I have been thinking about a lot of great products that have now become an integral part of our life aka Google, iPods, iPads, SAP ERP, Zappos, Facebook, Twitter, Intuit, Amazon, Mitticool, etc..
When I think about what is common across these products and their growth to super-stardom and i found these common traits:
- Great products are highly focused in solving a particular need of a particular customer. No product ever succeeds if it tries to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.
- Great products are very simple to learn & use. Great user experience can make the difference between greatness and extinction.
- Great products are born out of conviction and never out of consensus. Conviction can create great products or crappy products. Consensus can only create average products.
- Great products continuously improve to solve the needs better. Continuous, concentrated improvements make good products great.
- Great products are built by small teams. I have never seen any great product coming out of a large team. The larger the team, the greater the chance that the product will turn out to be average or less than average.
Guy Kawasaki also talks about DICEE (Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant and Emotive as the characteristics of any great product. These are traits that also need to be kept in mind while designing any new products.
