The self-circulation of a product largely indicates the final development state of the product. Finding the key points and optimizing them to see if the product can go further is a question that every product person must think about.
A few days ago, a friend who was doing UI design told me that she wanted to design a product by herself, and hoped that I could help her check it out, so she sent me the document she wrote. After reading it, I thought of an idiom to make a sentence ——Xiaobai really looks like Dabai…
The general content of the document is as follows:
The original text is a little more messy than this structure… Although I am desperate, but the desire to survive makes me bite the bullet and have to do it. In this process, I have explored some methodologies that I personally find very effective, which may be helpful to everyone, so I share them here.
Step 1: See clearly
Why do you need to see clearly? What to see clearly? How to see clearly?
Liu Run has a saying that I like very much, “If you don’t abstract, you can’t think deeply, and if you don’t restore, you can’t see the original face.”
Before applying this concept to product thinking, we can put it into a more abstract logical system-mathematics to understand these three issues.
Here is a well-known example:
Starting from the five basic axioms and the five geometric axioms, Euclid constructed a rigorous logical system-geometry through derivation and argumentation. The process of his construction of axiomatic geometry is as follows:
- First of all, when you encounter a specific problem, you need to define it accordingly, such as what is an included angle;
- Secondly, starting from the definitions and axioms, get the relevant theorems;
- Then, define more concepts, and use axioms and theorems to derive more theorems.
We extract a few key words from it – axiom, definition, theorem and derivation, and then restore it in a more straightforward language. The axiom is actually the starting point or the basic disk, the definition is the perspective of looking at the problem, the theorem is the explanation of the problem in line with the starting point, and the derivation shows how they are related.
Now let’s look at the three questions above again:
Why do you need to see clearly?
Only when your starting point is correct and the angle of view of the problem is correct, the point of view you put forward is correct; and only when the connection between your points of view is also correct, can you push forward step by step to solve the problem question.
What to see clearly?
In fact, this question already has an answer in “Why do you need to see clearly”, but if you want to summarize it more concisely, I think it can be extracted into these two words: element and connection.
So how do you see clearly?
Simply put, it is to extract elements and establish connections. In fact, at this time we can use a very effective tool – the system dynamics diagram to help us think, so how do we do it?
Using my example in the background, we’ve established a perception – this document is mind boggling…
First of all, what we have to do is to take the essence and discard the dross, and extract the keywords inside. These are the elements we need to extract (at least it makes people less troubled), so I extracted the following elements for her:
- Background 1
- Background 2
- Background 3
- need
- function 1
- function 2
- Target
Second, we need to establish connections between these elements.
Take out a piece of paper, use your pen and brain, connect these elements with arrowed lines according to your understanding, and write the logical relationship and positive and negative effects ( or -) between them, so I asked her Based on her understanding the following connections were established:
Ok, we sorted out her thoughts from a bunch of overwhelming information above, but this is far from really seeing clearly. Careful and experienced friends may have discovered the problems revealed in this picture, don’t worry, let’s continue down.
Step Two: Verify
In the first step, we have drawn a diagram of the system dynamics, but there is a very critical adjective in the requirement to see clearly – “correct”, we have established a connection, but you have established a relationship between each element Are all the links correct?
You should have a villain in your head who refutes you relentlessly:
- Is it possible that the connection you’re making is only partially true? So what are the conditions for its establishment?
- Is it possible that the connection you made didn’t hold up directly, but was actually another element that you didn’t think of that was more direct?
- Is it possible that what you have established is a compound connection that requires the superposition of several elements to establish, but you have not considered it thoroughly, or it is not well matched, or there may even be internal conflicts, so you press the gourd and start the scoop?
- Is it possible that the connection you’re making is simply wrong and actually the opposite?
- …
He should be nagging in your head until you have verified every connection.
For example, the connection “Background 1, Background 2, and Background 3” in the example of this article “cause” demand” is the starting point of the entire architecture. Once this connection goes wrong, the entire product building will collapse. Think about all of these possibilities (and more) mentioned above.
How to verify it?
This involves too many topics, so I can’t list them one by one. Maybe I can write an article to talk about it later. At present, I can only simply say that it depends on whether the connection you have established is logical and self-consistent, and whether there is any relevant investigation, research or theoretical support. This depends on readers and friends.
Step Three: Optimization
After a series of previous efforts, we finally reached the third step. Some friends who know the system dynamic diagram may have been suffocated by the above diagram. Since no specific product information is involved here, only the structural level analysis of the system dynamic diagram is carried out.
There are positive correlation ( ) or negative correlation (-) between the elements in the original system dynamics diagram. Let’s take a look at an example of economic development and carbon emissions:
In this example, we can see that the increase in the output value of various industries will increase the GDP, which is a positive correlation ( ), and the increase in emission reduction costs will reduce the output value of various industries, which is a negative correlation (-).
The most interesting part of the system dynamic diagram is the cycle: when a connection chain forms a cycle, the elements in the entire chain will spontaneously accumulate influence in a certain direction. According to the direction, it can be divided into positive feedback loop and negative feedback loop.
“Production value of various industries GDP standard of living population labor force output value of various industries …”, this is a positive feedback loop in the system, and each element will iterate in a direction that is more and more deviating from the initial state. Here are the various Elements just keep getting better. But there’s another bad thing about positive feedback loops—elements get worse and worse.
“Production value of each industry GDP total energy carbon emissions emission reduction costs – output value of each industry …”, this is a negative feedback loop in the system, and each element will iterate in the direction of returning to the initial state. Here The increase in output value of various industries will eventually increase the cost of emission reduction, and the increase in emission reduction cost will in turn reduce the output value of various industries, and finally all elements tend to a stable state.
When we design products, we all hope that the product can establish a positive positive feedback loop, so that as long as the system is established, the product will be in a state of self-growth. The more users, the stronger the ability of the product to meet user needs. And the stronger the ability of the product to meet user needs, the more users there will be. It is so easy to achieve user growth and reach the pinnacle of life. It is estimated that you have to wake up from your dreams.
But the reality is not so ideal, and the product is usually in a more complex system. You may have constructed a positive feedback loop as described above, but at the same time created a negative positive feedback loop between elements you were not paying attention to. For example, the more users there are, the higher the concurrency of the server, and the worse the stability of users using the product.
At this time, you usually need to find the key points of interleaved cycles, vividly speaking, the places where the gears bite, and then weigh the attributes of the key points to obtain the optimal solution of utility and cost.
Going back to the example in this article, we can see that there is a negative correlation between the “goal” that the product wants to achieve in this system dynamic diagram and the “background” of the product’s starting point. The entire cycle is actually a negative feedback loop. This logically shows that this product will not achieve self-growth, which is fatal for a product; because no matter how hard you try, it will eventually return to an equilibrium state.
At this time, we can consider the following optimization directions:
- By changing the two elements in the negative correlation relationship, making them into a positive correlation relationship, this method is only applicable to the situation where the two elements are not both objective conditions;
- Construct another positive feedback loop by adding new elements, but loops constructed in this way usually only achieve partial positive feedback.
If you have tried various optimization directions, it is irreversible, or there is no way to generate greater value. That can only show that this product is too hard to hurt, its ability is limited, and there is nothing we can do to help it.
If you successfully find a way to optimize, don’t rush to be happy. First of all, you have to go back to the second step for verification, otherwise you may end up with nothing, and you will be happy for nothing.
Write at the end
Influenced by Charlie Munger and Scott Page, I have been very interested in the learning and practice of model thinking recently, especially how to transfer it to product thinking to form a product model thinking method.
I am still a junior student, and I know that my level is limited. If there is something wrong with the content of the article, please let me know. If there are friends who are also interested in this aspect, I hope to exchange and learn with you.
