Crafting a product experience is incredibly difficult and incredibly exciting.
It requires two things that are sometimes in conflict:
- Listening closely and intently to users
- Being able to think of things users aren’t able to communicate to you
You need to both know their known desires and their unknown desires.
If you treat it too scientifically and A/B test your way to every decision, you’ll end up with a lifeless blob of aggregated no-skin-in-the-game emotion. But if too disconnected from user behavior and preference, you build it for you and hope it appeals to some other people, and it just misses the mark for too many.
The process is hard. Getting a solid foundation and a solid idea what customer you want to build for are crucial. If those are fixed, the other variable are easier to explore. If those are in flux, it’s a house of cards built on another house of cards.
We’re in the middle of it at Crash. We’re getting better, but we have a ways to go!