21h • Methods, Tools, AI
Why P.A.L.T. belongs in your Product Discovery workshops
Sometimes the best customer insights are hidden behind workarounds, hacks, substitute solutions.
That’s why we created P.A.L.T. at Design Sprint Academy.
It helps teams see the unseen — the less obvious problems — and explore territory where competitors aren’t.
Proof: Claude Cowork
Anthropic didn’t build Cowork because users requested it. They built it because they watched users hack Claude Code (a developer tool) to handle everyday tasks they couldn’t quite describe yet—like organizing files or planning trips.
That’s a Painful + Latent sign.
What P.A.L.T. stands for:
P (Painful): → A problem that hurts, costs time, money, or trust.
A (Aspirational): → A desire or wish that would feel good to achieve, but not critical.
L (Latent): → A hidden issue or desire the user hasn’t yet recognized or can’t clearly express.
T (Top of Mind): → Something the user is already aware of and actively thinking about (or actively looking for solutions).
We use P.A.L.T. inside our AI Problem Framing workshop as a filter before teams commit to solutions. It helps them ignore, for a moment, the Top-of-Mind problems (where competitors also focus) and spend time where they can make a unique difference: Painful + Latent.
I wrote a deeper breakdown of how Claude Cowork maps to P.A.L.T.
(and how to replicate their way of thinking).
Hope you'll find it helpful.
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Why P.A.L.T. belongs in your Product Discovery workshops
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