How to Build Products That Suck
No product manager or company would set out to create a product that disappoints. However, the reality is that many products, if not most, simply suck! It’s true that building something that users love isn’t the easiest of tasks. But certain things we do or fail to do can make it a lot harder than it should be. One or more of the factors that we discuss here are often to blame when PMs build products that suck.
1. Lack of a Clear Vision
The product vision captures the essence of a product and charts the direction for it. With this statement, we try to make clear our intention for creating the product and what we hope to achieve with it.
Many teams work on products without the clarity that the product vision provides. It’s could be that the vision is not clearly set out, is vague, or changes too frequently. This gives rise to differing views among team members – something that makes it harder to get the product right.
To avoid building a product that sucks, we want to begin by putting together an explicit vision statement. This will help us in promoting proper alignment among all the relevant stakeholders.
2. Shiny Object Syndrome
Product managers sometimes end up building substandard products after letting themselves get carried away by features and capabilities. We let our attention go to creating “shiny new objects.” In other words, we focus on working on something trendy, gorgeous, or eye-catching while caring less about value.
If we do not take care, our attention will always simply be on working on something new. This can make us be mostly concerned with shipping all the time without taking a step back to ask key questions. We might lose sight of whether we’re solving real problems and providing true value.
It is important to first sort out the “why” before deciding on the “what.” That is how we build valuable products.
3. Failing to Say ‘No’
Perhaps, in a bid to please, product managers can build too many features based on requests from different users, stakeholders, or leaders. Feature ideas come from the executives, key stakeholders, and big customers (current or prospective). We don’t want to displease anyone, so we end up executing too many feature requests.
The result of giving in to almost all requests is, more often than not, feature bloat. The product offers features that are requested, but customers are not satisfied with the overall experience. So we end up not really pleasing by building the features that were requested.
We should learn to say “No” to feature requests that don’t match our vision. This doesn’t mean telling those requesting right away that we won’t work on what they want. Instead, we want to start by thanking them for their time and showing that we understand why they are making the request. We then make them understand our goals and, tactfully, how features asked for don’t quite fit in.
4. Detachment from the Product
Yes, you read that right. Product managers can become detached from their products. How? You might wonder.
We become detached from the product when we fail to use it. How then do we know what it feels like for the customer to use? Do they enjoy using it or not? Yes, there are things we can draw inferences from. But how about experiencing the product first-hand?
When we use our product, we put ourselves in a better position to identify what we excelled in or need to improve on. This will better guide our discussion with the engineering or development team. It helps to spend at least one or two hours a week using our product if it’s one we can use.
5. Lack of Metrics
Also related to the foregoing, our product can suck when we don’t put measures in place to assess whether we’re getting things right or wrong. Some product managers have failed by not being diligent in gathering and analyzing product metrics.
It is important for us to employ metrics that can help us to measure usage and engagement, among other things. We need a way to judge the success of our product. Metrics, ideally tied to our product strategy, help us to know if we’re doing well. They let us know whether we’re delighting the customer or not.
6. Not Interacting with the Customer
This is certainly one of the surest ways to build a product that sucks. We have done our job to perfection so we’re sure customers have no other option than to like the product. Let’s not be too vain asking how much we delighted them. We can tell already.
Besides, where is the time to be spent interacting with customers or trying to do so? We may well be afraid of what we might hear.
The truth, however, is that we don’t really get to know how happy or otherwise customers are and what we can do better until we interact with them. We need feedback to do our best work. Creating time to get feedback or complaints and ask incisive questions is especially vital if our product is one we cannot use ourselves (for example, a medical product).
