How to build a product users love

Launching a product that users love is hard, really hard. Too many times friends have come up to me saying they have an awesome idea for an app with the expectations they can launch it with millions of users by next month. Well having led product teams at OkHi and Google for 6+ years and built products that users have loved, never used and didn’t even launch, I know first hand how difficult launching a product that users love really is.

This is actually harder than it sounds, because often you have competing priorities from the business ie this user wants X, that customer wants Y, to increase revenue we need to do Z. Ultimately, if you always do what’s right for your user, even if it might not benefit your business metrics in the short term, then you will build a product that users love.

Practically there’s a few ways to help you make the right decision

Inspired by the Lean Startup, at OkHi we ensure every product release goes through the flow of building the product, measuring its impact and then learning from it. It’s a basic principle but super important to ensure you’re constantly improving on your product, and the faster you can go through the cycle the better.

At OkHi every product release goes through this cycle:

To help ensure we run through this process for every product release, we have a kanban board that we quickly review every day during our product team standup meeting.

Every startup is different, with people of different skillsets building different types of products. This means that there’s no single right process to successfully launch a product, so at OkHi we do 2 things to ensure we get this right for our products and team.

By — Timbo Drayson
CEO at OkHi

Related posts:

What comes to your mind when you think of office culture? Definitely the values, behavior and rules in any company. Values are the most vital in creating the culture of a company. This includes: Your…

Many people all over the world actively practise the forms of exercise and meditation known as Pilates and Yoga. Both disciplines frequently involve holding different positions for extended periods…

Business is cutthroat and dog it dog, but I don’t understand why, even as someone who’s been in business for themselves in multiple ways. Being selfish makes everything harder for everyone, including…