Do the product, you will be the first user

Jared Erondu is a designer, and recently, he and his team are doing an IPAD mail client called Evomail, which tells about its experience.

For the past few months we've been busy Evomail, Evomail is an IPAD mail client that's about to be released. This time I design the entire interface, also has certain sentiment

1: I am the number one user of my products

When we started doing evomail, we found countless IOS mail clients going out of the way. We all solve (mail) problems in different ways. Every time I look at the new products that are introduced on the tech blog, or what I see in the Dribbble, I open evomail and stay for a long, ask myself: Is this OK?

Then I went to Photoshop and played with things that were not necessary to touch. Move different controls, change font formatting, tune gradient parameters, and more. My approach is very annoying (the team has 1 designers, two development).

But then I changed my mind. One day at noon, I ate something and looked out of the window, thinking that I might have received some mail, so I turned on the Mac and picked up the iPad on the other hand, and then started replying to the email with Evomail. I switch between the different accounts, to the mailing label, archive, delete, forwarding and so on, out of the app. The whole experience was good, but there was some discomfort on the interface. This time I open Photoshop again is a practical goal, I want to solve my problem, modify the product and then try this application again.

This time I realized that I was the first Evomail real user. In fact, the first real user of each product will be its creator. It's also a success when you're comfortable with your own product.

Focus on a small number of users, not all

As creative people, we often want to help everyone solve the problem, but this is unrealistic. Our products are only useful for "a small number of people", while other "a large majority" is good, but not useful to everyone. So the best thing is for us to solve our own problems and start with our own needs. At the very least, we can help people like us solve problems.

If you're doing your own product, find the real target audience, just a handful of people, to solve the problem for them. But first of all, you have to use the product and then ask yourself: do I feel good? If the answer is no, then you have something to do.