How do you navigate Ambiguity?

I believe Ambiguity in product development shows up at 3 different levels

During discovery

After MVP rollout

While designing & prototyping

In the (research) discovery stage, Ambiguity means the team’s need to know what features to build, and more importantly, the requirements of these features.

The answer is figuring out the right questions, and knowing who (stakeholders including users) to ask what.

SOLUTION

After the MVP has been rolled out, ambiguity is not knowing what to do next.

Agile practices solves for this. The feedback (adoption rate, conversion rate, & business benefits) from first set of features becomes the data that determines the next set to build.


Basically, build-measure/test-learn. The true lean philosophy.

SOLUTION

Ambiguity while designing means not having all the details you need to make an informed decision

Use your intuition which is refined by experience, such that you can identify say a usability problem, and solve using the appropriate design patterns without needing to do new research, or rely on metrics


Make assumptions, and find a way to validate them

SOLUTION

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If I had 90s to introduce myself

Pretty much my elevator pitch

I have 5 years Product design experience working Desktop & web apps for B2B SaaS products. These have been as a Design team member in a Data Governance Enterprise platform, as well as a Senior IC for an Engineering-led product

I’ve worked across different touchpoints on the Product development lifecycle. These usually are my considerations when designing:

Business standpoint

Is the product-growth goal more Revenue, More users, or More engagement? What metric/goal am I designing towards. Adoption, retention, reduced customer service cost?

Users & customers

Stakeholders standpoint

Market stage

© September 2025