Since 1999 I have been working on digital projects that have included brand new products for startups, reboots of existing products for large established clients, and everything in between. I always make sure I work with talented, thoughtful designers and developers to bring to life products that people will love, and most importantly find easy to use. Years of trying different things, gathering feedback, iterating on ideas, and working with lots of different teams and products that serve different purposes have allowed me to bank a ton of experience.
In recent years I have become increasingly more in tune with user experience on a personal level since I became part of “the Sandwich Generation”. For those of you that are lucky enough to not know what that is, it’s the group of people that are at the age and stage of life where they are responsible for both raising their children and for taking care of their aging parents, at the same time. It’s quite challenging, but looking on the bright side it does have the advantage of being able to observe 2 very different user types. It’s as if you are watching a nature program, you can almost hear David Attenborough’s voice: “Here is someone over the age of 70 in their natural habitat, trying to use the voice command button on their TV remote. In the next room is a teenager being asked to not only make an actual phone call, but then to leave a voicemail so that the person can call them back to make an appointment”. Both are true stories. My mother thought she had to press the voice command button and yell “Amazon Video” really loudly to reach the TV, and my 15 year old son had never left a voicemail before. It’s fascinating to watch and learn.
When my children were young I used to hand them my new products and watch what they did. They immediately found things I had missed, particularly when it came to navigational efficiencies (the young are professional time savers, when it suits them of course!). They are now teenagers, and while it’s not as easy to pin them down for product reviews, they are nonetheless constantly teaching us new things, such as how to use the shortcut keyboard on the iPad (spoiler: you can swipe down for a number), or the quickest way to find a good giphy to add to a text (honestly, they recently taught us just how to add a giphy to a text). When I was developing a product specifically for the aging population we would strive for familiarity and comfort in the design to avoid the feeling of despair that often accompanies the use of technology with this generation as a result of being overwhelmed and therefore intimidated.
What have I learned, and continue to learn, about building great products?
Take a little (or a lot) of time to get to know your audience: If your audience is “everyone”, e.g. Google Search or Amazon, then obviously you need a different approach. But for the rest of us mere mortals, you should take the time to know who you are designing and building for. If you have the luxury of money and time you can do some customer and competitor research. At a minimum try and talk to a few users and/or the people that communicate with them (e.g. customer service), to ensure that you understand their needs and pain points. If you are designing for several different user groups and you don’t have endless funds, you will need to pick one or two paths to focus your efforts on, and prioritize (see below). The prioritization of the overall direction is important to get right as you likely won’t have time, or budget, to circle back to it until you start the iteration process (see below).
Prioritize! As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, you need to prioritize everything. As a project manager I am particularly good at this, and it’s an obvious theme to my thoughts. This goes for features, changes, user paths, etc. I am a big believer in phases and milestones. All ideas should get recorded, categorized, and prioritized to be addressed sooner, or tucked away for later.
Iterate: Don’t agonize over getting everything to be perfect the first time, sometimes just getting something out there and having people use it is the best first step, especially if you use the word “Beta”. Embrace the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach and don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you do, you will find yourself with an overworked, grumpy team, you will be late, or the product will not be in line with your expectations.
Being lean does not mean you should compromise on quality: Do not try to cut corners when it comes to testing and bug fixing. You should never launch something that doesn’t work well, not only is your reputation on the line but you will lose your users and they will never come back. Both sides of my sandwich would be gone because both the younger and the older in my opinion have low tolerance for things not working. I would be left with soggy fillings and no bread!
Have fun! Designing, building, launching and iterating on digital products should be challenging but enjoyable. If you are not having fun then chances are you are either working with a team that is not compatible or you don’t believe in the product and/or your client.
Happy creating!