Dan Olsen (@danolsen) gives a really interesting talk on best practices in making good product decisions: understanding user needs, prioritizing features, UI design optimization, and metrics. Dan is CEO and founder of YourVersion, “a real-time discovery engine that continuously finds new, relevant content for you based on your specific interests.”
Regardless of what product or service you are providing, the most important thing is that your product meets a customer need that is not well met by existing alternatives. If you accomplish this, both the customer and business sides of your business will be aligned.
Olsen introduces the concept of the problem space versus solution space to help think about product management and design. The best products are very clear about the problem space and then iterate on the solution space. The common error is “living” in the solution space without understanding the problem space.
Dan uses the problem/solution space as a way to think about prioritization where you measure importance of user need (problem space) versus satisfaction with product (solutions space). The complex thing about prioritization is that you’re doing it across many dimensions at the same time such as customer understanding, functionality, quality, and ease of use. It’s important to have a defined, small scope while knowing what you are NOT doing. If you break everything down using this framework, you can have faster iterations, get quick feedback, and have a more targeted product that better addresses user needs.
Olsen then touches on the design aspects of early stage product management. UI design consists of three elements: Information Architecture, Interaction Design and Visual Design. Visual design is what most people and users react to. The next step is then user testing. Olsen sets up a good framework to get the most out of user testing. Both these items are discussed in greater detail in the slides.
Olsen spends the last part of the presentation talking about measuring qualitative and quantitative information, when to track metrics, tools to understand user behavior, and how to think about UI design analytically. Check out the slides and podcast!
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