How to: Develop Product Sense

Product sense is: The ability to understand what people want and to build products that meet those needs.

Developing product sense is essential for product managers. Here is what I’ve learned about it, from what I’ve read and the work I’ve done.

Ideation:

1. Understand your customers

This means conducting research to identify their needs, wants, and pain points. The research can take many forms, such as interviews, surveys, and testing. It’s important to understand not only what people say they want, but also how they behave and what their underlying motivations are. Empathy is key—Watch people interacting with products (your own and others’), and pick apart products to consider how each design feature accommodates or fails to accommodate people.

2. Generate creative ideas for products that meet their needs

This can be done through brainstorming sessions or design thinking workshops, but core to this is generating a wide range of ideas, even if they seem far fetched. Always be learning about changes in technology and the field.

3. Evaluate them

Determine which ideas have the most potential and which are the most viable. This can be market research, competitive analysis, or other methods such as the RICE model. In terms of business viability, it’s important to also consider factors such as market size, target audience, and the resources required to build and market the product.

Implementation:

4. Prototyping

Create a working model of the product that people can test to get feedback and make improvements.

5. Build the product

Develop a minimum viable product and launch it to market.

6. Continue to monitor the product’s performance and make adjustments as needed

Analyze metrics, stay informed on industry trends, continue to gather feedback from people and make improvements based on this feedback. Good questions to ask include: “What do you think the purpose of this product is? Who do you think it’s for?” “Now that you’re in the product, what actions do you want to take?” “What are you thinking right now? How does that make you feel?”