The Productologist

I went to visit another customer recently and discovered something very interesting about them. Their first hire was not a Software Engineer or even a Product Manager, but a User Experience specialist. How novel…thinking about the user first.

This is novel, because at most companies that build software, the first hire beyond the founders is usually an Engineer to write the code that supports the founders’ vision of the product and how it should work. Most founders are not experts in user experience. They may have been users once, but they are not likely the user that they are trying to serve now.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

I have been meaning to read this seminal text on application development and usability for some time (read: years), but somehow it always ended up on my reading list just below something else. After seeing some others reference the book and discuss conference talks where the author expanded on his theorems, I decided to bump The Inmates are Running the Asylum to the top of the list. After finishing it up, I was surprised, to say the least.

When was the last time you included User Interface (UI) requirements in an MRD? If you are like most Product Managers, you may have included a reference like these in your MRD (I’ll admit to using at least one of them)–

• Need to make the UI easier to use
• The new screens must follow the existing screen design
• Replace old icons with new ones
• Change the colors to match our new logo

Unfortunately, not only are these not easily actionable, but they don’t get to the root requirement, which is how to make the product more clearly understood and easier to use so that the user has a positive experience.