Better Product Managers, and Product Management

For one thing, our household finally has one of the former (you may have noticed this blog was on hiatus for a few weeks).

What else?  Generally, users are afraid of doing something wrong that will damage them.  They tend to give obscure (if any) feedback on how well you’re handling them. It’s hard to tell whether a little quirkiness is normal or an issue you should be rushing to customer support for emergency help.

The other thing they have in common is that product managers tend to react with a “more information is better” attitude.  Here! Read this incredibly dense user manual / 500 pages of What to Expect The First Year!

Because, of course, nothing says reassurance like making an already distraught user think and filter and worry while they’re trying to cull out that piece or two of information they need to feel okay.

So the product/design geek in me was incredibly pleased by the worksheet that Kaiser sent us home with.

Here’s what it does right:

• PRIORITIZES.  Only TWO things that you need to worry about with a newborn.
• KEEPS IT SIMPLE: All you need is a pencil and the ability to draw circles.  (Now is NOT the time to make your users worry about forgot passwords or flaky internet access!)
• CONTACT US: The phone number if something goes wrong is prominently placed and easy to remember.

It’s easy to get caught up in the technology and think with an all-or-nothing approach – we need to provide interactive help / online and searchable / beautifully designed.  What would our users think if we included a plain, simple, black-and-white text-only sheet of paper?

They’d probably be grateful.

I’m happy to report that we’ve made it through Day 14 and circled all the circles.  It’s good to be back!

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