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When starting down the entrepreneurship journey there is far more unknown than known and that is why exploration research is all about taking small steps into the fog of the unknown. This is the only way you can start to understand what might be out there.
There are two types of exploration research; Problem Interviews and Design Sprints, you always start with problem interviews but it is very common to cycle between them until you are confident enough to move onto the next stage, validation experiments.
Goal
All exploration research has one goal; determine who your customers might be. At this stage you should not be selling anything to anyone, the key word in this question is 'might' so at this stage you are just wanting to talk to people and do small things in order to deeply understand the problem you are trying to solve.
Best Practices
- Don't think you know an industry that you don't
- Start by saying "I don't know..., can you help me?"
- Don't interrupt or present solutions
- Can take a long time, that is ok
- Keep going until the experts in the industry are correcting you less or not at all
- Approach everything with humility