What problem is worth solving?
Teaching scenario: a fictional team has product specifications and competitor material, but its portable-device positioning says only “premium and intelligent.” Convert the evidence into user problems, buying reasons and content tests.
Create distinctive positioning that product and marketing can jointly verify.
- WORKING ROLES
- Product, marketing, research and FDE
How does an FDE turn symptoms into a solvable problem?
The following discovery and implementation exercise uses a synthetic scenario.
Locate the usage moment
Describe a concrete task before and after purchase. Separate complaints, wishes and actions; carrying difficulty does not establish willingness to pay.
Find unsupported claims
Label specifications, user statements and hypotheses sentence by sentence; compare test conditions and retain counterexamples.
How does the solution enter the workflow?
- 01
Normalize
Align units, test conditions and versions; preserve missing values.
- 02
Analyze VOC
Group issues by usage context without treating repeated sources as independent users.
- 03
Build claims
Link each buying reason to a fact, user problem and testable assumption.
- 04
Test
Test one claim with a predefined audience and response measure.
Which decisions make the solution reliable?
Specifications are not motives
Lower weight is a fact; easier commuting is an interpretation; a price premium is a hypothesis.
Do not multiply a bad claim
Lock evidence before generating variants. Comparative claims need an explicit comparison set.
Make battery-life positioning testable
Synthetic specs: A lasts eight hours and B ten hours under different loads.
- Fact
- Record each condition and duration without ranking.
- Insight
- Invented comments about charging anxiety become an interview lead.
- Action
- Test equal loads, then test whether users understand a commute-specific claim.
What should you do and deliver?
Define a user job and scope
- OUTPUT
- Research brief
- PASS CONDITION
- The task is more specific than market analysis
Analyze twelve invented reviews
- OUTPUT
- VOC codes + counterevidence
- PASS CONDITION
- Statements trace to reviews; inference is separate
Model product and usage knowledge
- OUTPUT
- Three claim cards + provenance
- PASS CONDITION
- Each claim has a test
How do you prove completion and reuse the work?
Acceptance checks
Assess factual accuracy, support, counterevidence and test design, not content volume.
Reusable assets
Reuse specification contracts, VOC categories and claim cards; revalidate motives for each category.
Further reading and original sources
- Building effective agents ↗Anthropic · 2024-12-19
- Demystifying evals for AI agents ↗Anthropic · 2026-01-09