Virtual Summit 2019 — A good product isn’t just about features!

On November 19th we hosted a Virtual Conference on our YouTube channel where we asked experts from three user-centered companies to share their views on how to build good products.

Luke Vella, Product Manager at Hotjar

“Listen up. Understand. Make them love you.” — Luke talked about who our products are for and how to gather and validate customer feedback. And most of all, how it all should be a beacon for user experience design.

Why do we build products? We don’t do it just for the sake of building products, right? We build products because we would like to give value to the customers. So that they could become better versions of themselves. Because together with the functionality of the product they can make things they couldn’t have done without it. We’re getting them into the superhero mode.

We need to not only build good products but build a product that helps our customers, setting them up for success.

Competitors are not customers. You don’t know the mistakes that your competitors are making. So if you focus too much on your competitors, you might end up doing the same mistakes they made, instead of being a step ahead, focusing on your customers.

Tim O’Brien, Director of Product Design at Drift

“How to remove friction from user experience.” — Tim tackled the question of the ultimate UX design process in an engaging conversation with UXPin’s Marketing Manager, Katarzyna Kempa.

Put the customer at the center of everything you do. That’s one of the our principles. So we spend as much time as possible listening to our customers and gathering feedback.

Our real goal is to never be working something that is not a customer problem. A lot of organizations will mess this up, they’ll work on things that maybe their competitors have launched recently or things that they think are good for their market. And they can get lost along the way. But really, the ultimate goal is to deliver value to the customer.

We try to avoid this classic pitfall of the solution without a problem. When you build something — even if it’s beautifully designed and really easy to use — if no one’s using it, it doesn’t matter.

Marcin Treder, CEO at UXPin

“Why a good product is not just a collection of features?” — Marcin presented the short story of the design tools industry and why UXPin’s approach to product building is very much focused on user experience.

Having the right thing is significantly better than having everything. Focus on the right thing. But gosh, our job as product developers would be easy if that was the only thing we have to take care of.

The best experience will win. And with that thought, back in late July — early August, at UXPin we introduced a complete feature freeze. We stopped all our work on features and we decided to redirect the entire company towards this battle for the best experience for designers and product-makers out there. We reconsidered everything we knew about product development. We changed the direction. It was a bold move for a small organization such as UXPin. But we firmly believe that this the right way to build software. Focusing on users instead of focusing on competitors.

We introduced over 200 fixes and enhancements to UXPin. Things that are absolutely key to the overall experience. But those things are not necessarily the most shiny features out there. We are leaving Las Vegas and going towards something completely different. Instead of all the glitter of feature launches, we decided to focus on the actual work improvements.