What makes a good product great?
I am an experience creator. Whether I am writing, entertaining, creative directing, or designing, my underlying goal is to create unique and delightful experiences for whomever I encounter. I have built my career not on a job title, but on the pillars of storytelling, empathy, and problem solving — all in the name of cultivating joy.
Great products are the reason I decided to pursue a career in UX design.
Even though many of the digital products we encounter on a daily basis are quite good nowadays, there are still only a few great ones, products that have become an indispensable part of our lives, innovated an industry, or created downright addictive user behavior.
Good Products
- Solve a problem
- Respect the user
- Are usable and learnable
- Are adaptable to human behavior, especially error
- Are responsibly made
A great product will do all these things and inspire joy.
Let’s take a look at some products and how they go beyond good to great.
Something I Cannot Live Without
With over a billion users monthly and integrated into millions of apps, Google Maps has become an indispensable part of our daily lives.
Just like the paper map that predates the internet, Google Maps helps users find their way from a one location to another. Throw in the real time GPS location and traffic analysis to optimize the commute route and you have a really good product. Very useful — but, that is not what makes Google Maps a great product.
What makes Google maps a great product is that in addition to instantly generating directions to your friend’s house via the fastest possible route, you can also search for restaurants nearby to eat, compare reviews, websites, menus, prices, make your final decision, then book a reservation and share it with your friend. Now you built your entire evening experience on the basic need to figure out how to get from one location to another.
The difference between a good product and a great product is like the difference between off the rack and tailor made. Google maps doesn’t just get you efficiently to your destination, it is a tool that creates a unique and joyous experience for each individual user. Joy found in shorter commutes, finding new restaurants, and discovering hidden gems all around the world.
Something Innovative
Duolingo, the number one education app captivated the world by offering something entirely revolutionary. Free education.
Duolingo was created for the purpose of closing the accessibility gap of language education products. Co-founder Luis Von Ahn, born in Guatemala, believed that free education has the power to transform the world and can be used as a tool to battle socio-economic inequalities. There approach was make it fun and keep it free, something that language educational products for the most part were not.
Duolingo has been massively successful.
Launching in 2012 with six languages, they now offers 38 languages to its 300 million registered users. What sets this product aside isn’t just that they provide unparalleled accessibility to educational content at a zero software cost, they make the experience absolutely delightful. They approach language learning as a game, consistent in every point of user interaction.
While the app isn’t perfect, critics often note major faults in explaining grammar rules, and doesn’t quite prepare you for real life conversations. The Duolingo team has been dedicated to constantly improving the product and will undoubtedly continue to pioneer digital educational design.
Something Addictive
While I like most struggle at times to moderate my time spent on Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube, I have to admit that I am powerless when it comes to my drug of choice, Netflix.
I know I am not alone. I, like others, have lost countless hours of my life binging episode after episode of series after series. I bear the bags under my eyes from a 36-hour, all-day-all-night bender, that only ended in shame as I shrugged off an entire Monday full of responsibilities for the sake of those hypnotic words in lower right hand corner, “Coming up Next.”
I don’t consume it. It consumes me.
Melodrama aside — great products are addictive. They have to be because they compete fiercely for the most valuable resource in the world, your attention.
And Netflix isn’t here to play coy. They hook you in right from the get go, with a homepage of video content algorithmically tailored to your own unique interests. No two user profiles suggest exactly the same content. Each person gets their own personalized selection to choose from based on what they watched and what they liked.
Competing with over 200 viable streaming services out there, they are the industry favorite boasting a whopping 195 million subscribers. Even their brand name is synonymous in pop culture with media streaming, “Netflix and Chill.” It’s not just a product, its a goddamn mating ritual!
The difference between something good and something great is joy.
Great products don’t just solve problems, they enhance lives and create memorable experiences. They treat their users as individuals with their own unique problems, goals and desires. But most importantly, they bring joy into the user experience.
