Product design is the orchestration of utility, clarity and design. Does the user know what to do? What happens when they click that button? Is the result expected or confusing? Is it beautiful? Does the page load fast?
There are more great products out there than there are great businesses because sometimes the product design process misses a critical question. Where is the business? Users come to the site, pass through the experience effortlessly, delighting in the aesthetics, knowing exactly what to do next and marvelling at the interaction of the UX. But then what? Who pays? Why?
This is what I love about the principle of customer development that our marketing team and the lean startup (#leanstartup) community in general believe in. How does product design change when the first thing you do is to try to sell something? How does your thinking change when the first hypothesis on customer and value is completely wrong? When we product designers start thinking about how to reach people, how to understand what they want and what value they assign to what we do, our work changes. How do you capture your customer?
Here’s an example:
The pure product design is simple for this main Groupon page. A deal with a great offer, clear messaging and clear link to purchase. While visible, all of that is blocked out to capture the email address of the user. There is a moment of barter where the site is showing something of value that it is prepared to share with the visiting user, in exchange for their email address. They can see enough to measure the value and choose to leave if they wish, or they can provide their email address to engage with the business.
Group buying products would function perfectly well without this. Group buying businesses would not. The purity of the product design would be better without this violation of my pure experience, but there would be no business.
I think we are all getting better at understanding this in the products that we make, but we sometimes forget. In product design, don’t forget the business design.
What do you think?