How to make an impact on your product
Product impact is an attribute tech companies look for when interviewing candidates — both motivation to have product impact and previously demonstrated impact — and evaluating the performance of current employees. One of Facebook’s core values is Focus on impact, and Google looks for people who want to change how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one another. Yet, what does it mean to have an impact?
Impact is having an effect on product, process, and people.
In this article, I am going to define impact — at least in the tech world — as having an effect on product, process, and people. More specifically, impact is:
- The ability to identify product opportunities, influence product decisions, and innovate.
- The ability to influence the process by which product is developed.
- The ability to collaborate with others, influence senior leadership, and improve peoples’ lives.
In this article I will walkthrough two examples of work that has had an impact:
- Developing the Chrome OS window switching interface;
- Developing Instagram’s business profile and insights
While these examples are from the perspective of a User Experience Researcher, the lessons apply to other functions.
Example 1: Developing the Chrome OS Window Switching Interface
In 2011 Google released the first ever Chromebook — the CR-48. Google’s mission was to develop an operating system that was simple, secure, and fast. This was an opportunity to develop an operating system for the modern age of computing.
Around the same time, we were developing Chrome for mobile, which was released in 2012. One of the innovations of this mobile browser was the tab switching interface, which spread out web pages like a stack of cards. The user could scroll and select one of these cards to switch to that tab.
There was a thought that as we had Chrome OS, Chrome for mobile, and Chrome on other form factors and operating systems, it could be beneficial to the user to have a consistent switching interface. After all, consistency is a usability heuristic. However, a user interface or interaction that works well on one device may not translate to others. Porting the Start menu from the Windows 95 operating system to Windows Compact Edition (CE) is an example that resulted in a bad user experience — the Start menu tap target was too small, and it was difficult to interact with dropdown menus on a mobile device.
It was this argument that resulted in us taking a step back to consider other window switching interfaces for Chrome OS. This is our first instance of impact: influence the process by which product is developed.
Jenn Chen, a Designer, and Alex Kuscher, a Product Manager and I reviewed the academic literature on window switching interfaces and documented existing solutions. We then ideated on various possible solutions. We also filed a patent for presenting windows and tabs. This is our second instance of impact: product innovation.
We shortlisted three window switching interfaces we wished to consider for Chrome OS. The Card window switching interface arranged windows as a stack of cards, like Chrome for mobile. Users could scroll through the card stack and select the window to switch to. The Mosaic window switching interface arranged windows in a grid, scaling the window to the size of the grid cell. The Expose window switching interface, which was a popularized by Mac OS and was a baseline for our study, arranged windows based on their relative size and position. For both the Mosaic and Expose window switching interfaces users could select the window to switch to.
We needed to decide which to implement. When developing the Chrome for mobile tab switching interface, Ed Chi, a Research Scientist, and I conducted a lab-based experiment that showed the cards tab switching interface was more efficient, less frustrating and incurred no significant difference in error rates when compared to Safari’s tab switching interface. We published the results of this experiment at CHI 2013, which had a 12% acceptance rate, and received a RepliCHI Award: Swipe vs. scroll: web page switching on mobile browsers. As such, the product manager wanted to follow a similar process for deciding the window switching interface to be used on Chrome OS. This is another example of influence the process by which product is developed.
Alex identified a Software Engineer, Robert Flack, to work with us to design and prototype the window switching interfaces, as well as integrate the experimental procedure and log various metrics, such as the time to switch between windows. This is our third instance of impact: cross-functional collaboration (i.e. people). Specifically, by leveraging each others’ skillsets we were able to achieve more than either of us could have alone.
Helen Harris, another User Experience Researcher, and I ran 42 participants through the lab-based experiment. After the study, Robert was standing over my shoulder as I ran the statistical analysis. As soon as the results were in he knew which interface to develop. We found that the Mosaic window switching interface we evaluated was the most efficient and less error-prone when the user had a higher number of windows open. The Cards window switching interface was actually the poorest performing on a desktop interface. This is our fourth instance of impact: influence product decisions. It was because of this lab-based experiment that we implemented the Mosaic window switching interface that exists in Chrome OS today.
Chrome OS is an operating system that is used by millions of people. This project resulted in us implementing the most efficient and least error-prone window switching interface among those tested. This is our fifth instance of impact: improve people’s lives. Specifically by launching a window switching interface that is simpler and faster.
Ed Chi and I wrote up our research findings in a paper that was published at CHI 2016, which had a 14.5% acceptance rate: Window Shopping: A Study of Desktop Window Switching.
Beyond having an impact on the product, process, or people, publications contribute to the knowledge of the scientific community, and can positively impact a company’s brand and support hiring, to name a few examples.
Example 2: Developing Instagram’s business profile and insights
In 2014 I joined Instagram as their first User Experience Researcher and Head of Research. Prior to our product planning meetings, I would often hear whispers from the Monetization product manager, Jeff Kanter, “we should do something for SMBs”. Every 6 months this whisper grew louder. However, we did not know what to do. As such, I pulled together the five User Experience Researchers on the Instagram team at the time to conduct a research deep-dive to understand the needs of SMBs and their use of social media. This is our sixth instance of impact: identify opportunities to inform product development.
I asked Nicole Chen, a User Experience Researcher working with the Monetization team to lead the project. She organized five cross-functional teams consisting of Analysts, Designers, Engineers, Product Managers and User Experience Researchers to travel to five cities across the US and meet with business owners at their businesses in order to understand their roles, businesses, needs and use of social media. This is another example of cross-functional collaboration (i.e. people). There is nothing more powerful than the people who design, develop, prioritize and understand products hearing and seeing the needs and problems of their users first-hand.
After the in-field research, the team came together to synthesize the core needs of SMBs. We worked together with a Designer, Alexander Mayes, and Product Manager, Sanchan Saxena to map these core needs to product opportunities.
We found that SMBs were hacking Instagram accounts to represent their businesses. For example, they would put contact information in their profile description. Furthermore, we learned that businesses were frustrated there was no way for users to identify their businesses on Instagram. As such, we proposed creating a business profile to increase awareness of business accounts on Instagram, and provide features specific for businesses, such as contact buttons.
We also found that SMBs had varying levels of understanding on how to evaluate the success of promotions they were running on various social media platforms. As such, we proposed creating a business insights product that would allow businesses to easily evaluate the success of their promotions on Instagram.
We presented these and other proposals to our leadership team during a product review. After the presentation, Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s CEO and co-founder said, “How many engineers do you need?” In addition to influence product decisions, this is our seventh instance of impact: influence senior leadership (i.e. people).
Business profile and insights were released on Instagram in 2016. Today there are over 25 million businesses on Instagram that use such features, and over 200 million Instagram users who visit at least one business on Instagram each day. This is another example of improve peoples’ lives — and in this case, businesses.
This research had such an impact on product that the Instagram research team committed to conducting a research deep-dive that was outside of our core product roadmap at least once a half. This is another example of influence the process by which product is developed.
Impact is having an effect on product, process, and people
Based on these examples and my other experiences working on products, such as Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Instagram, and Uber Eats, impact is:
- The ability to identify product opportunities, influence product decisions, and innovate.
- The ability to influence the process by which product is developed.
- The ability to collaborate with others, influence senior leadership, and improve peoples’ lives.
What constitutes impact in your experience? Comment below.
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