Good vs Great Products
As I was reading through lessons for my Designlab class, I discovered some great points on the differences between good and great products.
First off, I feel it’s important to define why products are so important to individuals.
Products are important because they create value in their users’ lives either by reducing problems or creating gains. Good products can generate habits and great products can inspire emotion. Products that solve tangible needs as well as address our intangible desires are the ones that fulfill their users needs and motivations.
While reading This list of short principles by Joshua Porter, I came across a quote I couldn’t agree with more.
“The difference between a good and great product is the last 10%”.
Many core features of a product will often resemble their competitors but the best products are those that are unique and provide full support for people trying to achieve specific goals.
For me personally, visually pleasing design that is straightforward and efficient to use creates an indispensable product in my world.
One digital product that I can’t live without is the Shazam Application. Shazam is an application owned by Apple Inc. The application can identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, watchOS, and Windows.
I use this app to identify tracks when I’m out and about anywhere from a coffee shop to a bar/nightclub. What I love most about this app is how simple and effective it is. Shazam finds the name of any song and artist in seconds. You can listen and add your tracks to Apple Music or Spotify playlists, follow along with time-synced lyrics and watch music videos from Apple Music or YouTube.
A digital product that I consider innovative is Venmo. Prior to Venmo, there were few or no options to transfer cash electronically without a fee. Venmo didn’t gain popularity until its aggressive marketing push in 2015, when PayPal announced the slogan “Pay with Venmo”. Cash was slowly becoming obsolete so it was perfect timing.
According to Investopedia, “Venmo has emerged as one of the most popular apps for electronically transferring funds from one party to another. Its explosive growth is largely driven by millennials, who even use its name as a verb, as in: “I’ll Venmo you for the food”.
Instagram is a product that I feel negatively addicted to. I personally feel a mix of emotions while using the application. I like to check in with friends and influencers for social interaction and inspiration but often find myself on the “gram” way too many hours of the day. As a result, I often delete the application from my phone to give my self “social media breaks”.
Due to the effect that it has on the brain, social media is addictive both physically and psychologically.
According to a Harvard Law School Study, self-disclosure on social networking sites triggers the same part of the brain that also fires when taking an addictive substance. When an individual gets a notification, such as a like or mention, the brain receives a rush of dopamine and sends it along reward pathways, causing him or her to feel pleasure. Social media provides an immense amount of immediate rewards in the form of attention from others for relatively minimal effort.
