Is Elon Musk Democratizing Product Design?
There’s a reason his companies keep succeeding and it isn’t his presentation skills.
Elon Musk is a hard pill to swallow. And he seems to have only gotten more problematic since his takeover of Twitter.
Personally, he reminds me of the Kardashians, TikTok, or Love is Blind. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to look away.
Whatever your opinions are on the guy, he’s certainly proven himself as an effective leader of growing organizations. And as a product designer, he has me on the edge of my seat.
He’s doing a real-time redesign of Twitter. This is something I’ve seen in startups hundreds of times, but for a company with 450 Million users, this is INSANE.
One of the first things I learned working in UX design is that people hate change. I still remember the day Facebook introduced timelines, it was terrifying.
So how’s he doing this?
Simple. He’s asking his users what they want and ACTUALLY LETTING THEM VOTE ON IT.
First off, holy cow. I wish I got to work with sample sizes like this for my user surveys.
But I mean come on? This is some pretty convincing quantitative data…
This is User Experience 101, listen to your customers. PUT YOUR CUSTOMERS NEEDS FIRST.
By giving Twitter’s users deciding power, he’s building the product they actually want. And he’s engaging the Twitter community to become owners of their online experience. People are more willing to accept change if they know they had a voice in it.
And why shouldn't Twitter’s users have a voice in what it becomes? Twitter IS the people who USE the platform. It only makes sense that it tries operating a bit more like a democracy than a dictatorship.
Look, I realize what users say they want is often different from how users act. Not all user feedback is perfectly useful. The key insights that shape a product’s experience are hidden amongst a lot of noise.
But as product designers, it’s up to us to disseminate what feedback should be prioritized. Optimizing for users’ actions is what’s given us the terribleness that is modern social media. And Twitter has hemorrhaged money almost every year its existed. Clearly, it’s time to try something new.
I don’t know why so many of Elon’s companies have succeeded, but it’s impossible to ignore his product acumen. Teslas are revolutionary beyond being electric cars. Elon and Tesla redesigned the entire experience of being in a car, making it fun.
Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen was recently asked in an interview with CNBC what it’s like working with Elon. He praised his customer-centric thinking, stating:
“He cares a ton about what the customer perception is, how does a customer relate to the products, what’s the experience their going to have, he cares deeply about that.”
Designing an experience around what your customers want is the quickest route to a successful product. It seems like Elon Musk is just cutting to the chase and actually asking them.
P.S. I really hope this poll is real ⬇. I’m ready for Vine to be back.
