Findings Brief, Section 5: Taking a stand/Your Recommendations This is the most important section. You need to voice your opinion in a strong, authoritative way. This summary should be an honest and balanced assessment about what the current competitive landscape looks like (see Figure 5-15). However, you don’t want to leave your client with nowhere to go. Think about what the client’s original vision was for the product and what aspect of that vision can be realized no matter if the market is blue, red, or purple. If your analysis supports the value proposition, your recommendations will probably suggest specific ways to capitalize on market opportunities and gaps through the user experience. Your recommendations might answer these questions: Can a specific function such as the Browse or Search capability be improved to help customers discover or find something that currently takes a lot of work to find? (See Chapter 6.) How can you make the product experience more personalized? (See Chapter 6, Chapter 8, and Chapter 9.) How can your team create or optimize a funnel to increase engagement? (See Chapter 9.) How can your team take advantage of something like social networks to drive people to your funnel? (See Chapter 9.) If your analysis reveals that the value proposition is facing certain risks, your recommendations need to pivot on the targeted customer segment or the specific problem. You would need to recommend that your team or stakeholder pursue a different version of the value proposition and/or business model. As such, your comments might try to address these scenarios: Is this an expensive endeavor to take on or are there ways to de-risk the vision by experimenting with Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)? (See Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.) Do you see another possible angle that addresses aspects of the stakeholder’s vision, or do you recommend that the team pivot on the customer or its problem? (See Chapter 3 and Chapter 8.) Does more research need to be conducted to really know if the value proposition is viable, such as with Guerrilla User Research (see Chapter 8) or using landing page A/B tests? (See Chapter 9.)