The First Rule of Product Vision
Friday, October 24th, 2008 | vision book
There is one rule about product vision that stands above the rest. Please memorize it, recite it often, and tattoo it onto your wrist:
The product must satisfy important, unmet customer needs, and profitably.
You can ask this whenever you need a reality check on your product. Let’s break this down.
The product must satisfy needs. Product vision is about needs. Not features. Or what technologies are used. Or even how it is designed. All of these things exist to serve customer needs and are only important to the extent that they do so. Are your new features truly solving needs?
The needs must be important. The needs must be important enough for customers to care about, and be willing to reward us for. Otherwise customers will not give the product the time of day. Are the needs your new features address really important?
The needs must be unmet. Somehow, people are surviving without your product this very minute. They are using a competitor’s product, or working around the problem, or quietly suffering. There must be a big enough gap between their level of need and the level already fulfilled by whatever they are using, or not using today.
This gap (the pink area in the diagram) defines the maximum potential opportunity.
Your product needs to fill as much of this gap as possible. If the improvement is too small, it won’t be important enough for users to bother wtih. The bigger the delta, the bigger the advantage. Is there a big enough gap remaining, and does your product make a big enough dent in it?
The needs must be met profitably. The product must meet the needs of both its customers and the company who sponsors it. The vision needs both a strong product concept and a strong business model to survive. A product that cannot sustain itself dies off, no matter how great it is, and becomes of no use to anyone.
So please memorize this mantra, the first rule of product vision:
The product must satisfy important, unmet customer needs, and profitably.
It’s the basis for distinguishing good product visions from bad ones, and it’s an important clue for developing a systematic approach to product vision.
3 Comments to The First Rule of Product Vision
[...] to the chagrin of designers everywhere, how great vision can withstand flawed design. If it satisfies important needs better, it’s more [...]
November 9, 2008
[...] a product that meets important unmet customer needs, profitably, and which is therefore [...]
November 13, 2008
[...] The First Rule of Product Vision [...]
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October 31, 2008