When I read Mark Suster’s recent post How To Avoid a Common Product Mistake, especially his remark: “Design for the novice, configure for the pro,” it brought back memories of my days at AOL.
When building out channels/sections in ‘rainman’ (their propriety tech before the .com), we were charged with building to the ‘lowest common denominator’. Back then (mid/late 90’s) I would tell people this and they would see it as a ‘slam’ to the AOL users. We were treating them as if they weren’t sophisticated enough. It was quite the opposite – we respected that a good experience was fairly basic one that met their needs.
I’ve run across the ‘complexity to create value’ issue in product build-out throughout my career. Having more features, more whiz-bang as a sure way to prove how smart you are and then reflected back in the smart (though usually frustrated) customers that would be attracted by such a product. Mark sums it up nicely: “the single biggest mistake most product teams make is building technology for what they believe the user would want rather than what the actual end-user needs.”
It’s relatively easy. Get out of the conference room and talk to customers. Find out more about their behaviors and routines. Build something that will make their life easier. If you aren’t building products inspired by user needs and solving a problem for them, you’ll find yourself in the well-populated product failure column.
Image credit: http://www.constructinglifecoaching.com/reduce-life-down-to-the-lowest-common-denominator/