The Impact of Product Discovery: Why We Start with Curiosity at Artera

As a seasoned Product Manager with over a decade of experience, I spend a lot of time asking questions. Curiosity is the heartbeat of product discovery and the foundation of any good product. Over the years, I’ve seen just how much value it brings, particularly to the customers we serve.

Getting Clarity

When we take the time to deeply understand the problem space, we avoid the trap of building based on assumptions or internal pressures. We become laser-focused on the outcome that will best solve our customers’ needs.

At Artera, we’re in the business of creating seamless, intelligent communication experiences. Healthcare is a space filled with complexity, regulation, and meaningful human connection. Rushing into development without a clear, validated understanding of our customers’ needs is a recipe for rework, misalignment, and missed opportunities.

That’s why we treat product discovery as a deliberate and collaborative practice. We partner closely with our internal teams to identify customers who would be great candidates for discovery conversations, those who are deeply engaged, open to sharing, and have firsthand insight into the workflows we aim to improve. These cross-functional partnerships are essential for bringing the right voices into the room.

How We Approach Discovery Conversations

When it comes to conducting discovery interviews, we approach them with structure but allow space for the conversation to unfold organically. We start with a working hypothesis, then develop a set of open-ended questions designed to explore our hypothesis from multiple angles. Our goal isn’t to validate a feature idea, it’s to understand the underlying problem in context. We listen more than we talk. We observe not just what people say, but how they say it, what they prioritize, and what frustrates them.

During recent customer visits to shadow care coordinators during post discharge follow-ups, we realized our initial assumption about workflow inefficiencies only scratched the surface. A bigger challenge was triaging patients and managing care journeys effectively, making sure the right patients received the right attention at the right time. Through listening and observing, we were able to uncover valuable insights that fundamentally shifted our thinking.

From Insights to Action

After the conversations, we synthesize the insights as a team, highlighting patterns, mapping out pain points, and identifying opportunities. We share what we learn with our team so everyone has a clear understanding of the challenge we want to solve. These insights directly shape our product direction, inform our roadmaps, and guide how we talk about the value we’re delivering.

As an example, the shift in thinking that I previously mentioned resulted in us not just focusing on automating individual tasks, but also prioritizing building tools that surface high-risk patients quickly, streamline triage workflows, and provide coordinators with a clearer view of each patient’s status. By anchoring our product decisions in the care teams’ real-world priorities, we were able to design solutions that better support both the care team and the patients they serve.

Product discovery gives our teams clarity. We know why we’re building something, not just what we’re building. And that clarity creates better collaboration with design, engineering, and go-to-market teams. It means cleaner handoffs, fewer surprises, and products that actually do what we intended them to do: solve real problems.

Turning Curiosity into Connections

A powerful but often underestimated outcome of product discovery is the trust it cultivates with customers, prospects, and even within our own teams. Some of the strongest relationships I’ve built in my career started during discovery interviews. Not because I had answers, but because I showed up with genuine curiosity. When a customer sees that we’re not just jumping to sell them the next shiny feature, but actually listening to their needs, they lean in. They feel seen. It creates a feedback loop where they become co-creators, not just consumers. That’s how we build loyalty. That’s how we stay relevant. And that allows us to design products that feel intuitive, useful, and impactful.

Curiosity as a Competitive Advantage

Curiosity is a mindset that anchors everything we do. It keeps us humble, hungry, and connected to the people we’re building for. When we lead with curiosity, we uncover the insights that drive meaningful innovation. And when we stay close to our customers, we don’t just build better products, we build trust, relevance, and lasting impact. That’s the Artera way.

About Artera:

*Artera is a SaaS digital health leader redefining patient communications. Artera is trusted by 800+ healthcare systems and federal agencies to facilitate approximately 2.2 billion messages annually, reaching 100+ million patients. The Artera platform integrates across a healthcare organization’s tech stack, EHRs and third-party vendors to unify, simplify and orchestrate digital communications into the patient’s preferred channel (texting, email,  IVR, and webchat), in 109+ languages. The Artera impact: more efficient staff, more profitable organizations and a more harmonious patient experience.*

Founded in 2015, Artera is based in Santa Barbara, California and has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company (2021, 2022, 2023), and ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for four consecutive years. Artera is a two-time Best in KLAS winner in Patient Outreach.

For more information, visit www.artera.io.

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