The power of why and what if: how to build a great product
It’s a different kind of why that you may know from Simon Sinek. It’s a why and what if we use, at supertalent, to build a product people love to use.
Let’s start by briefly introducing our product
Supertalent is a value-based hiring platform. But what does that actually mean? Well, as silly as it might sound, we want to help people be happier, more engaged, and satisfied at work by helping them find a job where they can take their whole selves. In other words, not just have a good match with the job itself, but also have a good fit with the company culture and values.?
We are a very product-centric company, and everything we do has to bring the best possible customer experience. Because supertalent has two types of users, companies, and talents, the product itself has many tiny details to accommodate this user duality. But it’s not just about striking the right balance that makes our product complex; it also must offer a great customer experience on all devices. Desktop, tablet, mobile. It’s like a million details that must be considered when we make a product decision. And this is what this essay is all about. Making good (better?) product decisions. Let’s hear me out.
MVP, MLP, MMP, MDP
Do you know these acronyms? They sound at least familiar, right? The tech world is now using so many acronyms that they have already started losing meaning. You hear about Minimum Viable Products MVP, Minimum Lovable Products MLP, Minimum Marketable Products MMP, Minimum Desirable Products MDP, and I believe there are many more. And you can find a lot of explanations on how they differ. But it’s all just nonsense. They are just fancy names for the first version of a product on the market.?
I don’t think you will increase your chances of success by using either of those. It all comes down to the simplest aspect of any successful company. Do you offer a compelling value with your product to the world? If not, no matter what product you build, you won’t succeed. You can call it lovable, desirable, or viable, or however, you want.?
At supertalent, we also had our own acronym, MAP. Minimum Acceptable Product. And I fancied myself on how clever it was, how it will help us to build a great product by asking ourselves questions such as “Would this user experience be acceptable for the customers?” or “Would this feature be accepted by the customers even when it’s not perfect?”. But you know what? It didn’t help at all. You can call your product lovable or desirable, but it’s just wishful thinking. Only once you launch it on the market will you know whether the product is lovable or desirable.?
This was our lesson. Not to cling too much to the word “would” that you need to use when calling your product lovable.
Instead, we started using why and what if to increase our chances to build a product people will actually love to use. And after the first couple of weeks from our launch, I dare to say that it paid off. We now have incredibly positive feedback from our customers. It isn’t because we were building a lovable product. It is because we have a lovable product! I hope you understand the difference. When you are building the first version of your product, you always predict before you don’t.
Continuous why and what if
So what exactly helped us to build a product that customers actually love to use? It was hard, and we were lucky, don’t get me wrong. There might have been a million things that might have gone wrong because when you are building the first version of your product, you work with many hypotheses around your customers. You try to validate these hypotheses continuously, but, as I said, you cannot be sure unless you launch the product.?
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You usually conduct customer research on a small sample of customers and with standalone features. I generally agree with this approach, but it’s just one part of the bigger story. Story of bringing the whole product on the market. All that thousands of lines of code in one compelling package. But as Aristotle said more than two thousand years ago, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Simply said, if you will validate all of the parts of your product separately, it doesn’t mean that the whole product will be a great success.
And this is what people usually do. Build the product incrementally. One feature after the other. A landing website, user sign up, user login, user settings, ... You know what I’m talking about. And as time goes, you become impatient. So once you see the finish line (or maybe just the arena in the case of the first version of your product), you put your last feature with the rest, and you want to launch it as soon as possible. And why not? Your customers will love your product, right? Because you were building a lovable product and potential customers loved all your features. Well, maybe. And maybe not.?
If they do, congratulations! Great job. But what were the odds? 50/50? According to the numbers, we all know, it’s more like 80/20 in favor of your product becoming an MDP,? Maximum Disliked Product
We wanted to increase the odds. We were still doing ongoing customer research, but next to it, we started challenging ourselves. Our own biases and noises. We realized that even with customer research, you can confirm only so much of the consumer behavior and perception. It would be interesting to know how many of all the nitty-gritty details you can actually validate via customer research and how many of them depend simply on being lucky with your own inner feelings to make it as you think it’s the best.
Our team guessed the vast majority of the details of the first version of our product. And having that in mind, we wanted to make sure that the guesses become truths. We started continuously asking ourselves why and what if.?
There are my top ten questions around why and what if:
But the most important aspect of this method is that it has to be continuous! It’s not enough to ask any of these questions just once per each product decision. In our case, it wasn’t a surprise that we changed our product decision several times. We made a decision, and after a month, we asked the same question again. If we found the answer still valid and compelling, we kept it. And then we came back to it once again after another month asking the same question again. And if we found out that now (remember the whole and the sum of its parts?), our rationale (if there’s such a thing as rationale) is different as we recently added new features and new details, we altered the decision and redid the product. Yes, it’s hard. And not just for you, but for the whole team. Suppose you change your decision three months after it was made. In that case, the whole team (product, designers, developers) has to go back to the drawing board and start again to make sure the customer journey fits this updated decision, and the whole product experience is still great.
Although I’m talking about using why and what if for building the first version of your product, these two words have wide-ranging use. You can use them across business functions, but also in your personal life. I always try to challenge my thinking and actions with why and what if, and it has never let me down. It always shows me a new perspective I didn’t see before.
And that’s it. I know it was long, but if it will help someone make a better product decision, I’ll be happy. And if you are into product decisions, I recommend reading a blog post from productboard that looks at why from a different perspective: https://www.productboard.com/glossary/five-whys/
PS: Be safe and healthy!