Stage 8: Post-Launch Measurement with FishDog
How to move beyond vanity dashboards by combining quantitative metrics with synthetic research that explains what the nu...
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Tag: Product Stage
Product Stage Articles
Different product stages demand different research. The questions you ask in problem framing are not the questions you ask in concept testing, and the questions in concept testing are not the questions you ask after launch. Most research advice ignores this and treats research as a single discipline. The articles below treat it as nine distinct disciplines, each with its own study design, its own typical mistakes, and its own deliverable format.
Each article in this stage-by-stage series gives a synthetic research study you can run for that specific stage, the persona criteria that fit the stage's question, and the analytical lens that matters most. The articles are deliberately granular: a PM in discovery does not want concept testing advice mixed in. They want the discovery playbook, complete and self-contained, with everything they need to run a study by lunchtime.
What you'll find
- Stage 1 — Problem framing: study designs that separate symptom from underlying job-to-be-done before solution work begins.
- Stages 2-3 — Discovery research and user segmentation: understanding the problem space and finding the segments that care most.
- Stages 4-7 — Synthesis, ideation, concept testing, validation: moving from insight through validated bet to launch-ready product.
- Stages 8-9 — Post-launch measurement and continuous discovery: closing the build-measure-learn loop with synthetic personas.
Pick the stage you're in and run a study at fish.dog
Stage 5: Solution Ideation with FishDog
Using Design Sprints, structured brainstorming, and synthetic research to move from "what's the problem" to "what could ...
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Stage 4: Synthesis and Prioritisation with FishDog
How to distil weeks of discovery into a ranked set of opportunities, using structured frameworks and synthetic validatio...
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Stage 2: Discovery Research with Ditto
Using synthetic research to move beyond surface validation into the rich territory where real product insights live...
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Stage 1: Problem Framing with Ditto
How to define problems worth solving before you build anything, using synthetic research to validate faster than ever...
Read ArticleFrequently Asked Questions
What are the stages of product development?
Nine stages: problem framing, discovery research, user segmentation, synthesis and prioritisation, solution ideation, concept testing, validation and de-risking, post-launch measurement, and continuous discovery. Each demands its own research approach.
What research should I do at the discovery stage?
At the discovery stage, the goal is understanding the problem space deeply: who experiences this problem, how acutely, what existing workarounds they use, and what makes the problem worse or better. The discovery research article in this collection gives a specific FishDog study design with persona criteria and a question set.
How is concept testing different from validation?
Concept testing happens earlier, when the product is still a sketch and you want signal on whether the underlying idea resonates. Validation happens later, with a more complete proposition, and asks whether the product as defined will be bought, used, and recommended. The two articles in this collection cover the distinction and the different study designs.
What is post-launch measurement?
Post-launch measurement is the discipline of figuring out whether your product is performing as expected after it ships — not just usage metrics, but whether real-world satisfaction matches the pre-launch confidence. Synthetic research lets you run rapid satisfaction and competitive-displacement studies at low cost during the first weeks after launch.