Sharpen your Product Sense - it will take you long way!
Sharpening your Product Sense
Product sense is the ability to make good product judgments regardless of domain and amount of information given.
It’s a good combination of User empathy, Domain understanding, Design thinking and Creative problem-solving
If you're a product manager, you have to look at your product through the eyes of the customer. It's not enough to know what your users are saying about your product—you need to know why they're saying it and how their experience will be different from the way it is now.
Building a product sense is one of the most critical skills for any product manager or entrepreneur. It’s the ability to understand what customers want, what they need, and how to create products that solve their problems. But how do you develop this skill? Is it something you’re born with, or can you learn it?
Build Deep User Empathy
The first step in building a product sense is to get to know your customers. And by this, I mean really get to know them. You need to understand their needs, their pain points, and their motivations. This means talking to them, observing them, and even spending time with them in their natural environment.
One of my favorite anecdotes about this comes from Airbnb. In the early days, the founders realized that their customers’ biggest fear was staying in a stranger’s home. They started visiting their customers’ homes and staying with them to address this fear. This gave them a deep understanding of what their customers were looking for in a home-sharing experience and allowed them to build a product that met those needs.
Creative Problem Solving
Creative problem-solving is an essential component of building a good product sense. When you're faced with a challenge or problem, it's easy to get stuck in a rut and try the same old solutions that have worked in the past. But to truly innovate and create something new and valuable, you need to approach problems with a fresh perspective and think outside the box.
Creative problem-solving involves breaking down a problem into smaller pieces and examining it from different angles. This often involves brainstorming, ideation, and experimentation to find the best solution. It also requires a willingness to take risks and try new approaches, even if they seem unconventional or outside of your comfort zone.
When Airbnb was first starting out, the founders struggled to get people to actually book stays in the apartments and homes listed on their platform. They soon realized that one of the main issues was the quality of the photos used in the listings. Many hosts were simply using poorly lit or low-quality pictures, which made their spaces look unappealing to potential guests.
To solve this problem, the founders decided to take matters into their own hands. They flew to New York City and rented a camera, then went around to various hosts' apartments and took high-quality photos themselves. They even went as far as buying props and staging the apartments to make them look more appealing.
This hands-on approach paid off, as the new and improved photos led to a significant increase in bookings. The founders quickly realized the importance of good photos in making a property seem desirable and learned the importance of taking a hands-on approach to solving product problems.
Domain Understanding
It involves understanding the target audience, competitors, industry trends, and other factors that can impact the success of the product.
Let's take the example of Slack, a workplace communication tool that has become a popular choice for teams across industries. When Slack was first launched, the founders had a deep understanding of the pain points of the modern workforce. They knew that emails, meetings, and long email chains were not the most effective ways for teams to communicate and collaborate.
The founders were also familiar with the domain of enterprise software, having worked in companies such as Flickr and Tiny Speck. They understood the intricacies of designing a product that would be easy to use, integrate with existing systems, and meet the security and compliance requirements of large organizations.
With this domain understanding, the Slack team was able to create a product that addressed the specific needs of teams in the workplace. They focused on building a platform that would enable quick and easy communication, with features such as channels, direct messaging, and integrations with other tools.
Design Thinking
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that emphasizes empathy, creativity, and collaboration. It involves putting the needs of users at the center of the design process and iterating through various solutions to arrive at the best possible outcome.
Loom is a popular screen and video recording tool that has gained a lot of traction among remote teams and individuals who need to create and share visual content quickly and easily. The Loom team applied design thinking principles to create a product that meets the needs of their users and delivers an intuitive, delightful user experience.
Here are some ways in which Loom applied design thinking to build a good product:
User research: The Loom team conducted extensive user research to understand the needs and pain points of their target audience. They talked to a diverse group of users, including educators, designers, and remote workers, to gain insight into how they used existing screen recording tools and what features they wanted in a new product.
User personas: Based on their research, the Loom team developed detailed user personas to represent the different types of users who would be using their product. These personas helped the team empathize with their users and understand their needs and motivations.
Rapid prototyping: The Loom team created multiple prototypes and tested them with users to gather feedback and refine their product. They used tools like InVision and Sketch to create interactive prototypes that allowed users to interact with the product and provide feedback on its usability and functionality.
Iterative development: The Loom team used an iterative development process to continuously refine their product based on user feedback. They released frequent updates and made changes based on user feedback to ensure that their product was always meeting the needs of their users.
Intuitive user experience: The Loom team prioritized creating an intuitive user experience that was easy to use, even for users who had never used a screen recording tool before. They created a simple, streamlined interface that allowed users to start recording with just a few clicks.
Personalization: The Loom team recognized that users had different preferences and needs when it came to screen recording, so they created a range of customization options that allowed users to personalize their recording experience. This included options to record with or without webcam, to record a specific tab or the entire screen, and to add captions or annotations to their videos.
Putting all 4 of these principles together is how Apple built a great product!
When the iPod was first introduced, it wasn't the only MP3 player on the market. However, it quickly became the most popular due to its sleek design, ease of use, and intuitive interface. Steve Jobs understood that people wanted a simple and elegant way to access their music on the go, and he made that the focus of the product.
But how did Jobs and his team come up with the idea for the iPod? It wasn't just a stroke of luck - they used their product sense to identify a need in the market and fill it in a way that was different from other players.
They started by empathizing with their target audience, recognizing that music lovers wanted to be able to carry their entire music libraries with them wherever they went. They also took into account the limitations of the technology at the time - storage capacity and battery life were major factors in the design of the device.
Next, they used their domain understanding to identify the best possible components and technologies to make the device work efficiently. They understood that a hard drive-based system would be more effective than the flash memory-based systems that were commonly used at the time.
From there, they employed design thinking to create a product that was both aesthetically pleasing and functional. They wanted the iPod to be something that people would be proud to carry with them, and they succeeded by creating a device that was simple, elegant, and easily recognizable.
Finally, they used creative problem-solving to address the challenges that arose during the development process. For example, when they discovered that the battery life was shorter than they wanted, they developed a way to optimize power consumption without sacrificing functionality.
Overall, the success of the iPod was due to the Apple team's ability to use their product sense to identify a need in the market and create a product that met that need in a way that was unique and effective. By focusing on user empathy, domain understanding, design thinking, and creative problem-solving, they were able to create a product that changed the way people listened to music on the go.
Now that you've sharpened your product sense, it's time to put it into action. Pick a product you use daily and think about how it could be improved. Are there any problems you encounter? What solutions might work best? If you're feeling ambitious, try creating mockups or prototypes of new features!