 Product Managers define product features based on market opportunity, client needs, and revenue potential in an ideal world. What happens when project resources cannot deliver those features due to a lack of knowledge or technical ability, and you do not have the luxury of waiting for new resources?
Have you had to change the scope of your product to align with the team's skill set? Tell me about it in the comments.
0 Comments
 I am always on the lookout for how companies are using technology and disruption for social good. I recently discovered that Lyft and Uber have broken into the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) space making transportation to healthcare appointments more accessible. In addition to reducing medical costs due to missed appointments, I see this as a massive win for patient health.
Key Features:
Read More: https://www.modernhealthcare.com/patients/lyft-uber-expand-reach-healthcare https://www.bmc.org/healthcity/population-health/our-clinic-was-struggling-no-shows-so-we-called-uber https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/uber-health-targets-provider-pain-points-with-revamped-platform/573177/ https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/lyft-is-providing-rides-for-eligible-medicaid-patients-in-six-states  Every product with a UX undergoes multiple redesigns as it evolves. I have encountered these primary reasons for a redesign: rebranding, introducing new features, or leveraging new technology. With all redesigns, the focus should be on facilitating user actions. Keep users focused and make it easy for them to accomplish what you want them to do. Facebook is rolling out a redesign for its web UX, and I am perplexed by their design choices. I captured the screenshot above from my home screen. What actions are they promoting with this design? The first post in my feed is nearly below the fold, and the excessive whitespace is confusing. I like how Alex Bigman describes visual hierarchy patterns in his article "6 principles of visual hierarchy for designers". Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of graphic elements in a design in order of importance of each element. The visual weight defines the importance of an element in a design's hierarchy, communicating to a viewer's eyes what to focus on and in what order. The visual hierarchy should facilitate one of two goals:
Going back to the screenshot, what is Facebook trying to get me to do on this page? If I apply information hierarchy, it appears they want me to create a story, create a post, or interact with a room. I do not use stories or rooms, so the features taking up the majority of real estate on my screen create friction for me. I primarily use Facebook to consume content posted by others. This UX deprioritizes my primary goal. I do not have Facebook usage metrics, so I do not know if browsing content is a low priority action, but this change seems counter-intuitive. I have to assume that the purpose of this redesign was goal #2 above. Facebook wants me to adopt stories and rooms. What if I don't want to adopt these features? Creating a user experience that prioritizes your goals over your users' goals can effectively drive change. Give your users what they need, not just what they want. The crux is to understand when you need to back off and refocus on your users' goals. Facebook is somewhat unique in that there is little competition, so users are not necessarily going to stop using their platform in favor of another product. Yes, there is Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., but the sunk cost for participating in a social media platform is so high that switching is not easy. Many products do not have this luxury.
If you redesign to force a change in user behavior, do it deliberately.
Listen to the user feedback and be honest with the results. It is OK to admit something was a major failure. Make it right, learn from it, and laugh about it with your users. Evolution happens through experimentation. Do not be afraid to try, but do it intentionally.  This post is a follow up to last week's article on goals. The most common response to that article was, "I can't measure non-business related goals." Of course you can. They may be correlational, and you may have to do a little more work, but you can measure soft goals.
The key is to focus on the output rather than the input. If you remember my article on Finding Nirvana Through Asynchrony, I talked about how companies that operate in a genuinely asynchronous manner allow people to work in a mode and context optimized for their productivity and prioritize a culture of trust and autonomy. When you have a culture of autonomy, you focus on the output and not the input. What does it mean to focus on the output? Rather than metrics that focus on what a person does -- lines of code, documents produced, bugs filed, etc. -- focus on the result of the effort.
Yes, these metrics may be the result of multiple efforts and not attributable to a single person. Does it matter? If you have a culture that values personal development and autonomy, all that should matter is the final result. You can measure soft goals if you focus on the output. |