In product design, how to balance the relationship between user habits or user experience and determine product positioning? This has always been a problem.
A good product design can bring high profit revenue to the product while capturing the user’s aesthetic range to increase the high degree of communication among users.
When businesses are trying to make a trade-off between user habits and better design, consider the following:
How much value does this design bring, and is it worth the learning costs for old users?
- If this design can greatly help users, for example, it can speed up their work efficiency, prevent a large number of new users from making mistakes, etc., it is worth a try.
- If the design is only detailed, it would be better if it is changed, and users can basically accept it if it is not changed, and there are no more new users waiting there, and you still have more valuable areas to improve, then you can put it first to the side.
- The most troublesome thing is that the value is not big or small, so we have to refer to other principles.
Relationship between design itself and industry practices/standards
If a design detail is not very ideal, but the mainstream of the entire industry is already this way, and users are used to it, such as the send button of QQ, shortcut keys, etc., we don’t have to take the risk of changing it.
The success or failure of a product’s user experience is not just in one place, so let’s think about it, even if we are as bad as our peers in this place, can we be 10 times better than our opponents in another place that does not harm user habits?
Proportion of old and new user groups
Design changes will affect old users, but will benefit new users. At this time, it is necessary to measure the impact on the value of old users and new users;
your product is already relatively stable, and old users account for a large proportion? Or is it like Zhihu, a product that is still in the testing period, and there will be a large number of new users coming in in the future? If it’s the latter, then the need for a correct change is great.
The influence of the product in the industry
Microsoft Office is a prime example:
When Office 2007 was launched, there was a lot of criticism. Many users were accustomed to the interface of Office 2003 and previous versions, but they couldn’t stand the new Ribbon interface of Office 2007. They couldn’t find where the commands were.
But in fact, the interface of 2007 is very good from the design point of view, it completely subverts the inherent habits of users. But since Microsoft had enough clout here, they were able to push the design hard enough that users would eventually adapt and accept it.
It is worth mentioning that Microsoft has applied for a patent in it. Sooner or later, this interface and newly formed user habits will become a very powerful weapon for Microsoft. At that time, other opponents will have legal problems if they want to imitate Microsoft’s interface, but if they develop a new interface by themselves, they will face the barriers of user habits.
There is no optimal design, only trade-offs
In many cases, isn’t a good design a design that conforms to user habits? The boundary between the two is relatively blurred, and we can only make a decision in specific issues to see which one has higher benefits and which one has lower losses.
Product managers are no better than programmers and designers. Programming and design are skills, a skill that can survive and survive, and their core competitiveness. This is easy to understand.
But for product managers, if you summarize it from the perspective of skills, it is simply weak. Look at the tools we use every day, word, PPT, project, axrure, excel, MM, are all basic tools that cannot be used in the basics. Even if Axure is a bit professional, if you study hard, you can reach an intermediate level in about a week.
If you want to compare hard skills, you can’t talk about core competitiveness in individual items, and at most you can use comprehensive quality to comfort yourself. Therefore, the core nirvana of a product manager must be soft skills.
Product managers should arm themselves with logical ability as a weapon, especially when the product situation is chaotic, PM must keep calm and find the thread from the mess. This is a good statement, but it seems that the core competence is not yet mentioned, so we will dig a step further, that is, when is the product situation chaotic?
Generally speaking, there are two situations: one is when the product has no direction, and the other is when the product is lost during the product development process.
The two situations, one internal and one external, basically cover the core value of the product manager. Whether or not these two time nodes can be handled is the ability of the product manager.
Understand the user’s heart
This is a well-understood matter. Requirements are the life of the product manager. Mining the needs of users (the users here may be your boss, please make up your own mind), or understanding the needs of users is a necessary process, that is, In the process of finding the direction for the product or correcting the direction, the user is actually a group virtual existence, which includes several levels:
- Know who the user is: Just like chasing the goddess, the process of understanding before taking action is essential. It is necessary to secretly look at Qzone and follow Weibo. So go to where the target users appear, forums, QQ groups, etc.
- Understand users: There are many methods, focus groups, user interviews, I won’t list them one by one
- Satisfy the user
In fact, in this work process, there are many methodological things, and there are rules to follow. The hard part is that in the end, after you understand all these things, you still can’t create WeChat, 360, or Douban. Because the core things are often hidden behind
- Grasp the core needs: Everyone can find the needs, but there are real needs, false needs, core needs, and marginal needs. If you don’t understand people’s hearts, you will definitely get lost
- The demand behind the demand: It is found that the user wants bread, but the user is actually hungry. It may be more appetizing for the user to give a bowl of Lanzhou ramen. This requires enough experience to make a judgment
- Grasp the bottom line of the product: People are dissatisfied with their desires, but after all, the product cannot be a good man, and must have its own bottom line. Between taking and giving up is the embodiment of foundation
Know the heart of the team
A product is often jointly created by multiple teams. The team is composed of vivid people. Everyone has their own role division and responsibilities, so they have their own positions. There is a sentence in Chai Jing’s “Seeing”: No one in this world is absolutely righteous, they are all for their own interests. This is not a moral accusation, but a purely objective description.
Therefore, as a product manager, in the process of product development, it is the same thing to often encounter embarrassment. Engineers, testing, UE, and operations will have completely different opinions. To put it bluntly, communication is a reasonable compromise. One by one communication is not an ability, but a basic skill in the workplace.
But multi-faceted communication and coordination is really not an easy task, you have to try to do several things
- Try to understand everyone in the team: working style, way of thinking, experience endorsement, personality, etc. will affect everyone’s perspective and understanding of things
- Try to get the truth of the matter: through correct questioning, remove the subjective unverified part, and then superimpose the objective part
- There is a bottom line to compromise
In the end, some truths will definitely hurt the interests of some people. If there is a way, sometimes the “window paper” can be broken or not. In fact, the bottom line principle of grasping people’s hearts is respect.
Personally, I think students who study psychology have the genes to make products, just like some people think that Le Jia will be a good product manager.
Internally and externally, product managers face most people. Getting people right doesn’t mean pandering to others, but respecting them with principles. This is not something that can be cultivated overnight. It must be summed up in the constant encounters and failures, and the core competitiveness that others cannot learn.
