Treat the Workaround as the First Product Brief

When a customer describes a frustrating problem, the fastest route to a feature list is often the least useful one. Start with the workaround they already use.

In five conversations with people who fit your target customer, ask them to walk through the last time the problem happened. What triggered it? What did they do instead? What did that workaround cost—in time, effort, or a missed outcome? Look for repeated behavior, not just agreement that the problem sounds annoying.

Keep it to one week. If the same workaround appears repeatedly, prototype a way to remove one concrete step. If it doesn’t—or the consequence is minor—pause before building. The customer’s existing effort may be a sharper product brief than a hypothetical feature request.