Zhang Xiaolong's speech: Product Manager's methodology and values

Methodology of mobile Internet products

Mobile phones, as a contact tool, naturally determine that the main target audience of the mobile Internet is the group rather than the individual. The main task of the mobile Internet product manager is to serve the population, and the main task is to study the behavior patterns of human communities. Products are used to provide services for the group, and behavior patterns changes after the group gets involved must be predicted.

Early humans were village crowd models, and the product manager was a blacksmith in the village. He knew every villager and every villager knew him. Today, the product manager is completely behind the scenes. He cannot know every user or even the user does not know the existence of this person.

Therefore, the product manager has various options in methodology: He can provide some old services based on the acquaintance community, so as to enhance the emotion of the acquaintance community for the product purpose; he can also provide some new basic services based on large numbers of people, so that people can understand each other, coordinate their work, and organize orderly activities from self-profit-based unordered activities; or, he can also provide some intermediate type of products to help people smooth through the two demographic models and reduce the pain points caused by changes.

　　However, product managers should focus on serving the future. Before people get in touch with new technologies and new knowledge, and turn this cognition into products, using products to provide various groups in modern human society.Do everything possible to reduce learning costs and use human instinct to design products so that people can smoothly "slide" into new product use scenarios.

　　Literacy of mobile Internet product managers

　　1. Be keenly aware of the changing trend.

Mobile Internet products will enter the age of relative abundance from the age of relative scarcity. products that users can choose will gradually grow over time, and products will eventually become a fashion industry. If product managers indulge in various new things and pursue novelty, they may miss the real trend of the times and fail to grasp the real needs of the people.

　　2. Give up rational thinking.

The biggest characteristic of the mobile Internet is the extremely fast change. The traditional three-year plan for analyzing users, researching the market, and developing products is outdated in the new era. The human community itself is also evolving. product managers should rely more on intuition and sensibility, rather than charts and analysis, to grasp user needs. Product managers should always be young people of literature and art, but irrational young people.

　　3. Massive practices.

Although the mobile Internet is booming, no one can claim to be an expert in the field. However, this does not mean that there is a possibility of dropping days to days. The 10 thousand-hour law proposed in "heterogeneous" also applies to product managers. They need more than a thousand product practices to understand product design and have the ability to solve problems.

　　4. Accumulation of expertise rather than expertise.

Art, music, reading, photography, tourism, and other cultural activities do not seem to be directly converted to productivity, but qualified product managers need extensive knowledge reserves to understand and understand a large number of people, understanding the aesthetics of the Times makes your thoughts conform to the normal user's Thinking Paradigm. On this basis, the products designed will not be isolated from the crowd.

　　5. responsible attitude.

With appropriate methodologies and literacy, successful product managers should also be responsible for themselves and products. Only in this way can product managers be paranoid enough, clearly understand what you want to do, resist the pressure from superiors and performance appraisal, and implement product planning without deformation or compromise according to your own will.

　　Principles of mobile Internet product design

1. do not consider the web form. All considerations are based on the app.

2. Product priority:

(1) the product must be more interesting than the function. Cool is required for communication and reputation.

(2) functions are higher than interactions. Clear functions meet clear needs, and users do not care about cool interaction effects.

(3) interaction is higher than UI. Convenient and fast interaction is designed first. UI is implemented based on specific functions, rather than a high-quality UI solution.

3. Focus: an app only does one thing. A large and comprehensive app means full mediocrity.

4. Always one-dimensional: to allow users to solve specific problems in one dimension, Twitter's timeline is a good example. A slide menu like Facebook and path is a disaster, because it gives the product two dimensions and makes it more difficult for users to understand.

5. Keep the trunk clear and branches moderate. The product's main functional architecture is the product's skeleton. It should be as simple and clear as possible, and cannot be changed easily, so that users are at a loss. Multiple secondary functions are supported, so you cannot hide them as much as possible instead of placing them on a level-1 page.

6. Do not select a user. There are multiple entries in the same page. The same function has multiple implementation methods. The same interface has multiple display methods. This is a pain rather than enjoyment for users, because they only feel confused and afraid. Users prefer to adopt a long and fixed operation path for repeated operations, and do not want to use a variable shortcut.

7. Hiding Technology will always show simple, user-friendly and intuitive interfaces. Development cannot display functions for the sake of high technology, and products cannot build functions to show off.

8. Reject personalization. In addition to the personalized design that relies on the design features of the app and skin replacement, there is no value in addition to the product manager's illusion of doing a lot of work and self-satisfaction. It can only prove that product managers are not confident in their products, because confident product managers can satisfy users by default. To expand, a good product should meet global user needs without special customization for the region.

9. To a certain extent, the product is intended to satisfy the greed and ignorance of human nature. This is a pain point for users. After the product manager can grasp it, the product manager should surpass it and use the product to help people free themselves.

10. I want to know what I want to do, not cater to my superiors, or please users.

11. category! CATEGORY! CATEGORY! This is the only thing that the product manager should do for users after determining the product's main functional architecture. Classification does not help reduce the difficulty of using products, but helps users understand products and the world around them.

12. Always design around functions and never do it over.

13. The basic functions of a product are not recognized by users, and addition is useless.

14. I 'd rather not do it before I can't figure out a function.

15. Do not allow users to "manage" anything in the product.

　　Design Concept of "natural flow"

Good products should hide the personal intentions of product managers. Users can use them smoothly with their intuition and experience to achieve a "natural" realm. Bad products provide product manuals, and their severity is positively correlated with the number of tip and text descriptions. To this end, a good product manager can communicate with users on an equal footing, without the need to be charming or maliciously sell cute products.

A natural stream product can communicate with users. Provides unique and clear feedback on any user action, and allows the user to accept it without any deviation. It does not have the cold and stiff man-made things, but has a warm human nature. For example, if you click the comment button in the circle of friends in iOS, a pop-up window of "like" and "comment" will pop up. This pop-up window quickly slides to the left, and then bounce a small distance to the right as quickly as it encounters something before it finally stops. Users may not be aware of this tiny pause, but in the subconscious, they will feel that this pop-up window is not a complete man-made thing. Based on life experience, nothing in the world can change from motion to absolute silence.

Never let the user feel the greatness and intelligence of the product manager when using the product. The product manager should be completely invisible to the product. Users should be able to follow the design intent without thinking about it and get the established positive feedback. This should happen naturally. The user feels that the product should be used in this way, as long as the product has not appeared. Good products do not emphasize that they exist in the world. They only strive to become part of the world without any trace.

If you are a product of natural flow, it will inevitably tend to be simple and anti-logic in aesthetics. The inevitable choice for product managers is to perform subtraction. Among the many functions, choose one that best solves the actual problem and choose the most intuitive one among the many features, as a result, the product is elegant and concise, making it unforgettable. Simple and extremely natural, making imitation impossible because no one can create a better experience.