Many product managers are keen to put fashion labels on their projects, but they often overlook the most fundamental question: What actual life needs of users do your products solve?
Product Manager Core Responsibilities
The first responsibility of a product manager is not to create concepts, but to take responsibility for the final market performance of the product. This means that you have to deeply understand the real life scenarios and specific difficulties of the target user group, rather than talking about models in the office. For example, if a food delivery app is successful, the key lies in whether it can allow users to quickly find nearby restaurants and deliver them on time during the peak period of 12 noon. It does not depend on whether it claims to be an "O2O life service model."
Be wary of the concept of looking first and thinking later
There are a large number of success studies in the industry that are summarized after the fact. For example, the popularity of a certain application will simply be attributed to "social network" or "LBS technology". Such a labeling interpretation is extremely misleading for the development of new products. Around 2010, many teams tried to imitate foreign "check-in" models to develop products, but most of them failed in the end because they only copied the concept of "geographic location-based" but did not solve the key question of Chinese users: "What is the use of check-in?"
In the early stages, we need to return to the essence
During the exploration period of a product from 0 to 1, the most taboo thing is to be constrained by the existing model. At this stage, you should forget all industry jargon and think and feel like a user. When shared bicycles first appeared, no one could tell whether it belonged to the "sharing economy" or "time-sharing rental". The founding team simply planned to solve the walking problem of the last few hundred meters from the subway station to the destination.
Bridging the cognitive gap with users
The environment that product managers live in is different from that of ordinary users. Their understanding of the same thing and their use of words are completely different. Technical staff believe that "cloud synchronization" is a necessary feature. However, many users may only care about "will my photos be lost?" There is a huge difference in thinking between the two parties. This is the root cause of the product being out of touch with the actual situation. When communicating, be sure to use language that users can understand, rather than technical jargon.
Extract real needs from users’ comments
The most valuable source of feedback is user dissatisfaction, but the key is to understand between the lines. When users complain that anti-virus software is ineffective, background data analysis shows that the real reason may be that the computer is too slow to boot, resulting in a laggy experience. The real need at this time is system optimization, not stronger virus detection. The startup assistant function of Tencent Computer Manager was born out of insights into this pain point from massive user feedback.
Focus on small iterations and real feedback
Don’t be obsessed with releasing a big, flawless, perfect version all at once. By quickly iterating small versions and focusing on solving one or two core pain points each time, we can get closer to the market. In the early versions of WeChat, key functions such as voice messaging and shaking were all added through small updates, and were continuously optimized based on the data generated by users' actual use. Many failed feature attempts have been eliminated internally, which also serves as a valuable learning process based on real feedback.
Have you ever encountered a product that is packaged with a gorgeous concept, but is actually extremely difficult to use? Welcome to share your experience in the comment area. If you find this article inspiring, please give it a like and support it.
