Fundamentals from Kunal Shah, Founder Cred & Brian Norgard, CPO Tinder
Yesterday evening, I was a part of an insanely inspiring product learning hour with Kunal Shah and Brian Norgard. I have to say, it was one of the most intense, wisdom-loaded sessions I have ever attended — live or online.
The quality of questions so deep, their answers so complete, and the analogies so simple and sublime.
So going with the flow of intensity of the session, I will get down to point and share what I learned (it was actually a lot more, penning the most vital ones)
1. Build Toys Like Products!
Who doesn’t like toys? Kids love them!
The apps we build need to be toy-like experiences. As kids, we used to play with toys, not work with them.
Toys make noise, they are a funny thing, you can play with them in a thousand different ways and they make you smile.
Even as adults, we crave toy like experiences. Adults have a new name for it — entertainment. Professionals call it gamification. But it’s all the same, enjoyment and fun.
That a user can just get on and play. Not work, not fill a form. But start playing with it.
For that, we’d need to build variable wins, even losses in the games. Both have a motivation of their own.
2. Go For The Wrist Twist!!
Try to remember the last time a friend twisted their wrist toward you to show something new or cool on their phone to you! That’s a wrist twist experience.
We have to look to create in-app moments that make a user twist her wrist to show a friend and go ‘Look, I did This Awesome Thing on this App — so Cool!’.
This can be built by giving careful thought to the product flows and building multiple magic moments that make a user go ‘Aha’, think about sharing it with someone next to them, or someone they remember because of it and they just show it to a friend, family, fan or foe.
3. Keep it simple. And make it simpler!!!
Users want to go in and enjoy it. Have a fun time, get a chuckle or two out of them, if not for real at least in their minds.
For that, Simplicity rides Supreme. It has to be so intuitive, so natural that it feels like an extension of their own lives.
If we are true students of simplicity, our job is never done.
4. Build to Delight the Customer!!!!
There are a thousand different ways to play a game, to play with a toy or use an app. Our product at its core should be so simple that it scales across thousands of use cases of thousands of different people with different minds and different experiences through life.
In design, same as with life, nothing is right or wrong. Everything is just an opinion. So if everything is an opinion, let’s try to bias ours towards simplicity, and true customer benefit.
Utter simplicity and coupled with a clear benefit that the product will provide for the customer are the DNAs of a great product. Growth hacks built over only such products will scale exponentially.
Our aim must be to delight. Delight like crazy for the first time, and then keep exciting even more. For that, we have to start with the customer. And take a long adventurous journey stepping into their shoes.
We have to build a visual language that’s so simple that they turn off their brain and leave themselves with our creations to enjoy themselves.
So go for it! Make an amazingly simple toy that brings about a smile that makes a million wrists twist. And see it make a big difference.
One more thing…
Brian’s final suggestion to all product builders, designers, and creators was to go watch videos of Steve Jobs’ design disciples like Jony Ive and Tony Fadell discussing great design & great product experiences.
