Usability Principles from Jakob Nielsen
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When you work as a product manager, there are lot of responsibilities, but you have little or almost nil authority on any of the resources who will help you with these responsibilities. The product should solve a genuine customer problem in a viable way for your organisation, the product has to make revenue, it should have superior user experience , should be technically reliable and there are umpteen things you need to ensure and you will be pulled in multiple directions by everyone in the company.
When you are the ring master of this product circus you need to learn the art of saying No. It is a simple fact that you can never be productive if you take on too many commitments — you simply spread yourself too thin and will not be able to get anything done, at least not well or on time and will end up upsetting everyone. But requests for your time are coming in all the time — through desk phone, mobile phone, email, IM or in person from technology, marketing, sales and top management. To stay productive, and minimize stress for you and others, you have to practice the Gentle Art of Saying No — an art that many people have problems with.
What’s so hard about saying no? Well, to start with, it can hurt, anger or disappoint the person you’re saying “no” to, and that’s not usually a fun task. Second, if you hope to work with that person in the future, you’ll want to continue to have a good relationship with that person, and saying “no” in the wrong way can jeopardize that.Often the person or project is a good one, but it’s just not right for users, at least not at this time and it is the responsibility of the product manager to ensure that resources are used in the right way at the right time in such a way that everyone benefits.
There are various ways to say No without upsetting people especially when you will be working with them closely for the product and you have all the responsibilities while you never control any of those resources who have to help you to deliver these responsibilities. When I was a rookie Product Manager in Rediff and was building the video platform, one of the lessons that I learnt from a very senior product manager was about the art of saying No. This was after a chaotic meeting where technology, marketing, sales and product management was at loggerheads with each other about certain additions that each team wanted on the product. At the end of the meeting when everyone came out of the meeting every body felt that their demands had been met, but actually what he did was practicing the Art of saying No and everything was implemented as per the original product roadmap and in the end the product delivered an yearly revenue of around 20 million.
Here are some tips – You can use data, you have to be honest,you can buy some time and use your gut feeling. . Your body language is also very important. If you are seriously saying something but is smiling at everyone, people may no buy your argument. Don’t feel guilty that you are letting other person down and dont avoid saying No because you fear conflict with the person at other end and want peace from him. You have to say No because it will help you and people working on the product to keep the focus on the problems that you have to solve at that instant. Remember that the product will succeed not by doing a half hearted job of what everyone wants to do but doing a fucking cool job of solving at least one pain pint for users better than your competitors.
Here is an excellent Video on the importance of saying “no” and the effect it has on the people. Saying no is hard and it’s not a matter of killing bad things, but must be done to focus.
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Dont Make Me Think
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Thanks Steve- For the inspiration from Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and everything else and for changing the world
Image Courtsey : Jonathan Mak
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Crafting good error messages is an art because everything in the real world in which a user interacts with your website or software follows Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will.” Thanks to that, virtually all software and websites come with written-in error messages and if you don’t craft an error message that solves the problem of the user your website will lose a chance to connect with the customer when he is experiencing some pain with whatever you have built.
A Good error message is something like the one below that comes up when you login to wordpress after resetting your password.
The product manager/ designer or engineer who crafted this error message knew that wordpress users have a problem is remembering the autogenerated $%^%^^&%^ kinds of passwords or when they analysed the data in wordpress blogs they found out that majority of the users tried to create a friendly password after logging back to wordpress again.
This looks simple, but lot of sites send new passwords in the format $%^%^^&%^ and very few sites have a user friendly message that chats with the user.
If you look at the same usecase for a user who forgets his password checkout how different websites show the message.
WordPress has a better error message out of the ones listed above because they are trying to chat with the user and is asking the user whether it is a forgot password? scenario.
Cleartrip also has a good error message for the forgot password because they are trying to empathise with user and is asking him whether his CAPSOCK is on .
Error Messages are really important because if something goes wrong, the error message may be the only help for a user and people don’t like to be in helpless situations with a dumb computer. If you give them a solution to the problem or a reason why the scenario has occured then that can result in a positive association with your we site or software, which is always valuable and which may give you a slightedge advantage over the competitors.
I am a fan of error messages in wordpress because in most cases they try to help users and solve the issue
These error messages say what went wrong , why it should have gone wrong , how to fix the issue or if nothing happens an alternate way to solve the issue faced by the user. Any Good error message should first try to solve the problems faced by user, should be concise, may or may not be short and will be correct making it easy for any user to use your website or software.
It is too easy to discover bad error messages because they dont tell user anything new that he does now know . Error Messages which tell user things like “404″ , Unknown Error”, ” Program failed to load ” and so on because it has to tell the user what is 404, what is unknown and why program failed to load.
It is not only about crafting error messages but also about crafting user messages for alerts and confirmations. Alerts and confirmations are different from error message because it is a good method to tell user that whatever he was expecting has happened. Things like he has entered a valid coupon in an E Commerce checkout flow and the password has been updated.
The responsibility for crafting a good error message lies with everyone associated with a product. The product manager , the product designer, the front end engineer, the back end engineer, the product marketing manager and everyone who feels that he is responsible for the experience that the product is creating for any user.
My Favorite error message is the message that is displayed in the payment failure page of HomeShop18.
It is my favorite because every month we add a 7 digit sum to our monthly revenue only through this error message. An idea that came on a cold Bangalore morning when we were wondering what has to be done with the bad.. bad.. payment gateways in India.
The thumb rule to test any of the error messages is to test the message on a non-technical person someone like your grandmother who is a part of any user segment. If your grandmother knows to operate computer and can make sense of it, you’ve succeeded.
Image Credits :http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/error+messages
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My fixed line connection and internet conked in the Bangalore rains yesterday.
Called up Airtel Customer Care at 11:20 AM and they came and repaired it at 11:30 AM.
So Soon!
Have you experienced the past?
When the telephone connections in India was controlled by Govt and there was a monopoly.
Those were the days of endless queues for
- applying for a new connection
- getting the instrument
- submitting a telephone bill
- getting a telephone connection repaired
Compare it with the present
No Queues for any of the things above. and there are providers like Airtel who will repair within 10 minutes after making complaints.
Thank god as customers we have numerous choices for telephone services in India and when you have numerous choices then all all our choices will try to delight us in every possible way.
When there are lot of choices, then the winning products will be those products which are trying to delight customer in each and every possible interaction with a customer.
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Sometimes when I sit in discussions with people who have championed marketing in other industries I have found that it is difficult to make them understand the marketing strategy and tactics in new media. In most cases the marketing goal will be accurate, appropriate strategy will be defined but the execution and the tactics used goes horribly wrong since so many of them does not understand that new media is about interactive individualised marketing like this to create customer engagement and not about mass marketing that existed in the times of lalitaji and Vicco Vajdradanti.Marketing has become two-way, where you communicate something and then listen to customers and marketers these days interact with, and not interrupt, their customers.I found this diagramme at alterian website and I can’t help but agree with most of the differences between the old and new marketerer.
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#1: Be Narrow
#2: Be Different
#3: Be Casual
#4: Be Picky
#5: Be User-Centric
#6: Be Self-Centered – Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch.
#7: Be Greedy
#8: Be Tiny
#9: Be Agile
#10: Be Balanced
#11 (bonus!): Be Wary
For details, click here
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I started using Justdial three years back in Mumbai and one thing that has impressed me about them in all my interactions was the way in which they have personalised the services both in Mumbai and Bangalore.
The first time you call them they login all your details and each time I have called them I was impressed with few things
1.The person at the other end picks up the call maximum on the second ring. I just call them once in a while to check whether they go till the third ring, but it has never happened( I am impressed)
2.He/ She greets me (Good Afternoon, Good Morning, Good Evening) and says my name. Good Afternoon, Mr: Lijo ( I smile and nod(only if it is a she before my wedding) when someone greets me by name)
3.He/ She asks me what I want and helps me in finding the same. (I have asked things from movie timings in Inox to Malayalam Mass timings in an Indiranagar, Bangalore church)
5.They send an SMS at the end of the call and in some cases connects me to the service owner
Justdial is like an offline Google and no wonder they have been quite successful.
Compare this with Subway. The company in which I works give free lunches but I am a big fan of Subwaying my lunch. Each time I call them, the same girl picks up but never greets me by name and I have to recite to her my address and contact number each time. I am tired of doing it every time but since I love subway sandwiches I don’t mind that much but sometimes I just don’t call subway due to the frustration of doing it again and again.
Compare this with Citibank/ ICICI Bank or any of the six banks I deal with. Each time I call them for my bank account or credit card related issues, I have to hear the music and advertisement on why citibank/icici bank is great. ( Not a good Point to interact with a customer who does not have patience) and I go to some stupid IVR menu which is not personalised even after they have all possible information points about me. The only personalised service ever I get from banks with my name in it is a Birthday mail once in a year and the credit card and account statements.
In Internet, may be the scope for personalising the product is maximum. How often we get invitation mails from addresses like noreply@xyz.com or Hi, emails even after collecting all the information points. Some of the sites and web services just goes on collecting information points one after the another with out any road map on how it will be used(ever).
Personalisation is one of the cornerstone features of any successful consumer Internet product, and the focus of a product manager should be in creating a simple but a personalised experience for users. It not only impressed and wows the users but also helps us in creating a number of visitor segments, and tailor the information that is presented for each segment.
Image Courtsey:http://www.bwired.com.au/web_images/modules/personalise.jpg
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