Write your own headlines.
Before you write a line of code, write the headlines for the day after your product ships. What did the press think and what did they say?
Did your top idea land as the lede? Or did some other harsh UX reality (slow loading time, hard-to-find controls, ungenerous flow) trump your big idea? Most importantly, did the reason why you made the product in the first place find its way to your intended audience?
Start before you start
Before you begin your product work, draft the headlines.
If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a riff on Ian McAllister’s marvelous “write the press release before you start” technique, with the twist of requiring a little more discipline through constraint: A press release can stretch on for paragraphs; here you get just a headline to imagine the world’s reaction to your product.
Headline writers (and editors) practice an art that combines poetic reduction and metonymic hooks with brutal personal/editorial assessments. Throw out the garbage; cut to the bone.
- Why does this product matter? (most important)
- How does it work? (next important)
- What are the details? (not important)
You will build a better product if the details and the methods serve the fundamental human need your product solves AND your audience understands and can repeat the reason why this product exists.
Write the headline together
Get your team in a room and write the launch headlines together. Optimize for repeatability and make sure the reason why lands as the idea that gets repeated. Try to avoid product-spec details as headlines—look deeper and you’ll always find a reason behind a feature.
People don’t have a fundamental human need to click a button, but they do have a need to help their families be safe, to empower their children succeed, to conspire with their friends to have fun. If your product doesn’t solve a fundamental human need, change your product.
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Try one of these other ways to work together:
Draw together
Write a four-word story
