Why Is Focusing on Problems Difficult?
Well designed products make you say — “Wow, they [company/product designers] have really thought about everything!”. This is the pinnacle that every product team strives to reach, to convert users into fans. Every article I’ve come across or PM I’ve spoken to, mentions that the path to achieve this is simply empathizing with your users.
Now, empathizing with users is undeniably hard — else we would be surrounded by beautifully designed products. To empathize you need to put yourself in the shoes of your users and have a very deep understanding of the problems and pain points they go through. Only then will you have the data to understand why and how often they face these problems, what they’ve done to get around it and more importantly — whether this is a problem you should be solving.
Even after understanding the value and importance of deep diving into user’s problems, more often than not, we end up skipping straight to potential solutions which ultimately end up resulting in “Bandaid Products”. Here are 3 scenarios which consciously or sub-consciously make it hard to focus on problems:
The Engineering Frame of Mind
“Ok thats great! Now how do we solve/build that”
I’ve personally been guilty of this after moving from an engineering background to a core…
