Principle #3 - Make Your User Awesome (21 Days Of Principles Used By Successful Product Leaders)

Let's continue highlighting 21 product principles that help us to make better decisions and build better products.

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PRINCIPLE #3

Make Your User Awesome

Now you know who your target user is. But it's time to go deeper.

What is her current situation, and where does she want to get to?

Kathy Sierra talks about making users awesome, and that's a great way to think about it. Your outcome is a user who feels better in some way.

The core driver is always emotion. People will tell you that they make decisions based on logic. Don't believe them :) Logic only backs up the emotion.

Your user wants to be able to create a great looking presentation. Why?

So she can feel good about her contribution.

So she can feel recognised.

So she can feel successful.

Now often your user is thinking in terms of surface level wants or needs, and is unaware of what's deeper. That's why you can't just ask her directly.

You need to keep talking, observing, probing, and learning about the chain of situations, thoughts, and emotions that lead her to look for a solution.

When you understand her better than she understands herself, you can paint a vivid picture of the transformation she's looking for, and use it as the key input to your Vision and a North Star to guide all your efforts.

Questions you can use to start applying this principle:

• What does our user really want?
• How will she feel if she gets what she wants?
• Are we getting closer to delivering that transformation?
• How are we designing our goals around that transformation?
• How can we do less of what doesn't help to deliver that transformation?