customer-researchlisted

# customer-research ## When to use - A backlog item is fuzzy because no one has talked to a current user about the underlying job in the last quarter. - A churn or refund spike needs a switch-event explanation, not a feature gap list. - A product owner is about to write AC for a feature that has not been validated against a real user job. Do NOT use for quantitative funnel diagnosis (see `funnel-analysis`), RICE-style ranking (see `rice-prioritization`), or surveying at scale — this skill is about depth-5-to-10 interviews, not statistics. ## Cognition cluster - **Mental model 2 — Jobs-to-be-Done.** Frames every question against the **switch event**: what caused the user to fire the previous solution? See [`docs/contracts/mental-models.md`](../../../docs/contracts/mental-models.md) § 2. - **Mental model 3 — Pareto principle.** A research week that produces 12 distinct insights is usually re-discovering the same three. See `mental-models.md` § 3. ## Procedure ### Step 0: Frame the job 1. Write one sentence: *"Users hire \<thing\> to make progress in \<situation\>, when motivated by \<pressure\>, expecting \<outcome\>."* If you cannot finish the sentence, the discovery slice is not yet shaped — stop and route to `po-discovery`. 2. Read the **product** slot of the [context-spine](../../../docs/contracts/context-spine.md) (if the consumer project has filled it) for bounded scope, and the **team** slot for the senior PO / researcher handoff target. Skip if absent —