(Better Questions for Stronger Insights series) #15 'What they do in the gap the product doesn't fill?'

Ask what they do in the gap the product doesn't fill

A deep dive into the technique that turns consumer workarounds into innovation briefs — and six ways to find the improvised solutions that reveal exactly what the market has failed to build

Why this angle exists

When a product doesn't quite do what someone needs, they don't give up. They adapt. They combine two things that were never meant to go together, use something in a way the manufacturer never intended, create a personal ritual that compensates for what's missing, or simply absorb the cost of the gap and carry on. The workaround is the market's failure made visible — and the consumer's ingenuity made actionable.

Standard innovation research asks consumers what they want. The problem is that consumers are not very good at inventing what doesn't exist — they can critique the present but struggle to imagine a genuinely different future. The workaround question sidesteps this entirely. It doesn't ask the consumer to imagine; it asks them to describe what they already do. The imagination has already happened. The consumer has already built the prototype, however crudely. You are just asking them to show it to you.

What makes workarounds particularly valuable is their specificity. They are not wishes or preferences — they are solutions. A consumer who has been combining two products every morning because neither one alone does the job has told you, with great precision, exactly what a single product would need to do. A consumer who adds a step to a service journey because the service doesn't provide it has specified, in operational detail, what the service is missing. Every workaround contains a feature request that the consumer never consciously wrote.

The age of a workaround matters too. A workaround the consumer has been using for years is a durable unmet need — one the market has had ample time to solve and hasn't. The older and more habitual the workaround, the more stable and commercially significant the gap it represents. These are not nice-to-haves. They are the products that should already exist.

When you know you need this angle

They describe using multiple products to do one job

Any time a consumer combines two or more products to achieve what should be a single outcome, they are describing a product that doesn't exist. The combination is the brief. Ask how long they've been doing it — the answer tells you how long the market has been asleep.

They mention a step they always add to the process

"I always do X before I use it" or "I have to remember to Y afterwards." Any added step the consumer performs that the product or service doesn't perform for them is a feature gap — sometimes a product gap — hiding in plain sight.

They say they've "made it work" without being asked how

"It's not perfect but I've made it work." This phrase almost always conceals a workaround. Something about how they've made it work will contain the innovation brief. Always follow up.

You're in a category that hasn't significantly innovated

In mature, stable categories where products have converged and everyone does roughly the same thing, workarounds are especially rich. Consumers in these categories have often been improvising for so long they've forgotten the improvisation isn't normal.

Six techniques — click each to expand

A. The combination workaround

Ask whether the consumer uses more than one product together to achieve something a single product should handle. Combination workarounds are the most legible innovation briefs in consumer research — the consumer has literally assembled the product that doesn't exist from the parts that do. Every combination is an implicit product specification, written in the language of current market failure.

WEAK

"Is there anything missing from products in this category?"

STRONGER

"Is there something you find yourself combining — two products, two steps, two things that weren't designed to go together — because nothing on its own quite does the job?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"Every morning I use the serum first, then the SPF moisturiser, then I have to wait for both to absorb before I can put on makeup or it all just slides around. It's three separate products and about fifteen minutes of waiting and it feels completely mad that no one has just made one thing that does all of this. I've looked. There are some 'SPF primers' but they don't actually do what I need."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

The consumer has been running a three-product morning ritual for what is almost certainly years, and has actively searched the market for a consolidated solution without finding one that works. The fifteen-minute absorption wait is the real cost — it is a daily friction point that restructures her entire morning routine around a product gap. The 'SPF primers' she found are close but not right — which means the category has attempted the solution and missed the brief. Understanding exactly what the SPF primers got wrong would complete the product specification entirely. This is not a vague wish for a better product; it is a precise, tested, commercially validated brief for something that is currently underserved.

When to use: When a consumer describes a combination workaround, always ask what each component is doing that the others aren't. The functional split between the combined products is the exact feature list the consolidated product needs to deliver. Don't summarise it — get them to specify it.

B. The added step workaround

Ask whether the consumer always performs a step before, during, or after using a product or service that the product or service doesn't perform for them. Added steps are workarounds in disguise — the consumer has internalised them so thoroughly that they no longer register as gaps. Surfacing them requires asking not what they wish existed but what they actually do, in sequence, every time.

WEAK

"How do you use this product?"

STRONGER

"Walk me through exactly what you do with this — including anything you do before or after that the product itself doesn't do for you. Is there a step you always add that just became part of how you use it?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"I always take a photo of my receipt and email it to myself before I leave the shop. Always. Because I've been burned twice by needing to return something and not being able to find the receipt. The app is supposed to have my purchase history but it never shows everything — things fall off it, older purchases just disappear. So I've made my own backup system. I've been doing it for about three years."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

The consumer has been manually maintaining a parallel record-keeping system for three years to compensate for a service failure the brand doesn't know is happening at this scale. Her workaround is meticulous, habitual, and invisible to the brand — it generates no complaint data, no churn signal, no support ticket. The app's purchase history incompleteness is experienced not as a bug but as a known limitation she has engineered around. The fix is technically trivial — complete, persistent purchase history — but its value to this consumer is three years of daily compensatory effort. That is an enormous service improvement available for what is almost certainly a straightforward engineering fix.

When to use: Added step workarounds are most common in service and digital product contexts where consumers interact with a system regularly enough to have learned its limitations and built their own compensations. They are almost never reported as complaints — they are reported as 'just what I do.' The phrase 'just what I do' is always worth stopping for.

C. The repurposed product workaround

Ask whether the consumer uses any product in a way it was never designed for — in a different category, for a different purpose, or in a modified form. Repurposed product workarounds reveal jobs-to-be-done that no product in the relevant category has claimed. When a consumer uses something from one domain to solve a problem in another, they are drawing a map of underserved territory that no brand has yet thought to occupy.

WEAK

"Do you ever use products in ways they weren't designed for?"

STRONGER

"Is there anything you use for something it was never really designed to do — a product from one area of your life that you've recruited to solve a problem somewhere else?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"I use a cooking spray — the kind for frying pans — on my squeaky door hinges. I also use it on my kids' zip fasteners when they get stuck. I tried actual lubricant sprays but they leave a residue and smell awful. The cooking spray just works. I've been doing it for years. My neighbour saw me doing it once and she does it now too."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

A cooking product has been repurposed as a household maintenance tool because the products designed for that job are worse — more residue, worse smell, less effective. The consumer has found a better solution by accident and transmitted it socially. This is a precise product brief for a lubricant product positioned around kitchen-to-household versatility, or alternatively for a reformulated household lubricant that matches what the cooking spray does right. The social transmission — 'my neighbour saw me and she does it now too' — suggests the workaround travels easily and the unmet need is not idiosyncratic. A product that officially occupies this space would have a pre-existing user base already using an improvised version.

When to use: Repurposed product workarounds often reveal that a product in a completely different category is accidentally winning a job it was never designed for. The question for innovation teams is always: should we claim this use case officially? Often the answer is yes — the consumer has done the market research and the product development simultaneously.

D. The do-without workaround

Ask whether there is something the consumer simply goes without — a need they've stopped trying to meet because no solution they've found is good enough — and what they do instead in that absence. The do-without is a workaround of a different kind: instead of improvising a solution, the consumer has decided the cost of having no solution is lower than the cost of the imperfect solutions available. That decision is an indictment of the entire category — and an invitation for something genuinely better.

WEAK

"Is there anything you feel is missing from this category?"

STRONGER

"Is there something you've just stopped looking for in this space — something you need but have decided no product is going to give you properly, so you've learned to do without it?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"Honest nutritional advice that actually applies to me. Not generic government guidelines. Not the 'eat less, move more' thing. I'm fifty-three, I have a thyroid condition, I do moderate exercise, I have specific things I'm managing. I've tried apps, I've read books, I've paid for a nutrition consultation. None of it mapped onto my actual situation. At some point I just stopped looking and started making my own judgments. Which probably aren't optimal. But the alternative was spending more money on advice that didn't fit."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

The consumer has exited the market for nutritional guidance entirely — not because the need has gone away but because every product and service she encountered failed to meet it. The failure is precision: generic advice is abundant, personalised advice that accounts for age, health conditions, and lifestyle simultaneously is not. She is now self-managing with acknowledged suboptimality because the cost of continuing to search exceeds the expected value of what she'd find. This is an almost perfectly specified brief for a personalised nutrition service — the consumer has told you exactly what it would need to do, exactly what the current alternatives get wrong, and exactly what she would pay for something that actually worked. She has stopped looking, which means the first credible solution that reaches her has no competition for her attention.

When to use: The do-without workaround is the hardest to surface because it requires the consumer to remember a need they've actively stopped attending to. The phrase 'at some point I just stopped' is the tell — it marks the moment of resignation that turned an active search into a closed chapter. That closed chapter is almost always still open from the market's side.

E. The timing workaround

Ask whether there is something the consumer does at a different time than would be natural — earlier, later, more frequently, or in a different sequence — because the product or service forces them to adapt their timing rather than serving the timing they actually want. Timing workarounds reveal mismatches between how a product is designed to be used and how a consumer's life actually runs. They are often invisible to brands because they show up as normal usage patterns in the data — even though the timing is entirely driven by constraint rather than preference.

WEAK

"How does this fit into your routine?"

STRONGER

"Is there something you do at a different time than you'd naturally want to — because the product or service works better, or is only available, at a specific moment that isn't ideal for you?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"I do all my banking admin at 6am before anyone else is up. Not because I want to. Because that's the only time the app doesn't glitch. By mid-morning the system is under load and things take forever or time out. I've learned that if I want to actually get things done — transfers, checking statements, anything — I have to do it before the world wakes up. I've been doing this for about eighteen months. My husband thinks I'm slightly mad."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

The consumer has restructured her personal schedule around a service infrastructure failure — waking early to conduct financial administration because the product performs poorly under normal load conditions. The bank has no visibility of this: her usage appears at 6am, which looks like a preference, not a workaround. Eighteen months of early-morning banking is the cost of a system performance problem that has never generated a support ticket because the consumer found her own solution rather than complaining. The product team sees a loyal early-morning user. The reality is a frustrated customer who has accommodated a failure that should have been resolved a year and a half ago.

When to use: Timing workarounds are most common in digital products, services with peak-load problems, and any category where availability or performance varies by time of day. They are almost always invisible in usage data — because the workaround makes the data look like a preference. Asking directly is the only way to find them.

F. The social workaround

Ask whether the consumer has recruited another person to fill a gap the product or service should be filling — relying on a friend, a family member, an online community, or a professional to do something that should be built into the product itself. Social workarounds are among the most significant innovation briefs available because they reveal where the product or service has failed at a specific task so completely that the consumer has outsourced it to human relationships. Every social workaround is a feature that exists in a community and not yet in a product.

WEAK

"Do you ever ask for help with this?"

STRONGER

"Is there something you rely on another person for — a friend, an online group, anyone — that you feel like the product or service should really be handling itself? Something where you've effectively outsourced a gap to your social network?"

LIKELY RESPONSE

"I have a WhatsApp group with four friends and we basically function as each other's financial advisors. Not properly — none of us are qualified — but when one of us is making a decision about a pension, or a savings account, or whether to remortgage, we crowdsource it in the group. Because the actual financial services products are either too complicated to understand without a degree or too expensive to access if you just have a question. The group is just us trying to make sensible decisions with incomplete information together. It's been going for four years."

INSIGHT UNLOCKED

Four consumers have collectively built an informal financial advisory service because the formal market either prices them out or communicates in language they can't navigate. The WhatsApp group is a four-person fintech startup that has been running for four years on social capital because no product has earned their trust or met their access needs. The brief is not a robo-advisor or a comparison site — both exist and have apparently failed these consumers. It is a service that brings the WhatsApp group dynamic — peer language, shared decision-making, no judgment, practical not theoretical — into a product. The social workaround has specified the product more precisely than any focus group could.

When to use: Social workarounds are most productively found in categories with high complexity and high stakes — financial products, health decisions, legal matters, significant purchases. In these categories, consumers routinely outsource to trusted people what they should be able to get from the market. The community that has formed around a shared gap is almost always the launch audience for the product that closes it.

Follow-up probes once the workaround is on the table

▸

"How long have you been doing it this way?"

The age of the workaround is the measure of the market's failure. A workaround that has been running for five years is a commercially significant gap that incumbents have missed and challengers should find.

▸

"Did you figure this out yourself — or did someone show you?"

If the workaround was passed between consumers — friend to friend, forum post to forum post — the gap is wide and the need is shared. Socially transmitted workarounds are the strongest signal of category-level failure.

▸

"If a product existed that did this properly — so you didn't need the workaround — what would it look like?"

Converts the workaround directly into a product specification. The consumer has already defined what 'properly' means through their improvisation. Now you're asking them to describe the official version of what they've already built.

▸

"How much does the workaround cost you — in time, money, effort, or something else?"

Quantifies the value of solving the gap. A workaround that costs significant time, money, or cognitive load every day is a high-value problem. One that costs almost nothing may not justify a product — but understanding the cost helps prioritise which gaps to build toward.

▸

"Have you ever looked for a product that does this properly — and what did you find?"

Reveals whether the consumer has actively tried to close the gap and failed. A consumer who searched, found nothing adequate, and returned to their workaround is the most precise signal available that the market has a genuine white space.

▸

"Would you pay for something that eliminated this workaround entirely — what would that be worth to you?"

Tests commercial viability directly. Not all workarounds represent paying opportunities — some gaps are too small, too occasional, or too cheap to solve. But a consumer who answers this question without hesitation has told you the rough value ceiling of the product you're considering building.

Signals that the workaround is a genuine innovation brief

They describe it without realising it's unusual. The consumer who explains their workaround matter-of-factly — as if everyone does it — has normalised a gap that shouldn't be normal. This is one of the strongest signals available: a need so persistent and so unaddressed that the consumer has stopped perceiving it as a problem and started perceiving it as just how things are. That normalisation is the market's biggest blind spot.

The workaround involves combining products from different categories. A consumer who uses a tool from one category to fill a gap in another is revealing a job-to-be-done that neither category has claimed. These cross-category workarounds are often the most disruptive innovation opportunities — because no existing player is positioned to own them.

They've shared the workaround with others. "I told my sister about this" or "there's a whole thread about it online." A workaround that travels socially is a shared unmet need with an already-assembled audience. The community that has built up around an improvised solution is the launch audience for a product that replaces it.

The workaround is highly personal and idiosyncratic. It works for this consumer in a very specific set of circumstances that don't generalise. Worth understanding — but probe for whether others in their life have similar needs before treating it as a product opportunity. One person's intricate workaround is often just one person's intricate workaround.

The workaround already exists as a product they haven't found. Sometimes the gap has been filled — just not visibly, not accessibly, or not with enough reach to have entered this consumer's awareness. A workaround that turns out to have an existing solution is still useful: it is a distribution, discovery, or communication failure rather than an innovation opportunity.

They say they don't have any workarounds. In almost every category, almost every consumer has at least one. A gentle reframe often opens it up: "is there anything you do before, during, or after using the product that the product itself doesn't do for you?" The workaround is almost always there — they just haven't labelled it as one.

What to avoid

Don't evaluate the workaround while the consumer is describing it. No "that's clever" or "interesting that you do it that way" — reactions that signal the workaround is unusual will cause some consumers to second-guess whether they're describing something worth sharing. The workaround should be received with the same calm curiosity as everything else. What feels mundane to the consumer is often the most valuable thing in the room.

Don't jump straight to the product solution. The temptation, once a workaround is on the table, is to immediately sketch the product that would replace it. Resist this. There is almost always more to understand first — how long the workaround has existed, what triggered it, what it costs, whether others share it, and what the consumer's ideal replacement would look like. The product idea that emerges from a fully understood workaround is a much better brief than the one that emerges from a half-heard one.

And don't assume the workaround is the whole gap. Most workarounds are solutions to the most visible part of a problem — the part the consumer was motivated enough to solve. The parts they absorbed and stopped noticing are often equally significant. After the workaround is fully described, always ask: "is there anything else about this that still isn't quite right — something you haven't figured out a workaround for yet?" The unsolved remainder is frequently the harder and more interesting brief.