Pichler (2011). Several other prominent templates include:
- The business model canvas by Alexander Osterwalder (Miro template)
- The product canvas by Roman Pichler (Miro template)
- The opportunity canvas by Jeff Patton (Miro template)
- The opportunity canvas 2.0 by Anthony Murphy
- The lean canvas by Ash Maurya (Miro template)
- The lean UX canvas by Jeff Gothelf (Miro template)
- The product management canvas by Dinker Charak
Thanks for reading. I hope that this article has given you the tools and the confidence to facilitate the vision workshop with your teams!
