Product managers should care about user experience (UX) because UX goes beyond usability to also include user satisfaction, how desirable a product is, and whether users will adopt it. UX models show that value, usability, adoptability, and desirability are key factors that determine a user's experience. As products are created to solve user problems, product managers must understand UX to build products that users will want to use and continue using.
People hire products to get a job done UX- Measure how they feel while getting the job do Can this apply to hardware products? To Product Marketing?
Usability – Ease in getting job done Captures the Psychological and Behavioral aspects of User interaction with the product Usability is tactical in nature UX is a strategic aspect of Product Design
As a product manager you own the product. You are the voice of the customer. That means you need to know what the user is trying to get done i.e. the job to be done. UX is an important part of that job. It defines how the user feels as he is getting the job done using your solution. How much knowledge of UX do you need as a product manager? Think about the technical specs of the product. Even if you know little about the inner workings of the code you can still make really good judgement calls about the solution as you know what your user needs. IF you don’t have a UX team at your disposal this becomes doubly important. This session will cover some basics of UX and try to
There is no hierarchy here. AT least in my opinion they have equal value.
Does the product provide a user value? Many devices have good to great usability but they just don’t provide value Can also be seen while crossing the chasm e.g. Feature phones are now selling less than smartphones Many Features phones have great usability now some of it borrowed from smartphones However they just don’t provide value to the user - GPS, Web Surfing, Facebook Segway to FB and how it overcame this value prop problem How to add value Align product features with user needs Both Explicit and Implicit needs e.g. Apple products, Metro Design on the Microsoft GUI, Amazon.com
Why did FB end up buying Instagram for $1Bn. It couldn’t provide value in the mobile domain using its current model.
Hits phone Spends several seconds trying to find where the dial pad is Then can call E.g. Android on Samsung galaxy sII - I hit phone and I get a keypad straightaway Key assumption is what would the user want to accomplish more Ideally iphone wouldn’t be bad if it had the tabs at top - How our eyes move Left and Top is more intuitive Biggest Usability frustrations - Intranet sites!!!
Good amount of time spent on usability and workflows Very little time on Adoptability. How will users discover and start using our products This should be tied in with product design right from the persona days to product marketing. If it is done later it will be too late Think about why people would need another social network for professionals. Branchout re-imagines this by using FB profiles Associated with Brand Value Relevance Content Branchout – Instead of creating a new LinkedIn and going against the behemoth and 100 clones, branchout decided it would make its content easier by making it available to the 900 million users of FB. Thus making adoptability really easy.
Why is desirability important? Often products that are easy to use, valuable and easily adoptable fail to produce the desired effect Prime example is the HP touchpad Really Intuitive OS - Mattias Duarte now designs for Android --> Usable Check Useful - Yes, Lot of enterprise support built in Adoptable - Yes, HP made it available practically everywhere Desirable - No! Proof people purchased the HP touchpads for cheap after an Android port was available
Good Visual design leads to usability However there is a caveat – Context Excel might not be a beautiful GUI but its desirable for what it does
