Problem Scenarios

Problem Scenarios are

  • real, imagined, and hypothesized problems and needs that particular people experience or are hypothesized to experience in a problem space
  • a unit of analysis in customer discovery, an empirical research method.

Key Concepts: Customer Discovery Interviews; Design; Design Thinking; Lean Product Development; Mixed Research Methods; Problem Definition; Problem Scenarios; Rhetoric; Usability; Venture Design


Problem Scenarios are a tool developers use to imagine how a customer or a sketch of a customer, a customer persona, interacts with a problem in a problem space.

Developers create customer personas to speculate about how particular customer cohorts (aka customer segments) are likely to respond to new services, features, applications, and products.

Related Resources

See Alex Cowan’s course materials for Problem Scenarios in his tutorial on Venture Design.

Source httpswwwalexandercowancomventure design

Read More: