How to Build Products Users Love

The talk at Y Combinator "How to Build Products Users Love" by Kevin Hale makes a lot of interesting points and I would recommend you to watch it. The questions session especially is gold.

Figure out, how people have a story to tell about your product, where there are the most interesting person at the dinner table. And then that person is your sales person.

was probably the strongest case for awesome product design I have heard in some time.

Another interesting idea was expressing product quality in two different Japanese terms

• atarimae hinshitsu: things will work as expected
• miryokuteki hinshitsu: things will have an aesthetic quality

You could also describe it as unpolished and polished. But if the product both works as expected and has an aesthetic quality, it will be a product that users love and want to have.

You could compare for example a Walmart shopping bag with a Louis Vuitton bag. Both will fullfill atarimae hinshitsu to carry your stuff, but only the Louis Vuitton bag has some element of craftsmanship, something with an aesthetic quality, ie. miryokuteki hinshitsu.

I realised that the packaging at Breuninger also fulfils that criteria with the distinct bright orange color and nice red wrapping paper. And it is a good story for customers to tell their friends. They are impressed with the packaging and the attention to detail with a small sticker.

Amazon packing on the other hand only fulfills atarimae hinshitsu. It will hold the product in place during transport, in a very plain and economic matter. You won't be impressed and there is nothing aesthetic about it. Nowadays Amazon skips often skips the package completely and just slaps the label on the product.

To create a product customers love, polish it in areas where your competitors don't.