The key of product design is to find out what is the core value of the product and what core needs the user can meet. In practice, 70% of PM often forgets this point, because "meeting users' needs" has almost become a formula that every PM can come with his mouth open, so he often forgets it. We often hear that "Weibo should strengthen the SNS attribute", "WeChat should open O2O" and "community information should flow faster", which are the most typical examples of forgetting users' needs. All these formulas are taken for granted. If you don't think from the user's point of view and understand the user's needs, you will inevitably fail.
In fact, even if PM used this article, it often didn't help. Because a careful analysis of "meeting users' needs" will reveal that it is actually a wordless gobbledygook.
First, "user" is a virtual group concept, and PM can't find specific people to represent users;
Second, "users" actually don't know what they need. Therefore, in practice, users are always represented by three kinds of people: PM himself, imaginary typical users and PM administrative leaders. People who stick to iphone, Weibo and WeChat today didn't know they needed this a few years ago.
User needs are always captured and created by geniuses, just like what is popular in the fashion industry the next year. Those luxury consumers and fashion critics don't know that only talented designers can lead the future. Those great events in the history of IT were either created by geniuses or by super lucky boys. The "giant" of online games once practiced the truth of "meeting the needs of users" with great care, and investigated users in great detail, and found that "users" did not exist at all in the end. Those who were labeled as "users" didn't know what they needed, so the product failed completely.
Fortunately or unfortunately, most of us don't need to invent the iphone like Mr. Qiao, and we don't have the opportunity to create and lead the trend of the times like Kim Jong-un. So, if you just want to do a new function of an existing product, or want to design a new gadget, there are two more practical ways than understanding the "user needs":
1, crazy about your product
2. Try to solve the biggest pain point you encounter.
The most basic feature of a PM is to love its own products. If you don't love your product, the advice here is to switch to the product you like immediately, even if you get half the salary less. How interesting life will be if you burn for the products you love. 10 years ago, in order to get such a job, my good friend made the world's greatest China product regardless of the region (no matter how far apart the country is, the vast mountains and seas), the position (no matter how high or low the position) and the salary (the bottom line is to maintain personal local food, clothing, housing and transportation). Three years ago, I had a subordinate, an ordinary little boy, who was rated as the lowest PM in a big company with a professional title, but with the same lofty sentiments and a young heart, he made a product almost comparable to WeChat, which had an impact for some time.
According to the first step of this "nine-step method", if you are a deep user in Weibo, please think about the three-column structure revision of Sina Weibo, which core needs have been met by users?
As a deep user of Sina Weibo, I often visit Weibo with my mobile phone in front of my computer, because the PC doesn't give me a better browsing experience. Unfortunately, the core requirement of "poor browsing experience of PC users" has not been solved, but has intensified after the revision of the three columns. If you don't start from the needs of users, you will go in the opposite direction. Please think about what core needs you have solved for a user when you make a revision. You may change the world or murder the time of millions of users.
The first step focuses on "a core requirement", paying special attention to "one". For products like Weibo, making the browsing experience better is the core requirement. How to load the system faster, how to produce high-quality information for users, how to get rid of junk information and how to improve the visual experience are all urgent problems to be solved. PM should never dream of inventing, subverting existing products or adding some new features that you feel fashionable. Only by grasping the "core demand" and improving bit by bit, one percentage point by one percentage point, can quantitative change lead to qualitative change.
▌ Step 2: What is your uniqueness compared with similar products?
If the first step solves the problem of "what's the use" of the product, then the second step solves the problem of "why others use it". This question seems simple. In fact, compared with 70% of PM, "user needs" are often forgotten, and even 90% of PM in large companies will not consider "why others use me".
Why do so many PM's not consider "Why should others use me"? The biggest advantage of large companies is that they have money, people, technology and users, and they can quickly push a product that has been proved by the market to users, and at the same time bring users a good experience. It is precisely because the products of large companies are born with such advantages that they have become the usual magic weapon for PM, and there is no need to consider product positioning, so the biggest advantage will often become a disadvantage.
20 1 1 One night at the end of the year, I was in Foshan, Guangdong Province, and went to pinch my feet after dinner. As usual, I asked the technician what websites she usually visited, what hobbies she had in her life and what she planned to do recently. The girl replied that her recent dream is to buy a Xiaomi mobile phone. At that time, I was surprised that the cup in my hand almost fell to the ground. 20 1 1 At the end of the year, I only saw the news of Xiaomi on the Internet, and there was no real machine on the market. But in Guangdong, thousands of miles away, a girl who washes her feet on the roadside of a small town regards Xiaomi mobile phone as a dream of life. I quickly asked her why, and she said, "Xiaomi mobile phone 1000 yuan, but it is as cost-effective as Apple." This is positioning, and this is the uniqueness of the product.
China Internet is a very common example: from news, portals, e-commerce and video websites to group buying, security software, browsers, Weibo and mobile phones, 99% of them compete indiscriminately, and few people consider "what is your uniqueness compared with similar products". Obviously, those who are late and win have a deep understanding of this problem and extraordinary control ability.
According to the second step of this "nine-step method", if you are a deep user of WeChat, please consider what is the "uniqueness" of this product.
When designing the function of "circle of friends", WeChat must have considered its uniqueness relative to Weibo, Qzone and schools. In the case of such a serious homogenization of SNS products, how to win a secondary function of WeChat and where is its uniqueness is the primary problem to be solved by PM team.
Personally, I think this uniqueness is "privacy".
In fact, the essence of social interaction is "privacy sharing", the process of understanding between people, friends, close friends, even lovers, and finally lovers, that is, the process of sharing privacy with each other step by step. Why can't Weibo do SNS? Because broadcast platforms like Weibo are not private. Wechat friends circle solved the complicated privacy setting problem of Facebook with simple means in privacy positioning. Whether it is the insight of WeChat PM genius or luck, people have to admire it. If the WeChat circle of friends can do better in "privacy sharing", then this product has a bright future and has a chance to fight Facebook in the future.
▌ Step 3: Decompose users. According to the core value of products, users are divided into different roles.
The first step is to solve the problem of "what's the use", the second step is to solve the problem of "why others use it", and the third to seventh steps are to solve the problem of "how to use it better". The key to better use is to become a user and think from the user's point of view.
Maybe God can only see the needs of users, but genius also has a growing process in understanding the needs of users. We see that Mr. Joe Wang has also climbed out of one failure after another. Grasping the needs of users, just like the Buddha's revelation: peel an apple, cut it to the end, and you will realize it is empty. The user's demand results in a wordless gobbledygook. To understand it, there needs to be a process of peeling apples.
The process of dividing users into users is the process of peeling apples, and it is necessary to cultivate a PM. Different products and dimensions have different decomposition methods. It doesn't need to be too complicated at first, but there must be no one user in mind, that is, not peeling apples and stones. PM should at least classify users according to the core value of the products with the thickest lines.
For example:
UGC products: users who watch and users who write;
Forum: browsing users, posting users, moderators;
B2C: browsing users and trading users;
E-commerce: sellers and buyers;
New products: seed users and growing users;
Old products: initial users, increasing users, decreasing users and losing users;
Wait a minute. The core of this process is to grasp the most important role.
In particular, the division of roles is related to the degree of product operation. When mature products enter the refinement stage, they need to decompose roles more finely.
Take Weibo as an example: if the role is divided into two dimensions: X axis and Y axis according to usage and life cycle, then the usage of Weibo can be browsing information users and publishing information users, and can be divided into individuals, certified individuals, enterprises, media, big V and so on. For example, the life cycle of Weibo can list seed users, initial users, growing users, declining users, losing users and so on.
When the X axis and the Y axis intersect, we will get many roles. There are 30 kinds of Weibo characters listed above. Of course, some of them are meaningless. Few products and PM need to decompose dozens of roles. In most cases, we just remove the most important roles.
▌ Step 4: Become a user. Each type of role answers the following two questions:
Question 1: Why does the character use this product?
Question 2: How does the role know about and come into contact with this product?
After decomposing the role, PM needs to substitute itself into the role and play an imaginative role-playing game like cosplay.
When answering "Why does this role use this product", we will find that the core requirements of users begin to decompose. I mentioned in the article "Business Model and Entrepreneurship Opportunities of WeChat" (/zjaphLW) that the core needs of users are first-level needs, and a product will only have one first-level demand, while others are second-level needs, and there are three levels and four levels below the second level. For example, when users in Weibo look at Weibo, it is a first-level demand (browsing), a second-level demand (emoticon), and a third-level demand when users in Weibo insert various functions.
When we analyze the core demand of users in Weibo "browse the information they care about", the first function is "browse users". When answering "Why do browsing users use this product", we found that this is because there are "users who publish information", so why do users publish information?
When Weibo's role and why he uses this product are decomposed layer by layer, we will find that Weibo users have multiple needs:
1, information requirements
2. Expressed needs
3. Social needs
4, the need for self-realization
These requirements are pyramid-shaped, with the number of users decreasing step by step, and the top is "self-fulfilling requirements". These characters are the big V users in Weibo. Their purpose on this platform is to realize self-worth, so they produce the best quality information, which determines the overall ecological environment of Weibo. This is what distinguishes Sina Weibo from other products. At the bottom is the "demand for information". These characters are all users in Weibo, and they truly represent all of Weibo, including the dream of commercialization and the future.
The second question to be answered, "How does the role know and come into contact with this product", is a product operation problem. Good products are inseparable from operation, and many products even win by operation. In the early days, in order to invite a potential V, Sina Weibo could send someone to Hong Kong for two weeks, just to give this celebrity an iphone and teach him to use his mobile phone to go to Weibo. It is the key to the success of Sina Weibo to accurately understand how its core users know and reach this product and implement high-execution operation.
The example of Sina Weibo tells us that in the differentiated competition, as long as you have distinctive features in products or operations, and you can bring these features into full play so that competitors can't catch up, you can also succeed in the market.
▌ Step 5: Determine the role achievements, and determine how the product meets the sense of accomplishment of different roles.
How each role grows and is satisfied in the process of using the product is the key to the continuous growth of the product. In this regard, 90% of PM has fallen into a misunderstanding.
1996 when I was addicted to BBS, an adapted lyric "You on the Internet" was very popular on the Internet. I remember a lyric like this: "At that time, the sky was always very short, and it was half past ten in a blink of an eye. You only consider when you can upgrade, even if your vision drops by 0. 1 ". I once wasted four years of college time in order to hang an experience value on a bbs, so the virtual results hurt people.
In a flash 16 years have passed, and simple and direct integral incentives have been mastered by domestic PM, which is a tried-and-true method. Among them, there are endless innovations, so we can write a history of Internet innovation in China.
Classics such as QQ upgrade system, lighting various icons, various titles and points system of Discuz, various titles, badges and props of online games, fans of Weibo, points of tool products, information pieces and world rankings, etc. At present, there is no product motivated by user points, but it has become a substitute, such as WeChat.
It is this short, flat and fast means that is especially suitable for the psychological characteristics of orientals, which makes many PM ignore the core of the product. The misunderstanding of 90%PM is the over-gamification of products.
The most important achievement of a product is the sense of accomplishment when the user's core needs are met. When irrelevant incentives interfere with his core needs, his real sense of accomplishment is reduced.
Free online games, Taobao and search engines are the best products in the world because the achievements of core users are directly related to the income of the most sensitive indicators. Baidu's recent search tips suggest new features. When the user searches for the same keyword for the second time, the search prompt of this word will turn blue, which is the achievement of the search user: it is more convenient to query information and the search engine understands you better. On the contrary, if the search engine introduces a function, a floating layer pops up when users search: Congratulations, your experience value has increased by 10, and the most direct result is that the income will drop immediately, because this interferes with the core needs of users.
Products with unclear business models have no sensitive quantitative indicators, and PM ignores the core needs of users. When they are over-gamified, the achievements of minor characters are immediately taken over, such as Sina Weibo's disturbing encouragement to browsing users. Therefore, the key to this step is to pay attention to the core needs of your core users, so that core users can achieve core results in core needs.
In terms of role decomposition, Sina Weibo's secondary demand role, that is, the role of "publishing information user", has achieved some excellent results, especially the innovation of comment mode and fan concept, which is far better than Twitter, and laid the foundation for the latecomers to win from the product. For Weibo, a product that can be divided into dozens of roles, it is a great challenge for PM to grasp the relationship between the whole and the part when sorting out the achievements of each role.
▌ Step 6: Determine the key points in the process of meeting users' needs.
Decompose each role from the whole process of "knowing the product, using the product, meeting the demand, leaving and coming back", and describe the key steps and pages.
This step is a key step to test the execution of PM. Whether PM can do this step well has nothing to do with talent, but only with whether he works hard.
E-commerce companies can best control the process of meeting the needs of the whole user. The reason is simple, because every step is money. Excellent e-commerce, such as Tmall, Taobao, JD.COM and PM, will definitely have a clear understanding of where users come from, how to use them, how to get there and how to come back. Because PM is very clear, the income will rise when a key point is completed, and it will fall when a key point is not completed, which is directly related to the bonus, but it is not allowed to mess around.
This is the advantage of products with clear business model, and the business value is directly proportional to the user's needs. Both search and e-commerce have the best business model, that is, to realize business value while meeting the first-class needs of users. Both business value and user demand can find the sensitive measure of "income". If your user experience is good, your income will go up, if your user experience is poor, your income will go down. There is no more effective way to improve the user experience in the world.
This step is painful cosplay. We assume that the simplest new B2C product has at least four simplest roles:
1, browse users
2. Trading users
3. Seed users
4. Initial users
There may be 20 key points and a dozen key pages to describe the process of these four simplest roles "knowing products, using products, meeting needs, leaving and coming back". So if you play too much, you will enter the play. According to Buddha's philosophy, the product manager peeled the apple and finally found that the apple was gone, so he became a user.
▌ Step 7: Improve the conversion rate of key points.
When PM finds about 20 key points, how to improve the conversion rate of each key point and key page is the phased goal. When I was the general manager of Post Bar, I registered more than 80 accounts online to find out how new users came in, and see what can be improved in the registration process. Therefore, an ordinary PM, at least at every key point, must be tried dozens of times before it is possible to find a feeling and find an effective way to improve the conversion rate.
Many people have heard of the truth that "users lose half with one click". Although the actual loss rate of different products is different, it is basically a considerable figure. At the core of all forms of products on the day of "ordinary people using products", for many years, portal, search and IM have used at least two pages: portal's home page and content page, search's home page and results page, IM's friends list page and dialog box. E-commerce users have a long demand chain and use more pages. However, Facebook and Twitter only use one page to meet the core needs of users and maximize the conversion rate. Hao 123 invented by Li Xingping practiced this interactive revolution seven or eight years earlier than Facebook and Twitter.
It must be mentioned that after Facebook and Twitter, the most influential innovation in the history of interaction is the search open platform (Aladdin), which meets the needs of users on the current page of search results and saves the time for users to jump to the new website to check it again. This is the most successful and abundant invention of PM in China.
So, don't think that the conversion rate is already the highest. Maybe in another way, you can bring a revolution. Aladdin of Baidu and the revision of the left and right columns of Twitter are all innovations aimed at the core needs of users. In this mobile era, more fields that have not been involved by predecessors are waiting for PM to explore.
▌ Step 8: Form a closed loop so that the product can grow itself.
The phased goal of PM in the previous step has been completed, and the eighth step is to calm down and consider the closed-loop problem. Closed loop is the cycle of product self-growth.
Taobao's credit evaluation system is a closed loop. Buyers buy products, and merchants provide good services and get favorable comments. When they get favorable comments, they will get more new buyers. When new buyers buy products, businesses will have the opportunity to get more favorable comments and form a cycle. PM's job is to find, design and ensure the smooth operation of this closed loop. For example, the bad reviewer is the killer of this closed loop.
UGC products are often a closed loop. Users publish high-quality information to attract new users, and new users also publish high-quality information, and more new users are attracted to form a closed loop. Spam, spam and low-quality information are all killers of this closed loop. For many UGC products, PM makes great efforts to make them work normally, but the deterioration of information quality will spread to the whole cycle like a virus, making the products wither and finally die.
More products are not closed-loop, such as Alipay, dictionary APP, IE browser, Flash game, Microsoft office software and so on. The increase in the number of users has not brought about the self-growth of products. The difference is that many tool products have now found their own aura, such as cloud input method. The more users, the better the input method, the better the input method, and the more users, forming a cycle.
The era of mobile, cloud and big data will make it possible for more products to form a closed loop. Only by forming a closed loop can this product grow itself and evolve into an organism. Many small closed loops will eventually form a big closed loop, and many big closed loops may eventually evolve into an ecosystem, such as Ali, Baidu and Tencent, which is actually an ecosystem. Multiple ecosystems may evolve into a super ecosystem, such as what Ali is doing. Of course, the word ecosystem is the favorite word used by strategists or critics. The product manager only needs to care about those small closed loops, pulling and adjusting those that hit your pain point.
20 12 even if the end of mankind comes, from a physical point of view, it is not essentially different from a piece of ice melting into water. It is just one form of ring and another form of ring. What PM has to do is to be a singer who plucks the strings. Countless closed-loop vibrations will make the whole universe play music for you.
▌ Step 9: Do it quickly and iterate quickly.
When Google and Baidu interviewed PM, they both asked the same question: When the product reached the scheduled release date, they found that some functions were not perfect. Do you choose to go online or continue polishing until you are satisfied?
Once a big boss answered this question wrong, but only one of hundreds of questions was wrong, so he became the biggest technical boss of Google and Baidu. What's your answer? There are always too many things in PM's mind, but users think little or even don't want to. Zuckerberg, the best CEO of PM Facebook in the world, simply called users "idiots". PM, a genius in China, described turning users into idiots. He hopes that the distance between PM and idiot is only 0.0 1 cm.
If you are lucky enough to have listened to the teachings of the two most successful and richest PM in China, you will notice that these two people thousands of miles away will emphasize two identical principles, one of which is: hard work and quick iteration. Perhaps this is the secret of becoming the richest man, because they know that if the opportunity is missed, it will be gone. If you pay attention to both principles and you are not yet 30 years old, you have a good chance to change the world and make a lot of money at the same time.
But now there is a misunderstanding in the rapid iteration of the mobile field. Many unrelated app upgrades frequently prompt users to install new versions. This is by no means a fast iteration. Rapid iteration is just a better way to satisfy the user experience, so the product upgrade should give users an unexpected experience, so that users can expect and wait for your upgrade. Nothing to release a small change, force users to upgrade, waste company bandwidth, waste user traffic, such a PM should pay for the mobile phone by itself. Please learn from WeChat and Sina Weibo for fast iteration of APP. They are the darlings born in the mobile age.
Nothing is the same, the world is changing too fast. How many apples do you have to peel to understand the needs of users? So what I say is always wrong.
▌ Conclusion: Nine Steps of Product Design "Nine Steps of Product Design"
Step 1: Which core requirement does the product meet?
Step 2: What is your uniqueness compared with similar products?
Step 3: Break down users. According to the core value of products, users are divided into different roles.
Step 4: Become a user. Each type of role answers the following two questions:
Question 1: Why does the character use this product?
Question 2: How does the role know about and come into contact with this product?
Step 5: Determine the role achievements. Determine how the product meets the sense of accomplishment of different roles.
Step 6: Determine the key points in the process of meeting users' needs.
Step 7: Improve the key conversion rate.
Step 8: Form a closed loop. Let the product grow by itself.
Step 9: Do it quickly and iterate quickly.
The above are the nine steps of product design that product managers must read. I've sorted it out for you separately. Now please open your laptop, answer the above nine questions one by one for the product you are designing, and then analyze and discuss them with your team one by one. If you do this, you will believe that everything you think is wrong, because you need to do it again exactly the same within one month. This process is painful and lonely. The person who changes the world is the loneliest person in the world.
But I believe that as long as you do this, your hands will make the world a better place. Please share this article with other product managers who dream of changing the world. Only with more closed loops can we undertake countless closed loops.
I want to send this document to those who dream of changing the world.