Feature Canvas Template
Analyse incoming features and ideas keeping in mind users, problems and context.
About the Feature Canvas Template
A feature canvas helps you understand why a new feature was requested.
Before you dive into solution mode and build out a feature, try filling in a feature canvas. The grid layout helps you understand if investing time in a new feature will be valuable to your customers, meet business needs, and make the most of team resources.
Your product team may want to fill in a feature canvas after completing a product canvas. After developing expertise in who your customers are and what your product’s basic functionality should be, it’s time to dig deeper.
Feature canvases allow your team to build context and value propositions for feature requests. You'll make better product decisions by learning more about the risks and opportunities of some advanced features.
What is a feature canvas
Before you start working on a concrete solution for a new feature, you need to figure out the “why” that’s motivating it. A feature canvas helps you understand if you should commit to a new feature based on its feasibility and whether it truly solves customer pain points.
A feature canvas typically has seven segments:
An idea description: How would you describe the product feature in 2-3 sentences?
Why: How would implementing this product feature help your customers and your organization?
Contextual situations: When do people need this feature? How do internal and external factors impact how they interact with the feature?
Problems to solve: What are the customer and business problems this feature addresses?
The value proposition: What value will you deliver to your customers? Revisit a relevant methodology like a lean canvas or business model canvas to help craft a definition. Using lean canvas templates can provide a structured and repeatable approach to clearly articulate and refine your value proposition.
Team capabilities: What resources are immediately available to you to help build new solutions to these problems?
Restrictions and limitations: What obstacles could stop your team from building these features right away?
By considering these different factors, you can decide what feature requests are worth building, and which ones aren’t worth following through. This is the basic version of a feature canvas, which can be adapted for any product feature idea.
When to use a feature canvas
You can use a feature canvas during planning or brainstorming sessions to sell your ideas or align your cross-functional teams on all the details. It can help you and your product team:
Spend more time defining a problem before you commit to building a new solution
Stay user-centered while analyzing new feature requests and ideas
Discard feature ideas that don’t fit current needs, user contexts, or business goals
Find blind spots to address in your user research before building new features
Align teams around the context you need to agree on before you commit to building a feature
You can also use this canvas to plan feature launch activities. These can include re-engaging dissatisfied customers, boosting customer retention and customer loyalty, and campaigns reminding your customers that your company is listening and considering feedback.
How to use the feature canvas template
Get started by selecting the feature canvas template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Give your team context about why you’re using the feature canvas. This canvas aims to help your team progress from execution mode to analysis mode. Context, customer problems, capabilities, and restrictions all impact whether or how you build out features. Get your product team to fill in this feature canvas in a single session, to understand the reasons for prioritizing certain features over others.
Fill in each numbered segment with sticky notes. Stick to one idea per sticky note. After placing all the notes, nominate a group facilitator to review them to determine what ideas to prioritize, and which to set aside for the near future. Spend 10 minutes on this, then assess whether you’re ready to move onto the next step. If not, try another five minutes.
Add other segments if needed. An extended feature canvas can have up to 14 segments, including: customer tasks, customer awareness, customer support needs, success criteria, and key activities to deliver customer and business value.
Invite cross-functional team members to review and contribute to your canvas. You can use this feature canvas as a one-off team synchronization tool or maintain it as a living document throughout a product’s life cycle – to implementation and beyond. Revisit it as necessary to update details or add more segments as your team’s analysis and planning needs evolve.
Get started with this template right now.
Good, Bad, Ideas, Action, Kudos Retrospective
Works best for:
Retrospectives, Meetings, Agile Methodology
The Good, Bad, Ideas, Action, Kudos Retrospective template offers a structured approach to retrospectives by categorizing feedback into five key areas: good, bad, ideas, action items, and kudos (appreciations). It provides elements for team members to share their thoughts, suggestions, and acknowledgments. This template enables teams to reflect on past performance, generate actionable insights, and celebrate achievements. By promoting inclusivity and constructive feedback, the Good, Bad, Ideas, Action, Kudos Retrospective empowers teams to foster collaboration, drive continuous improvement, and strengthen team dynamics effectively.
Product Strategy - Understand the "Why"
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
The Product Strategy Understand the Why template emphasizes the importance of aligning product strategies with business objectives. By defining the "why" behind product initiatives, setting clear goals, and prioritizing initiatives, this template ensures strategic alignment and focus. With sections for articulating vision, setting objectives, and defining success criteria, it provides clarity and direction for product teams. This template serves as a strategic guide for product managers to develop and execute product strategies that drive business growth and customer value.
Product Inception Canvas
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
The Product Inception Canvas template facilitates collaborative sessions for defining product visions and strategies. By exploring product goals, user needs, and market opportunities, this template aligns teams around a shared vision. With sections for defining product features, prioritizing initiatives, and setting success criteria, it provides a structured framework for product inception. This template serves as a launchpad for innovative product ideas, guiding teams through the initial stages of product development and setting the foundation for success.
User Interview Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Product Management
A user interview is a UX research technique in which researchers ask the user questions about a topic. They allow your team to quickly and easily collect user data and learn more about your users. In general, organizations conduct user interviews to gather background data, to understand how people use technology, to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, to understand user objectives and motivations, and to find users’ pain points. Use this template to record notes during an interview to ensure you’re gathering the data you need to create personas.
Product Roadmap Template
Works best for:
Product Management, Roadmaps
Product roadmaps help communicate the vision and progress of what’s coming next for your product. It’s an important asset for aligning teams and valuable stakeholders – including executives, engineering, marketing, customer success, and sales – around your strategy and priorities. Product roadmapping can inform future project management, describe new features and product goals, and spell out the lifecycle of a new product. While product roadmaps are customizable, most contain information about the products you’re building, when you’re building them, and the people involved at each stage.
Startup Canvas Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Documentation, Strategic Planning
A Startup Canvas helps founders express and map out a new business idea in a less formal format than a traditional business plan. Startup Canvases are a useful visual map for founders who want to judge their new business idea’s strengths and weaknesses. This Canvas can be used as a framework to quickly articulate your business idea’s value proposition, problem, solution, market, team, marketing channels, customer segment, external risks, and Key Performance Indicators. By articulating factors like success, viability, vision, and value to the customer, founders can make a concise case for why a new product or service should exist and get funded.