Three Body Product Method / Sources

Updated September 2026

Three Body Product does not invent human-centred design from scratch. Every level builds on a named approach (a canvas, a study, a book, a guide) already in wide use. This page credits each one and points you to the best place to read further, organized the way the cards are: by body, then by step, then by level.

Design

Step 1: Who is Your Customer?

• Pick Your People
  • Business Model Canvas: Customer Segments (Strategyzer): Where the habit of naming segments before solutions comes from.
  • Stakeholders vs users (NN/g, Stakeholder Interviews): How to hear what the payer wants without letting it replace the customer.
• Describe the Main One
  • Personas: Study Guide (NN/g): The best free grounding on what a persona is for and what it is not.
  • Why personas fail (NN/g): The mistakes to avoid, from teams that made them.
• Stand in Their Shoes
  • Empathy Mapping: the first step in design thinking (NN/g): The canonical explanation of the six fields and how to run the session.
  • Get out of the building (Steve Blank): Where the habit of leaving the office to learn comes from.

Step 2: What Are They Doing?

• Explore Their Needs
  • Start by learning user needs (GOV.UK Service Manual): Plain rules for writing a need, used across UK public services.
  • Jobs to be done: an introduction: The idea behind "they need to do this, to achieve that".
• Feel Their Pains & Joys
  • Value Proposition Canvas: pains and gains (Strategyzer): The customer half of the canvas is the same exercise; 3BP uses only that half here.
  • Empathy Mapping (NN/g): Where the quotes on this sheet should come from.
• Follow Their Path
  • Journey Mapping 101 (NN/g): Definitions, the anatomy of a map and a worked example.
  • Service Design Tools: Journey Map: Templates and case studies from service design, where the before and after matter most.

Step 3: Answers, Care & Impact

• Answer With Solutions
  • Epics (Atlassian Agile Coach): What an epic is and how it later becomes work.
  • Value Proposition Canvas: the product side (Strategyzer): The pain relievers and gain creators this sheet is answering with.
• Delight Them with Care
  • The Kano model: delighters: The research behind why unexpected care builds loyalty.
  • Designing for delight (NN/g, "Creating delight"): How surface delight and deep delight differ.
• Impact the Industry
  • Blue Ocean Strategy: what it is: The classic frame for changing the rules instead of competing on them.
  • How to tell a reframing story (Simon Sinek, Start with Why): The link between a new belief and the story you will tell in step 7.

Build

Step 4: Sort Out Your Priorities

• Decide Where To Start
  • Prioritization matrices (NN/g): How impact/effort grids work and where they mislead.
  • How to estimate complexity, not effort (Basecamp Shape Up: Risks and Rabbit Holes): What "complex" means before you have written a line.
• Balance Your Plan
  • The Kano model: basic, performance and delight: The three columns on this sheet map onto Kano's three categories.
  • Hygiene factors (Herzberg, overview): Why nobody thanks you for the things that must simply work.
• Activate Strategic Motion
  • Opportunity Solution Trees (Teresa Torres): Choosing bets by the outcome they unlock.
  • Bets, not backlogs (Basecamp Shape Up): Why a short list of deliberate bets beats a long ranked list.

Step 5: Prepare for Success

• Slice the Work
  • User Story Mapping (Jeff Patton): The original technique for slicing by what people do.
  • Get one piece done (Basecamp Shape Up): Why the first slice should run end to end, however thin.
• Picture Success
  • Measuring the success of your service (GOV.UK Service Manual): Plain guidance on choosing few metrics that drive decisions.
  • Outcomes over output (Josh Seiden): The difference between what you shipped and what changed.
• Set Up Milestones
  • Product roadmaps (Marty Cagan, SVPG): The case against feature-and-date roadmaps.
  • Outcome-based roadmaps (Roman Pichler, Goal-Oriented Roadmap): A widely used template for roadmaps built on goals.

Step 6: Good Pace, Flow & Teamwork

• Track Your Progress
  • The Kanban Guide: Work in progress limits and flow, in a few pages.
  • Scrum Guide: the sprint: If your team already runs sprints, this is the timebox 3BP means.
• Synchronize Your Efforts
  • Team Playbook: Working agreements (Atlassian): A short play for agreeing how a team communicates.
  • Daily stand-up (Atlassian Agile Coach): The classic sync format the progress template extends.
• Design Your Teamwork
  • Team Playbook: Retrospectives (Atlassian): The format the Stop / Keep / Start columns come from.
  • Liberating Structures: 1-2-4-All: A five-minute structure that gets every voice into each section.

Ship

Step 7: Say Why, in Your Own Way

• Say Why It Matters
  • Start with Why (Simon Sinek): The argument for leading with why, and its limits.
  • Positioning statement template (April Dunford, Obviously Awesome): How to fill "Unlike alternatives, we…" honestly.
• Brand It So It Sticks
  • The Brand Gap (Marty Neumeier): The shortest good book on what a brand is and is not.
  • Voice and tone guide (Mailchimp Content Style Guide): A public example of verbal identity done well.
• Embody Your Identity
  • Brand archetypes: The Hero and the Outlaw (Mark & Pearson): Where the twelve archetypes on the sheet come from.
  • Brand personality (Aaker, overview): The research behind treating a brand as a person.

Step 8: Resonate Together

• Spread the Word
  • Channels (Business Model Canvas, Strategyzer): The block this plan grows out of.
  • Writing for GOV.UK: plain language: How to say it so anyone understands and can act.
• Amplify Awareness
  • The Mere-Exposure Effect (overview): Why repetition builds memory, with the research behind it.
  • Contagious: why things catch on (Jonah Berger): What makes language sticky and shareable.
• Build a Community
  • Community Canvas: A free, thorough framework the charter condenses.
  • The Art of Community (Charles Vogl): summary: The seven principles behind rituals and belonging.

Step 9: Deliver, Listen & Grow

• Confirm Satisfaction
  • Net Promoter Score: the one number you need to grow (Reichheld, HBR): Where NPS comes from and what it can and cannot tell you.
  • The Sean Ellis product/market fit survey: The PMF question on the sheet, with benchmarks.
• Collect Feedback
  • Thematic analysis (NN/g): How to go from raw quotes to patterns without bias.
  • Continuous Discovery Habits (Teresa Torres): Weekly customer conversations as a habit, not a project.
• Grow with People
  • Build-Measure-Learn (Eric Ries, The Lean Startup): The loop this sheet closes.
  • Double-loop learning (Argyris, overview): Why updating the belief matters more than patching the build.

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