First Principles of Building Products

So you’re building a product, congratulations! Even with just that, you already deserve applause.

Building a product, or service for that matter, is a gargantuan task. Even if you’re just starting out or already working on a big one with millions of users, it’s the same challenge just in different flavors. You have my utmost respect and my admiration for taking up the challenge.

Whichever part of the journey you’re in, product success is really hard to achieve and, let’s face it, a really vague target; a venture after all entails going into the unknown. With the fog of uncertainty blocking the path, it’s really hard to see success, much more get it.

If you were a young TV geek like me and loved the Discovery Channel, you probably know Bear Grylls. For those who are not familiar, he is a British adventurer from the show “Man vs Wild.”

In every episode of the show, Bear and his film crew would be left stranded in a jungle or an island and his task was to find his way back to civilization. He would use his adventuring experience and knowledge to survive in the wilderness and make it back. He’d identify tracks to avoid wild animals that could kill him or identify plants that could poison him. It was a fun show to watch.

One of the things that I distinctly remembered from the show was how Bear would always have the standard survival tools to help him navigate through thick rainforests. It seemed funny then because he’s supposed to be an expert adventurer, but he still used tools. Looking at it again, nobody would want to go into a dense forest without tools, naked, and afraid, no matter how adventurous you are.

The tools he used, however, weren’t high-tech gadgets, besides a camera, he had knives, ropes, and some protective clothing on him. What’s great was how he would always find ways to use the tools in different ways to navigate through tough terrain or create new tools like spears made from wood.

Given that he could only bring a few tools to his journey, he chose the most fundamental ones. The simplest ones but worth more than their weight in gold, the fundamental tools.

Going into the unknown and building a product or service is much like going on a jungle adventure like Bear Grylls. In this series of posts, my goal is to equip you with tools that would help you in your product journey. If you’re already awesome at it, I hope this helps you resharpen them.

Just like Bear, these tools won’t be high-tech or too executional by any means because the more complex and specific the tools become the more niched they are. Personally, I don’t think that blindly applying techniques and tools without understanding the concepts behind them can help you in the long run.

What we’ll be talking about is the First Principles of building a product. A “First Principle” is defined as a basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.

These foundational principles will help you make better decisions and devise or employ other tools, methods, or techniques for your own liking or purposes.

So without further ado, let’s jump into the first one.

(Just to clarify, when I say product, I am not excluding services. The two are almost inseparable these days, especially in digital. I just call it “product” for simplicity in writing).

Start with the problem

Simply put, to “Start with the problem” means instead of starting to work on building features or products, we start building by first understanding the problem space and precisely contextualizing the problem that we’re going to solve.

Understanding the problem entails focusing on the user and their situation to completely know what is happening and why. Contextualizing the problem, on the other hand, means defining the problem to be addressed and painting a clear picture of it.

But the thing is, it’s quite unnatural for people to start with the problem. We almost always jump into solution mode whenever we see a problem, that’s probably why we’re in product in the first place. It’s very natural for us to focus on creating ideas off the bat.

Yes, it makes the process longer, but in spite of that, your product is much better off starting with the problem. Here are a few reasons why:

Why?

• Users buy solutions to their problems

Users almost never buy things just for the sake of buying, even a cherry-red Ferrari is used to solve some middle-age crisis. They buy(hire) products to solve their problems.

This means that the better we understand why and how users want those problems solved the better chances we have of building a product that they find valuable.

• Building the wrong thing is expensive

The danger in starting with a solution is building the wrong product, “wrong product” meaning users don’t want it. Though this doesn’t mean the end since you can pivot, it’s still quite expensive to make changes on the product especially when you’ve built it already.

• The problem could be solved in different ways

Starting with the problem also allows us to explore different solutions. Rather than just sticking to what you have or just confirming your assumptions, you’d be able to explore other solutions because you’re not very invested in the solution. This allows you more creative freedom and innovation which makes for better products.

• Find more opportunities/things to solve

Problems barely exist in isolation, that’s why it’s really hard to frame them at times. However, looking at the problem allows us to find other related and relevant problems to explore and potentially work on in the future or as an added value to customers.

• Empower the team

Starting with the problem allows your team to solve the problem rather than just build something off a spec sheet. This lets creative people, your builders, maximize their potential

• Better Strategy and decision making

The problem becomes your reference point to know whether you are on the right track. Solving a problem is a much better way to measure your progress and assess your progress because you’ll be able to say, “yes, this feature solves the problem.” This is a more reliable basis for making decisions over plainly trying to prove your assumptions.

Although we still have to build on assumptions, they should always be based on solving the problem rather than random whims because of trends, opinions, or competitive pressure. This removes the trap of building features that don’t bring the product forward.

How do you start with the problem?

So now you know why, the remaining question is how. How do you start with the problem?

Starting with the problem comes down to 2 activities, User Research and Problem Framing.

• User Research

The goal of user research is to improve customer empathy and to create a complete picture that will help with building the product. It entails going out and talking to your target market to learn about them and their problems as well as creating artifacts that you will use later.

It involves research methods such as Interviews, Ethnographic studies, and Diary Studies, to name a few, with the goal of creating tools such as Personas, Journey Maps, Empathy Maps, and more.

• Problem Framing

Problem framing is a technique that helps contextualize a problem and align the team around it. This is very critical as it helps the team focus on the one thing that they’re going to solve with a feature or product as well as understand the reason why it’s valuable for both the customers and the business.

It may seem moot but framing the problem really helps with removing distractions especially when the team is multifaceted. Defining why the problem needs to be solved and bringing to light the things that happen around it prevents the team from working on different things and trying to insert their function’s agenda into what they are building.

So that’s Principle #1, Starting with the problem. Come back next week, for principle #2.

Spoiler: It’s Think Big, Start Small.

Watch out for that one and I hope to see you next week.

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