3 must-ask questions to build the best product
How to understand your product, really.
After 4 months of banging-on-the-wall training at becoming a full-stack developer, I stand at another crossroad staring into my gloomy future, wondering what’s going to be my next step.
Interestingly, I came across a local software company that is looking to hire a product managerial position, and I thought who could have done a better than Mr. Over Engineering (it’s me, obviously).
One of the questions that they used as filtering questions was:
“Imagine you’re in charge of designing an alarm clock for our co-founder. You’re getting started understanding his requirements. What 3 questions do you want to ask him first?”
The question seems to be simple enough for anyone to understand, but I don’t think that will bring me to where I wanted to be. Assuming we are not running short on time, and the ultimate goal is to gain a comprehensive and extensive understanding of my subject. I must dig deeper into the rabbit hole.
Reasonable assumption before the question
Before I answer the question, the first thing I do wasn’t to ask for 3 more questions, nor getting the interviewer to hold my hands on understanding what he is trying to get to, but to make a few assumptions that I can presume that they are highly probable and safe to base my hypothesis on.
1 | He is a smart cookie
Also assuming that the questions that I’m asking are not the only 3 questions that I could ask to understand the requirements of what and how I’m building the “alarm clock” for the CEO, where the 3 questions should only be focusing on exploring and hypothesising a precise and least-biased result, where things shall be plausible until proven otherwise.
2 | Three is not all I’m getting
Also assuming that the questions that I’m asking are not the only 3 questions that I could ask to understand the requirements of what and how I’m building the “alarm clock” for the CEO, where the 3 questions should only be focusing on exploring and hypothesising a precise and least-biased result, where things shall be plausible until proven otherwise.
3 | The sky is the only limit
Without a doubt, the alarm clock can be relatively simple to understand its concept. However, that violates the basic rules of exploration and discovery, where anything is plausible until proven otherwise. Hence, I shall make the assumption that the “alarm clock” should be in any form that shall satisfy the user’s requirement without any predefined assumption to dictate what the outcome shall be.
(And of course, when it comes down to design, I also understand where a good product should be designed with great affordances and constraints, which can be achieved by building something that resembles how the users naturally behave towards to their purpose, hence in this case, clock.)
4 | Everyone lies
One of the things that I learned while working back in Ipsos Canada as a translator, is that everyone lies, (Thank you, Dr. House).
This isn’t something that everyone does it on purpose, but then we are all susceptible to all sorts of biases, making ourselves one of the least reliable sources of truth even when comparing to vodka being served at Mexico.
Breakdown of the analogy of alarm clock
We’ve successfully extracted the external factors in which might get in our way towards the truth, it’s time for us to walk deeper into the heart of our solution:
What is that we are creating?
“Alarm” has the meaning of anxious awareness and external stimuli that inflict/introduce a mental state. “Clock,” in this case, has a time-related element that is embedded into the product that it is describing.
However, that should not be the entire picture of what an alarm clock is. To hypothesis our true understanding of what we think about an alarm clock is, let’s briefly imagine where it can be applied to. (For the sake of precision, alarm clock shall be further referred to as “alarm”).
- Bloody 10x alerts that drive you out of bed for school/work
- You slaved away the entire afternoon for that lovely souffle, and you don’t want it to be reduced into charcoal
With those two scenarios, we can already see that even the same product can be serving two different purposes. To my understanding, an alarm clock is:
“Time-bounded catalysts/trigger of the change of state regarding the users’ predefined purpose.”
The rationale behind this statement is simple. The clock represents time itself, it is a concept, but it isn’t a product of itself. Anything that suffices to satisfy the understanding of the progress of a day can be named “clock.”
Consider the sleeping/cooking examples, the user depends on the alarm to trigger the shift of their current stage, either be from asleep to awake or from watching TV to rushing to the kitchen to turn off the oven, although we could also consider the willingness and smoothness of the change according to what scenario the user is in, the trigger in itself still stands valid.
The change of state is the essence of the entire idea, which it has no boundary to how we can express the idea of what the change of state is.
Considering an interesting prototype of an alarm, where the alarm is a far-infrared sleeping mat with a timer on it. When the morning approaches, the mat adjusts its radiation strength to increase the body temperature and blood circulation of the user. As for myself, I can sleep as long as the temperature does not rise to a certain level, the warmer the bed, the less sleep I get. Instead of having a bell ringing over my ears, perhaps heating up my bed like ants on pans might be a more effective way of shoving me off the bed.
At last, the predefined purpose is something that is worth understanding, because this is where the users would create an actual conflict between themselves, where their predefined purpose might not be aligned with their current ones. When the conflict of interests arises, without a significant amount of willpower and a clear mind for a purpose, usually more often than whatnot, the current interests trump the precedent, preventing a smooth transition or even a transition from happening at all, which defiles the original purpose of having an alarm.
Finally, the 3 questions
1 | Personally, what is “change” to you?
And to help digest this question in a more reasonable chunk, please describe one of your most memorable (involuntary) changes that have happened to you in your life where you feel comfortable sharing the entire journey and thoughts with me
As history has taught us well enough, human lies, with or without knowing that they lie, or most of the time human is not capable of expressing ourselves sufficiently for others to understand us completely. Hence, a better way of truly understanding someone is to ask them to reenact their experience in front of you so that you can act like someone who’s participating in their story instead of a cold observer.
Also, as mentioned before this question, the alarm is a medium of change, there is no context, just pure medium. With this question, we can quickly hypothesis what sort of stimuli, affordances, and signifiers are effective in the process of helping with the change of state of the users.
Answers and hints as far as knowing how that user reacts to the world, how he/she retains their new behavior, and how they understand and accept the new state of changes, can be further extracted from understanding the user’s relationship with “change.”
When physical materials undergo a change of state, usually a catalyst act as the agent/interface to improve/enhance the process. Whilst developing a compelling product, the delivery of the message is one of the most crucial parts that makes or breaks a product. By asking a personal-experience related question, users tend to relax and increase the frequency of using keywords that reinforce their learning module/ behaviors, such as I can see where the problem is, or this sounds interesting. Of course, there is the cultural element and all the other external influences where we have to consider as part of the judgment, but still, the rationale stands.
2 | How and where would you imagine yourself using the “alarm clock”?
Please kindly help me picture your imagination by describing your thought and action journey from what drives you to use the “alarm clock” to where you complete the interaction with the “alarm clock” (put the alarm clock to a complete stop).
This question is the bread-and-butter of obtaining user requirements, I think anyone comes to this far shouldn’t need any further explanation on why did I pick this question.
3 | If you want to change one thing about yourself?
What would that be, and how would you go about it (from planning to experience the actual change)
This question tries to boil down to the methodology where the users consider “effective” to their own taste. However, this also acts as an indicator where the methods that the user suggests is not the most effective one to implement.
Conclusion
Really, we’ve finally come to the other end of the tunnel, and this is just the beginning of building the best alarm clock in this universe. I could not have taken all the credits for this thought process, and I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in learning more about product design, read “The Design of Everyday Things” by Donald.Norman.
Thank you, and may good designs be with you.
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And for you…
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Ivan Oung is a Product / Digital Marketing geek in tech. I believe in building intelligent products, creating memorable user experiences and working effectively. Just come say hi to me on LinkedIn, Github, or visit me on my personal portfolio page, mentioning this story.