Discovery & Ideation: Finding the First Problem to Solve

It started with conversations, not a product idea

Over the past several months, I've spent a lot of time talking with people about money.

More than 200 conversations, in fact.

My initial goal wasn't necessarily to build a product. I wanted to better understand the relationship people have with money: what they're working toward, what worries them, and what gets in the way of making financial decisions.

At the time, I was exploring a career in financial services and had a strong interest in financial education. Those conversations gave me an opportunity to hear firsthand how differently people experience financial challenges.

One thing became increasingly clear: knowing that something is financially important doesn't necessarily make taking action easy.

And sometimes, the hardest part isn't figuring out the mathematically optimal decision. It's knowing where to begin.

What I've been hearing

Although everyone's circumstances are different, several themes kept coming up in my conversations.

Fear of making expensive mistakes. Financial decisions can carry consequences that last for years. When people don't fully understand their options, doing nothing can sometimes feel safer than choosing incorrectly.

Too many decisions, not enough clarity. Budgeting, debt, insurance, retirement, saving, and investing can all compete for someone's attention. Even knowing which problem deserves attention first can be difficult.

The emotional side of money. Financial decisions aren't made in a vacuum. Family experiences, relationships, personal priorities, and expectations all influence how people approach their finances.

The importance of trust. People may be more comfortable discussing financial uncertainty when they don't feel judged or pressured into buying something.

These are qualitative observations from my broader conversations, not statistically representative research findings. They're helping me identify questions worth investigating more deliberately.

The problem with trying to solve everything

My first instinct was to explore a broad financial education experience.

I even built an early prototype called Clarity Coach, which used conversational AI to help people reflect on their financial beliefs, motivations, and goals before identifying a manageable first step.

Explore the Clarity Coach case study

That experience helped me explore what conversational financial guidance might look like.

But as I continued thinking about the opportunity, I realized something important.

“Helping people make better financial decisions” is a worthwhile ambition, but it's an enormous problem space.

Someone struggling with credit card debt has very different immediate needs from someone preparing to buy their first home or wondering whether they have enough insurance.

Trying to address every financial challenge at once risks creating the same overwhelming experience I'm hoping to help people navigate.

So I'm changing my approach.

One problem at a time. One focused experience at a time.

The longer-term product could eventually bring those experiences together, but each should begin with understanding a specific problem and the people experiencing it.

Starting with credit card debt

For the first product development cycle, I've decided to focus on people who currently carry credit card debt.

Why credit cards?

Credit card debt can combine several difficult challenges: high interest rates, competing financial priorities, uncertainty about repayment strategies, and the psychological weight of owing money.

It's also a problem with potentially measurable outcomes.

For example, someone might understand that paying more than the minimum reduces interest, but still struggle to connect that knowledge to a meaningful plan.

What would change if they could clearly visualize how different payment amounts affect their debt-free date?

Would that information make the situation feel more manageable? Would it help someone act? Or would another barrier turn out to be more important?

I don't know yet.

And that's exactly why I want to start with research rather than jumping straight into building a calculator.

Who I want to learn from

My initial research audience is people who are currently carrying credit card debt, particularly those who experience uncertainty, stress, or difficulty making progress toward paying it down.

I also want to hear from people who have recently paid off significant credit card debt.

Their experiences might help reveal what changed, what strategies were useful, and which obstacles were hardest to overcome.

However, people with current debt will be the primary audience for this first research cycle.

I want to understand the problem as it's being experienced today, not exclusively through hindsight.

The questions I'm exploring

Before choosing features or designing solutions, I want to better understand questions such as:

• How do people describe their experience of carrying credit card debt?
• What makes their current situation feel difficult or manageable?
• How do they decide how much to pay toward their debt?
• What have they already tried to improve their situation?
• Where do they encounter confusion, uncertainty, or frustration?
• What information or experiences have actually helped them make progress?
• What do they wish they had understood sooner?

I also want to be careful not to assume that everyone experiences debt through the same emotions.

For some people, shame or anxiety may be significant. Others may approach their debt pragmatically, or view it as a necessary tradeoff given their circumstances.

The goal is to understand their experiences rather than impose my own interpretation on them.

How I'm approaching discovery

I'm beginning with short, semi-structured interviews designed around approximately 15 minutes of questions, with additional room for people who want to share more.

I want the conversations to focus on past and present behaviors, specific experiences, and real decisions rather than asking people to speculate about features they might want.

I'm also planning to get feedback on my interview questions from a friend and former coworker with a PhD in user research.

The idea is to gather better evidence about the problem before deciding what to build.

My broader financial conversations helped me identify a promising area to explore. These more focused interviews will help me test whether my assumptions reflect the experiences of people currently dealing with credit card debt.

What might come next?

I have a few early ideas.

One is a simple, interactive experience showing how changes in monthly credit card payments could affect someone's debt-free date and total interest paid.

Another possibility is helping people identify which part of their financial situation needs attention first, without immediately confronting them with an overwhelming list of recommendations.

Eventually, I could imagine connecting several focused financial tools through a conversational experience that helps people navigate toward the one most relevant to their situation.

But these are ideas, not validated solutions.

I don't yet know whether a payoff visualization would address a meaningful obstacle, whether another type of experience would be more useful, or whether the research will point me somewhere entirely different.

That's the point of discovery.

What's next

My next step is to refine the interview questions, speak with people currently experiencing credit card debt, and look for patterns in what they describe.

From there, I hope to define a narrower problem statement, identify the assumptions worth testing, and decide whether there's a useful first product experience to prototype.

I'll document the decisions and experiments as the project develops, including the ideas that don't work.

I'm approaching this as an opportunity to learn, build, and hopefully create something useful.

And for now, that starts with asking better questions.