Product is empathy

We live in a tech age and have products of all shapes helping us making our lives easy. Yet there are few products that stand out. An Apple phone, Amazon’s shopping experience, AI on Google Now are some examples. They stand out not because they work but they have delights built into them. Delights which have made their way in the product through a thorough cycle of Listen, Reflect, Connect, Iterate. In this post, I focus on the big role empathy plays in building better products.

One example that I personally feel connected to is Google. Google has evolved since it started back in 1998. Google is a huge company today but its ability to put itself in the shoes of its users is the key to the awesome products they ship. It takes extra effort to collect, leverage data and feedback to build the product that it’s users’ look forward to. I have attended their Google I/O conference and the keynote speakers took pride in showcasing the features/products that users asked them for. It showed the connection, the urge to listen/solve their problem and work with them to accomplish greater things.

During my tenure at Google, I noticed how seriously Google took the concept of “dogfooding”. They put every design/code/feature/product through rigorous internal/external testing cycles. I always wondered how these products even launch. But they do, they have a systematic process which has stood the test of time and responding to early user feedback is a critical element of it. It is only possible if empathy is ingrained in the company culture.

Empathy in designing a product, building it, testing, launching and more importantly using the data to iterate and improve it. It is not just a product owner who has to empathize. It has to be the culture value of every product company that builds to succeed. A UX designer who designs product cares for the ease of use, how pretty it looks and how it makes the user feel. An engineer who builds can empathize by ensuring the code is well tested, written with utmost craftsmanship. Similarly, marketing, biz, and sales can empathize by building a connection with users. Selling a product is not the end of it. Caring for your users by getting their valuable input is one way they can empathize. Empathizing is listening, caring, building trust and connection. 

I usually tend to empathize using following steps- 1. Listen 2. Reflect 3. Connect 4. Iterate. Few of the things that I do to show empathy is to acknowledge the pain, validate, followup. I avoid suggestions, comparing the situation with others.

I was reading this post from Seth Godin where he talks about smashing the piggy bank. User product piggy bank is like a relationship bank which gets credited with the building of user trust. Breaking of the piggy bank is analogous to lack of empathy for the user and losing user trust. Empathy builds the connection with users which is one of the most important things to succeed in product development/adoption.