The CEO of the Product -Product Manager : Playing the Devil’s Advocate to the customer
A Product or a Commodity is a set of features or productive uses that it can be put to. A Product should help the end user achieve certain specific goals with the best possible degree of adoption.
Therefore it becomes highly imperative for the Product to be designed andefined in a manner that it enthuses the end users, has a high usability among the target customers and stays a mature Product on the Product lifecycle curve for an extended periodTherefore the role of the Product evangelist / manager becomes more challenging and tricky — should s(hegive the end user a glossy interface, bundle the product with all the fancy features, offer a high end design- all of which are of not much practicable value to the customer , but delights the customer for sure OR focus on the usable features, adopt a minimalistic yet robust design and a practical interface which serves the end user purpose.This is one of the most challenging aspects of Product management and user design that a Product evangelist if met with and there is no best answer to this one!
One excellent example in this context comes from my childhood days when my dad used to oft urge me to go in for more sturdy and practical footwear as compared to the fragile and delicate ones that I would be smitten by..Well so much for his advise that to this date it remains a matter of contention!
Therefore it becomes a need that the Product expert dons the hat of a “Devil’s advocate” to the customer and prods him as to the real world usability of the Product and the feature set and focus on some of the below aspects, which will help steer the Product towards a more usable and user friendly product, and at the same time meeting the purpose for which the Product is developed.
The Product expert needs to balance between providing a rich feature set, high end design and usability, must have features, ease of adoption by users and ease of use.”Playing the devil’s advocate” he needs to ask the customer:
- Is this an oft used feature Vs Is this a delight factor but rarely used?
o E.g. The Panoramic camera mode on a phone which is a customer delight factor but used by only 5% users
2. Will this hamper the usability of the product Vs make the product more user friendly?
o E.g. Face recognition based sign in on laptops/mobile phones may have functional glitches and prevent the user from logging into the device itself
3. Is the feature designed for mass market use Vs use of a limited customer segment
o A personal digital assistant such as Siri on iPhone could be used across the board by all types of users , whereas a stop watch may be used only by fitness users
Therefore the Product evangelist can adopt the following strategy when designing / defining a Product and at the same time keep the needs of the customer in mind and at the forefront of the Product design:
1) Without this feature will the Product fail its use?
2) What are the volume of users who are likely to use this feature?
3) Will this feature cause the Product to crash/delay in responding when there are many concurrent users/large traffic(esp. true in a SaaS setup)?
4) Is this design user friendly?Can first time users use the product with ease?
5) Will the product meet the needs of the different market segments that it targets?
The above Top 5 consideration set will help to justify that the feature set inbuilt into the Product not only satisfies the Product expert, but also fulfills the need of the customer and ensures high usability of the Product.
This will ensure that the Product defined and designed will be competitive, meet it usability goals and adopted by a large segment of the target customer base.
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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
