The Details ARE the Product

22 Sep 2009

5 Comments

Look carefully at the intersection of hardware and software in this picture.

Look care­fully at the inter­sec­tion of hard­ware and soft­ware in this picture.

The devil’s def­i­nitely in the details. And, it all falls on the shoul­ders of the Prod­uct Man­ager. Prod­uct Man­agers own the mun­dane task of prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tions, roadmaps, pric­ing, and so on along with prod­uct vision and direc­tion. It’s also their respon­si­bil­ity to make sure it all comes together in a pack­age that makes sense.

Take a look at the ATM photo I took at Bank of Amer­ica the other day.

It’s really easy to see the two dig­i­tal but­tons on screen. Pick which deposit type you want… cash on the left, and check on the right. Sim­ple.

Now, look at the hard­ware slots. I sus­pect it’s hard to read… there’s a slot for checks on the left, and cash on the right! Big deal? Maybe not except to the anal-retentive’s in the audi­ence. But, sloppy. Yeah. for sure.

But think about the elderly or dimly-lit. It’s not obvi­ous to check which slot to put stuff in. Hit the but­ton the left, put stuff in the slot on the left. That’s the obvi­ous choice. To me, it’s sim­ply dumb to do any­thing else in the UI.

Here’s another one. Had a bunch of peo­ple con­nect to me this week on Linked In. It’s been a par­tic­u­larly busy week, but I like to keep my inbox clean. I won’t, how­ever, delete the invi­ta­tions until I con­nect AND write rec­om­men­da­tions for peo­ple. Each time I got an invi­ta­tion, I clicked over the person’s pro­file, and selected “rec­om­mend this per­son,” a very clear link to the top right of every pro­file. Each time, I saw the following:

Linked In, "recommend this person"

I fig­ured, Linked In was hav­ing trou­ble, and I’d come back later to write the rec­om­men­da­tion. Today, about five days after I first clicked over… I scrolled all the way to the bot­tom of the page and saw what I was miss­ing, the famil­iar “make a rec­om­men­da­tion” panel… all the way at the bottom?

Make Recommendation Panel

What’s it doing there? Why did they move it? And, it took me five days to find it!!! Total Prod­uct Man­age­ment fail!!!

And to quote a very smart friend… “it’s like they haven’t tried the thing?!”

Exactly.

By: Bressler Category: Community, Technology