My New Principles of Sustainable Product Line [Draft]
They are complementary (Cheese Maker sells cheese cutter)
Every product solves a problem, and users who have the same problem can overlap with the other issues. It would be ideal to have a product line that has similar userbases. It multiplies the reach.
Pieter Levels, for example, his followers love his all products, maybe because he thinks a lot about the same topics and resonates with him what he has a solution for.
Some products are used by the very people they make them. Like in Dieter Ram’s good design manifesto sixth item was design must be honest. When the guy representing the windows phone, uses iPhone, you think twice to get a windows phone.
They have similar design language and structure (Apple’s HIG)
Simplicity can also be aesthetic. It’s like designing a hotel room, and the design should be general to validate the core idea. That is essential in the early stages. It’s a bit hard to make design components that can be used in multiple projects. But since product development is a long journey and I’ll probably spend a lot of time building new products until I find a working one, creating that components library is better.
They show what it can do ASAP (Snapchat onboarding)
Understanding the purpose of the digital product is more challenging. That’s why it should show and tell what it’s capable of very fast. But not too much because otherwise user will be bored with details. Give some room for discovery but explain the basics.
They are self-explanatory (Yo Yo App)
It’s ideal not to use tricky language and design. Do we need an information popup for explaining what this text box does, or instead user clicks and discovers