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The past few weeks I’ve been trying to learn about design and product thinking. I believe that first principles thinking is key to being a good product person. Every great product solves a problem and delivers value at scale.

Take craigslist for example, a popular site for buying and selling items. Craigslist generates around a billion dollars in revenue with a UI from the early 2000s. It isn’t fancy but it does the job. This is a great example of a product that solves a problem and delivers value without all the bells and whistles. All it needs a problem that you can relate and a solution.

Paul Graham in his article says “The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It’s to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.”. I think this applies even for Product Managers too. Without the right motivation, KPIs and incentives, PMs can end up building features that nobody wants. “Feature Factory” as Marty Cagan calls it is a real problem that can derail product teams from the broad vision statement.

A great product manager also understands user behavior and pyschology very well. I think its fair to say that PMs should take a leaf out of a behavioral economics book. Take for example: loss aversion. People would rather not lose a 100 bucks than win 100 in a game of chance. This can be applied to product decisions to influence users towards the actions we want them to take.

While behavioral tweaks can be done positively, some products unfortunately enter the realm of dark patterns and its very common in food delivery apps where the company plays with the pricing to extra every single $ from the user’s pocket. This goes back to the first paragraph. I’m sure there is a better way to make money by adding value rather than tricking users. For example, charging extra for a faster delivery is a fair mechanism. Users still have the choice to not choose it but any user would be okay to exercise it for a fee.

With the AI boom just around the corner, first principles and empathy is still a human objective and probably the most important.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash