Building Badass Products — Mind the Product Best Bits

Oct 6th, 2014 By Polly Howden

I went to Mind the Product for the first time last month. They had some super-duper speakers!

My #1 favourite was Kathy Sierra. In her compelling presentation “Building Badass Users” which covered the following;

• “Be better at the context” — It’s not about whether the product is amazing, it’s about whether it helps the user feels amazing and can do what they want to do. This makes me think of Instagram that successfully helps milliohttp://livemocha.com/ns of users make and share beautiful images by giving them all the tools to be the author / photographer of their lives.
• “Reduce cognitive leaks” — User tasks take ability + willpower and any friction or hidden information leads to “cognitive leaks”. The user’s willpower is used up, this creates more “leaks”, and the poor person’s energy and focus is zapped and they won’t go on. Yes, we all kind of know we should reduce friction but this psychology experiment she mentioned is a reminder it’s a “must have” tenet of product development. Providing trusted defaults and hints are a great start.
• “Your brain is a drama queen!” — Once the brain starts to worry about something it can’t let it go. This creates more cognitive leaks and distractions. Give the brain a reason to feel confident “we’ve got it handled” and shut down worries. So always tell the user “we’ve got it handled” and (echoing Android design principles “it’s not your fault”)

I also enjoyed Dave Wascha’s sweet synopsis of “Product Manager AntiPatterns” we should all take care to avoid:

• Inertia — doing things the way they’ve always been done
• Propinquity — believing your user is just like you
• Groupthink — clever people making stupid decisions or not taking action when they are together in a group
• The Journalist — observing a problem but not taking real action to fix it

An almost Orwellian warning of the dangers of complacency don’t you think?!

Des Traynor used the example of our ever over-complicated TV remote to warn against the urge of overly complicated products, and cautioned about saying yes to ideas outside your core feature to avoid swapping short term “wow”, for long term “ow”.

If it doesn’t answer the following say no:

• Does it fit your vision?
• Is it reward greater than the effort?
• Does it benefit all customers?
• Will it grow the business?
• Will it matter in five years?
• Is it a forward step?
• Will it generate new engagement?

Nir Eyal invited us to go deep into the human psyche with his whistle-stop tour around the key points of his book “Hooked” about building products that create (ideally positive) habits in users to make them highly engaged and valuable.

• 40% of what we do is driven by habit
• Successful business develop habits with internal triggers that bring them back over and over
• Trigger to action requires ability and motivation which can be more or less successful as a result of a variety of factors including time, money, emotional impact
• People wired to be excited by potential reward and variance / novelty of outcome increases that interest
• The best habit forming technologies become more valuable the mere they are used because the user has invested in them (e.g. Becomes more personal, builds a reputation etc)

Product Manager is a multi-faceted role but ultimately it’s about being a caretaker of the customer experience, without which your business won’t thrive.

I try to stay humble and curious in the face of user feedback, and these speakers give some great reminders and suggestions of how to help with the needs people don’t express or even know they have.

I hope you found it as interesting as I did! What are your thoughts or responses to the points made?

Resources:

• Full Mind the Product summary: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2014/09/mtpcon-2014-were-doing-the-right-thing/
• Des Traynor slides https://speakerdeck.com/destraynor
• Kathy Sierra presentation http://vimeo.com/106659444
• Dave Wascha http://vimeo.com/90117107
• Nir Eyal http://www.nirandfar.com/

Originally published at www.gumtree.com on October 6, 2014.