Here are my practical tasks to lead you through the Discovery Phase of your product's development.

Motivation: Tasks

Make sure you're connected with an audience who need a solution to their problem, and that you're motivated to solve it. You can read the chapter here.

Speak to your audience
Speak in-depth to at least three members of your audience. If you have more than one audience, follow this advice with them also. Read more here.
   > Try this audience interview template

Find a problem worth solving
Speak to your audience in-depth and make sure the problem they have is something they really need solving. * Try requesting a small amount of money upfront for your product. Offer to pay it back in a time period (e.g. 90 days) if their problem isn't solved satisfactorily. Read more here.

Understand your motivation
Address why you're creating a product, honestly, whether it be for money, personal growth, altruism and so on. Read more here

Test your commitment
Ensure you care if the problem gets solved for your audience, and that you'd be happy still solving it in five years. Read more here.

_{* It's not always possible to get people to part with money before you've built anything, but it's the gold standard we should aim for. If your initial product is free, consider Facebook. Its users don't hand over money to use the service, but advertisers do - so they're the audience you'd test this on. Someone has to pay!}

Market Analysis: Tasks

Learn about the market you're creating a product for, estimate its value and list the ways you'll try to make money in it. You can read the chapter here.

Research your market
Research the high-level characteristics of your target market. Read more here.
   > Try this tool

Shortlist revenue models
List which revenue models best fit your market. Read more here.
   > Try using this list of revenue models

Compare alternatives
Research how your users can already solve their problem to see where the gap is for your product. Read more here.
   > Try this tool

Estimate your market's value
Estimate the max value of your market to understand what you should spend on building the product. Read more here.
   > Try this tool

Audience Development: Tasks

Connect with your audience to find more people sharing the same problem, identify your evangelists and start to separate your audience into smaller groups. You can read the chapter here.

Community
You've joined conversations and groups where your audience discuss their problems. You're facilitating discussion and helping solve problems. Read more here.
   > Try these methods to build community.

Evangelists
Individuals are emerging who you think would be great candidates to try your product first, and will tell others about it too. Read more here.

Audiences
You've recognised different audiences based on their problems, so that you can research each more thoroughly. Read more here.

User Research: Tasks

Talk with at least five of your audience in-depth, understand then document their problems, and record their current experience in user journeys. You can read the chapter here.

Interviews
You've spoken to at least five members of your audience, in-depth, capturing a rich seam of data points.

Problem diagram
From your interviews, you've captured the core problem and related problems, and translated them into an easy-to-read diagram.

Problem statement
From your interviews, you've been able to pare down the big problem they're experiencing, into a single sentence.

User journeys
Based on your conversations, you've mapped out your audience's current experience, with the same level of understanding of each activity.