I knew it was not going to be a good start to the day when I got to the car and the tyre was flat.
For 10 years I worked as a a Professional Services Consultant, driving many thousands of miles a year. The flat tyre saw me lose 45 minutes and I found myself close to site in the middle of rush hour.
These were the days before Google Maps and Sat Nav was too expensive, so my trust AA Road Atlas and paper print outs of Microsoft Autoroute was the order of the day.
Could I find the building? No. I drove round and round, but the address was nowhere to be found. I rang the customer and he gave some vague directions which didn’t help. Further calls only frustrated him further with his final call ending with “I am not from here”, then he hung up.
I eventually found the building, down some back alley and was met by an angry customer because I was late!!
As product managers it can be frustrating to hear that users struggle to find their way around our products. We can look at the analytics and shout at live sessions seeing them repeatedly clicking on areas that don’t have a CTA, or keep ignoring the seemingly obvious actions to proceed.
But that is not an excuse to be angry with them. It takes time, patience and understanding to appreciate what they are doing and why, and where their struggles are.
I recently used a product that I am no longer involved with. What seemed a perfectly good experience to me as a Product Owner was now clunky, unintuitive and full of too many steps.
Removing emotion is a critical part of product management and taking the time to truly understand the user is vital to help improve the product.
