Best foot Sideward

Make it Easy

I heard a song called Make it Easy by the Barenaked Ladies and it seemed to strike a chord elsewhere. I realized that any product decision we make should be about making it easy for consumers. This makes even more sense in this day where consumers have very little time to pay attention, troubleshoot, do all over again etc. Everyone is busy these days - doing their day job, updating their social network profiles, doing budgets, catching a missed episode on Hulu, sitting in traffic, investing etc. The more time we demand of them to learn about a product, the less likely they are to choose to buy it and even less likely to talk about it to their friends. Making it easy manifests itself in 3 ways as described below.

Make it Easy to see value:

It must be brain dead simple to see value in your product. It must be immediately obvious what the product can do to our lives. How the product will enhance our well being. If it can help the greater good of mankind even better! Basically, the product should speak for itself with little need for a marketing effort. An example would be an IM service that sends money to charity whenever you chat. It is immediately obvious why this is a good idea! Or a guitar whose frets light up for in built practice songs. You go to a store and you see the lights blinking in time with a song, you know its a must have for your budding musician.

Make it Easy to get value:

It must be really simple to use the product and get value out of it. A product that frees up a few minutes/hours of a person's time is very likely to be close to their heart. Intuit's TurboTax does an awesome job of just simplifying the average person's tax return generation to an essentially brain dead series of instructions! I used the extra hours I saved to make a grilled cheese sandwich ... well burning a couple ... setting off the fire alarm ... cleaning up afterward etc.

Make it Easy to create value:

These days, consumers aren't just consumers. They are producers as well. Can your product let them create something of value that is useful for other consumers? For example Ning lets you create your own social network. Imagine the power of that! You don't just consume a social network, but you can create a niche social network and enjoy a vibrant social community that Ning provides. Another example - Going back to the fret lighting up guitar. If the guitar provides an easy way to save the songs you play into a fret lighting up format, you can upload it and provide a simple lesson online to anyone that wants to learn! When consumers feel like they contribute through your product, they feel good!

Delight, .. anyone?

What do customers want? I'm referring to end consumers not enterprises. Companies that release software products and services may know a whole bunch about their customers, the features they want, the services they need, their pain points etc. But this data seems to get lost a little in the transition to an actual product or service. During release cycles, there seems to exist a basic culture/tenet that drives development. To me, this has changed over the years and for the better of course. But where is it going?

Ship as many features as possible:

This has been a gory past for software. Ship as many features as possible in the product. Make no attempt to ensure they are discoverable. Make no attempt to link them together. Feel great about a 25 feature release! One can say this about operating systems/software programs of the 90s even early 2000s

Ship features tied to real scenarios:

This is somewhat new. Development teams figured out that people want scenarios not features. For example, customers want to be able to download songs and have them automatically synced to their favorite MP3 device and ready to play. They could care less about the download browser or the sync tool or the USB connection for the MP3 device. Customers want an entry point that takes them through an important/useful/entertaining scenario without having to worry about the individual parts. For example, this style has been used extensively in the design of Windows Vista. The new Control Panel is a great example of providing scenarios as opposed to features.

Ship some features and make them beautiful:

Companies such as Apple are doing this right now. Create a certain feature set and work on making the design beautiful and elegant. Think Apple iPhone, iMac. Another example - Microsoft made Windows Vista one of the most beautiful operating systems ever created with Aero glass technology.

See how all of the above are tied to shipping features? The all important feature list is right there in the title. Will this be the way of the future? Here's a thought and I fully believe this should be the war cry of any major software development company.

Ship delight!

How about that eh? Does an end user care about features? Do they care about scenarios? Do they care about design? We cannot be blind spotted by any of these areas. Ultimately, a product needs to delight a user. The user needs to jump out of their bath tub, cry Eureka while running around naked! They need to get the same feeling of a thrill seeker skiing down an icy slope, a kid that scores his first home run in little league, an environmentalist watching hybrid cars race down a highway. OK, that was an exaggeration, but you see where I'm going with this. A product/service needs to delight users. It has to engage them. It has to make them feel glad about using it, want to try out new products/services from your company and most importantly talk about it to their friends. After all in this day and age, that is the best marketing. Make something delightful! The world will love it and love you for it!