Good vs. Great Products- A Reflection on my Digital Journey
As part of my assignment for DesignLab for UX Academy for Week 2, we were asked to reflect on good versus great products. We spent the first week getting familiar with what makes successful products. For the beginning of the second week, we are exploring the product development process. In this article, I will reflect on my own product usage experiences, as well as discuss the products that I use every single day and what makes them so addictive.
In The Principles of Product Design by Aaron Walter, he states that “the difference between a good and great product is the last 10%. Everyone has the same 90%…the same core features and similar pricing and a similar story. But that last 10% is the real differentiator.” I truly resonate with this statement, and agree that the difference between great and good products lies in the details.
In reflecting on good versus great products, two products came to mind: Facebook and Instagram (under the same umbrella). In my experience, what makes Facebook a good product is its ease in connecting people all around the world, allowing people to share photos and life events with those who are far away. This has been so crucial to keeping in touch, but as of lately, I have fallen off of the Facebook train.
With its many developing features and new UI, I’ve gotten a bit lost about the original purpose of Facebook, and whether or not its purpose still aligns with my goals for using Facebook. I thinks it’s awesome that Facebook is branching out to do newer and cooler things, but at the same time it no longer really applies to my original motive to just keep in touch. It seems that it’s more of a place to browse and explore new pages, and buy and sell things from the Facebook Marketplace.
Instagram on the other hand, has been on the up-and-up in terms of racking up hours on my phone. It’s wormed its way into my morning routine and I can’t remember when Instagram became an integral part of my life.
A couple of things that I appreciate about Instagram is how it doesn’t try to do too much. Its purpose has stayed relevant and overall the same as when I first started using Instagram. It has had updates but each new update doesn’t require a learning curve, and it does what it does really well. It’s super simple to use, and its original purpose which is posting pictures and stories still aligns with my purpose of having joined Instagram in the first place. As with most products, it is still evolving, but evolving to a better version of itself, not a whole new species. Its real-time stories (somewhat real-time, as they expire in a day) keeps me checking daily in interest in what all my friends are doing in their slice of daily life.
