Your users aren’t your friends: An unconventional approach to product design | by Jon Upshaw

Your users aren’t your friends: An unconventional approach to product design | by Jon Upshaw

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Designing against confirmation bias.

Person holding a sign that says “No Means No”
Users don’t always do what we expect. Image credit: Pexels

Have you ever asked yourself why “people don’t seem interested in [your product idea]”? After all, you’re brilliant, and your idea should totally work. It makes sense! It’s so perfect even, you’re sure someone from a tech giant would pick it up… if they knew about it. It isn’t fair. If only there was some way to get them to understand. You rack your brain, trying to come up with any reason as to why your users are wrong and you aren’t.

This was me a couple of years ago when I was bringing my first idea to life. The issue wasn’t just that my idea wasn’t all that great. I was also very immature. I wasn’t aware that a good product starts with a good product strategy, which includes a balance sheet and accounts for revenue. It also meant taking product scale into consideration, something I was pitifully unfamiliar with.

Our world of design often leaves out these important details, which makes us creative types a bit less savvy in the startup realm of business. Those of us who build successful companies tend to be more engineering-focused, and for a good reason — engineers are well-rounded and, with their understanding of a product’s “ins and outs”, can see into the business end of how things work. In this article, I’ll outline some key points to understand from the viewpoint of design when building a product, and then outline a less conventional approach that could work in your favor.

Man sitting on puzzle pieces.
It just so happens that some fail faster and differently. Image Credit: Jon Upshaw

A product’s potential is defined by many key components, and one of them is failure. We often judge a product by its potential for success, a flaw of confirmation bias. What is confirmation bias? It is defined as a thinking pattern where you seek information that confirms your beliefs or values. Seeking information that confirms our product’s potential for success might make sense from our point of view, but in reality it can be a damaging and time-wasting pursuit.

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