Simplify to Win: Building Powerful Products Through Simplicity

The Power of Simplicity in Product Development

In the world of product development, simplicity isn't just a strategy—it's a superpower. With over 20 years of experience building products at scale, I've learned that simplicity is the key to creating better products and focusing on what's truly important. This approach has not only helped me in my professional life but has also provided valuable lessons for personal growth.

Why Obsess Over Simplicity?

While some might argue that simplicity is just an excuse for laziness, the truth is far more profound. Building simple products is often easier for teams to develop, but more importantly, it's significantly easier for customers to use. This ease of use is what truly excites product developers.

Think of simplicity like the physical laws of pressure. When you have a great idea and hide it within excessive information, your idea gets diffused. You have to push hard to get your point across, much like mashing potatoes—messy and potentially overwhelming for your audience. However, when you refine that same idea down to just a few words, you create something akin to a knife—all the force and impact of the idea cut through effortlessly.

The Knife Analogy

A knife is one of the most successful products ever created, found in every home and having existed for 2.5 million years. Its success lies in its simplicity—everything unnecessary has been removed. This is the essence of sharpening a knife, and it's a perfect analogy for product development.

Simplicity, like a well-crafted knife, makes it easier to build something meaningful for others, whether that's a meal, a sculpture, or a product. When you have a good, simple product, it becomes effortless to bring your ideas to life.

Lessons in Building Simple Products

Let's explore the top lessons learned about what to build (product strategy), how to build (product design), and how to tell the story (communications). These insights come from working on WhatsApp, one of the world's largest messaging apps.

What to Build: Focus on the Indispensable

When joining a new project, it's tempting to have a roadmap filled with exciting features and monetization strategies. However, until you know whether your product or feature works, you don't need all of that. In fact, too many features can muddy the product, making it harder for users to understand its purpose.

At WhatsApp, the focus was on making the product indispensable rather than shipping everything initially planned. The goal was to give anyone in the world the feeling of being face-to-face with their friends and family, even when separated by geography or circumstance.

For global users, especially those in emerging markets with low-end devices, the primary concern was whether calls and messages would go through for free, every time. This meant dedicating the entire roadmap to ensuring this core functionality, even if it meant slowing down other grand ideas.

The key question to ask is: What's the one thing that makes your product indispensable? Not flashy, not innovative, not fun—but indispensable. Does your product need to cut through bone or bread? Get that 100% right, then build on more.

How to Build: Make It Familiar

When it comes to product design, familiarity is key. No one needs to ask how to use a knife—it's immediately familiar. The same principle should apply to your product.

For global users, the only thing we know for certain is that they have a phone. Therefore, making the product feel familiar means matching what users already know from their phone experience. This involves borrowing patterns they're accustomed to and building consistent patterns throughout the app.

For instance, if Android puts a floating action button in the bottom right, that's where WhatsApp would put its button too. Simple, consistent patterns help customers build an intuition for how to use the product without needing to learn new interactions.

While this approach can be limiting—preventing the use of emerging interaction patterns or cool gestures—it prioritizes accessibility and ease of use. The question to always ask is: Where is the user naturally going to put their thumb? That's where the button should go.

How to Tell the Story: Simplify the Narrative

When it comes to communicating about your product, simplifying the story is crucial. The standard narrative arc that most stories follow has been ingrained in us for generations. By hooking into this familiar arc, the story you tell about your products becomes more resonant and powerful.

While it's tempting to start with a grand new problem and a never-before-seen technology to solve it, the reality is that technologies change, but human needs remain relatively stable. These include needs for connection, safety, and status. By plugging into these underlying needs, your product automatically makes more sense to users.

The key takeaway is that you don't need to add something brand new. Just like you can't sharpen a knife by adding more to it, the trick is to remove unnecessary elements and understand the story your customers are already telling. Reflect this story back to them and build your product around it.

For WhatsApp, this meant focusing on the idea of mirroring physical spaces and face-to-face communication. This central metaphor guided product development, including features like disappearing messages, which were designed to work similarly to how people handle physical mail—automatically deleting most messages except those intentionally marked to keep.

Understanding Your Customer

To effectively simplify your product, you need to understand your customer deeply. This can be challenging, especially for product managers who often feel pressure to show immediate ROI. However, customer empathy, while not high ROI in the short term, is the highest ROI in the long term. It gives you an intuition about what to build now and what to build next.

Here are some tactics for building customer understanding:

1. Schedule regular time for customer-related activities.
2. Use the product yourself.
3. Read and watch reviews.
4. Analyze support tickets.
5. Watch user recordings.
6. Visit customers in person when possible.

The goal is to find customers who say your product changed their life. When you hear this, you know your "knife" is sharp—you know what to build, and you can advocate for the right product even if it feels risky.

The Impact of Simplicity

The focus on simplicity has led to significant success for many companies:

• WhatsApp grew to 2 billion users globally, with 100 billion messages and 1 billion calls per day.
• PayPal won by simplifying payments to just an email address.
• Nest simplified the programmable thermostat into a turnable dial.
• Square brought simplicity to point of sale systems.
• Spotify and Instagram saw massive growth after simplifying their products.

At Fair, a marketplace for local independent retailers, applying these lessons of simplicity has led to doubled growth rates at a time when consumer spending is down and most global marketplaces have declining growth.

Recap of Key Lessons

1. What to build: Focus on what makes your product indispensable.
2. How to build: Make your product familiar to users so they can use it immediately.
3. The story: Discover and reflect the story your customers are already telling.
4. When unsure: Let the customer be your guide.

Applying Simplicity Beyond Products

The principles of simplicity can extend beyond product development to personal life and career. In an industry that often pressures people to have everything figured out, remembering that doing less can make your actions more powerful is invaluable.

Asking questions like "What's really indispensable to me right now?" can help focus on what's truly important, whether it's a specific career mission or spending more time with family.

Conclusion

Simplicity is a powerful tool in product development, career growth, and personal life. By focusing on what's truly indispensable, making things familiar, and reflecting the stories your customers (or you) are already telling, you can cut through the noise and create impactful products and experiences. These principles of simplicity provide a guide to enjoying the process of improving your craft and making an impact, whether in your product, career, or life.

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oItg64eaRlc