Startups: CEOs, founders, investors, developers and designers, listen up. I know there’s a ridiculous shortage of quality UX and product designers. But there’s still something for you to do to turn your product and company to be user-centric. I’ll tell you a secret: There are a few very basic things you can do to make your company light-years better, to get people to fall in love with your product, to allow your apps to scale from 100 users to a billion. All you have to do is answer a few questions:
1. Who is using this? Too many companies think they have some killer tech that everybody will line up to use. Identify who’s using your product and build the context around them. “A university student who cares about their exams.” Think of where they live, their economics, what they’re doing and when they’re doing it. Build a picture.
2. WHY do they want to use your product?! If I’m a busy student on a tight budget, why would I spend $10/mo on your crappy product which does the same thing I can do with my pencil and paper in half the time?! Really think like the user – why do I want to use product. What’s the benefit to me. What do I want to get out of it?? Don’t try to convince the user why they should use it; BE the user and tell yourself why you SHOULDN’T use the product, and see if it still holds up enough value.
3. What’s our UX mantra? You ever heard of scope creep? It’s not a weirdo spying on you from a submarine. It’s when you keep adding in features to a product, and slowly it creeps up and up, killing the budget and timeline, and turns into an overwhelming mess people don’t want to use. Now that you know who’s user your app and why, come up with a single sentence which describes the UX goal, fitting in with what we said above: “Let busy cash-strapped students get to class on time.” BOOM. Every feature and idea, every line of code, every pixel in the UI must fit that goal. What’s the UX mantra from that? Helping students be ON TIME. If there’s a question if you should make a UI either fun, fast or easy (Easy means less thought required, less cognitive load), you now know: FAST.
If you keep these 3 things in mind while working with your product team, you will have an infinitely better product your users will love and appreciate!