Some Thoughts on Product Design
What makes a product good vs. great?
Product design at its basic level should provide a solution for a clearly defined problem. The product or tool should be easy to learn, consistent, and adaptable. A good product is useful whether it be social, functional, or emotional.
A great product embodies all three.
Well designed products add value to users’ lives through tangible and intangible experiences. The product not only solves the problem well but also inspires emotion. You have a lasting and positive memory using the product. This is why great products create habits and patterns; they become embedded in our lives because they are easy to use and they become a part of our regular schema.
Great products stand out to me because of the last 10% put into their design. It is the differentiator that entices me to use their product vs. their competitors. A great product provides a niche solution for an existing problem; and the design simultaneously reinforces a positive experience by customizing every interaction.
There are many other aspects into what makes a product good vs. great. However, the salient difference to me is that great products create their own product market. The customers become the sales people of the product because the product provides such a positive experience. Existing users recognize the value of the product and are compelled to share their experience with new users.
Have you heard of KakaoTalk?
When I think of a product that embodies great design I think of the application KakaoTalk. Launched in South Korea in 2010, it was a free instant messaging application that had 10 million users in less than a year. By 2017, it had more than 42 million users in Korea which is 97% of the country’s smartphone user population(OhYujin, 2017). To me the product fulfills a very general need, instant messaging, for a very specific market, Koreans, and stands out because of its focus on the details in emojis, the last 10%.
I had first heard of the app through my mom, who is not technically savvy or adventurous in terms of exploring phone applications. It was a weird feeling having your mom mention an app to you like you’re missing out on the latest fad or Instagram update.
She had heard about KakaoTalk through her friends in Korea and in the US and apparently it was all the rage. On the surface level, she used the app to text friends and make phone calls without affecting her phone bill. What made the product integral to her life was the social framework it provided for her to connect with her old friends from near and far(in Korea). However, the most distinct features were the emotive icons aka Kakao Friends.
KakaoTalk had the BEST emojis. They were imaginative and offbeat.
These unique characters provided quirky, niche illustrations and moving stickers to convey just the right feeling making the use of product memorable and desirable. These characters enhanced my mom’s emotional connection to the product.
I dowloaded the app without realizing it would fulfill a need I never knew I had.
I was finally be able to connect to my mom on an instant messaging platform. Previously I had made traditional phone calls to catch up but now I had a platform to check in more often and conveniently with snippets of my life. Furthermore, I felt like the application’s unique emojis captured my feelings perfectly. Now I had a fun new way of interacting and communicating with my mom.
This is an example of how a great design can improve or enhance an existing problem that has already been solved. I had plenty of messaging application options but I chose to use KakaoTalk over them. What made KakaoTalk stand apart from other texting apps was its specific ability to convey the right emotions through characters they built.
There have been so many times I wish I could send the KakaoTalk emojis to people outside of my network…which is why I continuously recommend it to new users whether they are Korean or not, exponentially increasing its product market.
KakaoTalk has proved to be an indispensable social app because it connects specific users, Koreans from all over the world. Its great functionality brings meaning and shares experiences between users. It is successful because it is easy to use, and memorable because it links to users’ emotions.
Its users have increased as the app has expanded its service to provide a social network, music, taxi, and much more. It has even become a lifestyle platform for some where they manage all points of communication entirely digitally. Because of its feature expansion and unique attention to details through its emojis, I believe KakaoTalk has the potential to cross cultural boundaries and larger markets in the future.
Reference
OhYujin. (2017년 8월 18일). 카카오뱅크 금리전쟁 시작됐다[Kakaobank starts interest rate war]. “일요서울[Sunday Seoul]”.
