Avoid These Common Pitfalls as a Product Owner
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Understanding Your Users
Are you attempting to be your own user? It's unfortunate that genuine users are frequently excluded from the design process, whether it's for a website or an application. As a stakeholder, you possess in-depth knowledge about your services, but your users do not share that same familiarity. While you may have a passion for your brand's identity, your users are coming in with a fresh perspective.
Common Misconceptions Among Product Owners
Product and business owners often fall into one or more of these three misleading beliefs:
I Can Step Into My User’s Shoes, So I Can Tell Their Preferences
This is perhaps the most prevalent misconception among business owners. It is important to recognize that, as owners, we carry inherent biases. Our assumptions regarding users' tastes and preferences are often flawed and incomplete. Predicting how users will navigate your website or application is a challenging task, if not impossible. Even larger companies focused on usability can make significant errors, as evidenced by the failures of Google Buzz and Google Wave.
I Want to Surprise My Users by Not Involving Them
Whether intended or not, this approach is a surefire way to astonish your users negatively. Past experiences have shown that this disconnect can be nearly impossible to rectify. Many startups maintain secrecy around their applications by excluding user involvement, mistakenly believing it will create excitement. However, truly great products are crafted through collaboration and feedback from actual users.
A designer friend shared her amusing experience with a client who insisted on a complex logout mechanism, believing it would engage users more. The client wanted the logout option to be less obvious, which could backfire and create a frustrating user experience.
My Users Are Not Experts; They Don’t Know What They Want
This is a classic excuse! While you might have insights into what features or content your product should include, that doesn’t clarify how users will interact with them. Ironically, because users are not "experts," it becomes even more crucial to involve them in the design process. We should prioritize understanding users' perspectives rather than imposing our own expertise.
A useful takeaway is to focus on how users perceive their interactions with your product.
Engaging with Users
In summary, whether through interviews, surveys, usability testing, contextual inquiries, or card sorting, any method that fosters connection with users is valuable. Let’s refrain from pretending we can fully embody the user experience; we are inherently limited in that capacity, regardless of our intelligence or emotional quotient.
Copyright © 2022 Vishal Mehta. All Rights Reserved.
Further Reading
Here are some additional articles on this topic and its counterarguments:
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Chapter 1: Mistakes to Avoid
Seven Mistakes You'll Definitely Make as a Product Owner
In this video, you’ll learn about the common pitfalls that product owners often encounter, including the importance of user involvement in the design process.
Chapter 2: Effective Scrum Practices
What Product Owners SHOULD NOT DO During The Daily Scrum
This video discusses the essential practices and common missteps for product owners during daily scrum meetings, including whether their presence is necessary.