Why your beautiful product can fail

Here is a funny fact about Craigslist. It seems that it was designed in 1995, because it was mainly so. Purple links, text wall, zero visual hierarchy. Designing students use it as an example of what to not do. And yet he processes tens of millions of transactions every month, while dozens of beautifully designed competitors who died attempting to dispent him.

This should disturb you. They have me. As product managers, we should always know higher. We are talking about user impressions, design considering and all this jazz. But then Craigslist sits there, ugly as sin, earning money on fists.

The uncomfortable truth is that entrepreneurs and product teams fall in love with the flawed things. We observe perfect pixels, while users just wish to do things. We debate for typography, while competitors with Sans comics eat our lunch. It is not only about aesthetics – it is essentially a misunderstanding, which makes the products success.

Take Google’s fundamental page around 1999. Rare. Brutal. Only the logo and search field. Meanwhile, Yahoo built this glorious portal with messages, weather and quotes. Yahoo had a higher project in keeping with each conventional measure. More functions. Better visual hierarchy. Real graphics. Google looked like a student project. Guess who won.

Design theater

This psychology is fascinating. Significant 34.6% of holiday makers All over the world, they indicate that they definitely favor information structures that are easy and easy to grasp. However, someway, when we build products, we discover that users want something more sophisticated. More elegant. More beautiful.

This is what I call a “design theater” – when the form becomes the art of performance, not a deliberate function. You see it in every single place. Startups spend months, improving their animations on board, while their basic product barely works. Software firms for enterprises employing expensive design agencies to create “delightful experiences” for users who simply have to export the spreadsheet.

Reddit is one other great example. Reddit has 234 million unique users8.19 billion monthly views and 25 million votes a day – all this has not been updated since 2005. The site works because it provides exactly what users want: content, conversation and community. Not gradients. Not micro-interactions. Only things that matter.

Given preferences vs. actual behavior

But here it gets interesting. Users say they need a beautiful project. Really yes. In surveys and focus groups they’ll let you know that they like a prettier option every time. Then they return home and use an ugly, which actually works.

This disconnection between specific preferences and actual behavior is crucial for the product’s understanding of the product by using data and emerging techniques, equivalent to conversation interfaces to adapt the interaction and predicting the needs of users. The data tell a different story than focus groups. Always trust data.

How do you know when to prioritize the form in comparison with the function? Here’s my frames.

First understand the work that your product does. Clayton christensen’s “Work to be done“The theory is perfect here. Nobody employs Craigslist to have a beautiful experience of browsing. They employ it for sale of sofas or finding an apartment. Ugliness actually helps-it signs that this is a senseless market in which real people perform real transactions.

Secondly, find your acceptable ugliness threshold. Yes, this is a real thing. Each product category has basic aesthetic requirements. Dating applications must look higher than tax software. But even in categories there is surprising flexibility. Hacker News looks terrible and blooms. Designer News looks beautiful and fights. The same audience, the same goal, different results.

Third, test your assumptions absolutely. Not with surveys. Not with interviews. With actual behavior. Run the ugly version and a nice version. See which converts higher. You could also be surprised. I saw the way it plays several dozen times – the “worse” project wins because it charges faster, works higher on mobile devices or simply leaves the user’s way.

The challenge for product managers is to show to considering about the first project without becoming a villain. You don’t need to be a one who killed joy. But you can not let the team spend six months polishing something that must be sent in two weeks.

This is what works

Set every little thing in terms of user results. Instead of debating whether the button should have 4 pixels or six pixels from the edge, ask what user problem you solve. Instead of arguing about color schemes, talk about cognitive load. Talk about effectiveness, not aesthetics.

Also rejoice ugly victories. When Reddit’s valuation reaches one other billion, mention it. When Craigslist survives one other competitor, move him. Build a culture that values ​​results over improvement.

This does not mean that it’s best to intentionally create ugly products. A pleasant design can actually make good products great, but it only matters when the product is actually useful, useful and reliable. It’s about proper priorities sequencing. Function first. Then forms. Always in this order.

The most successful products find a sweet place – just a project is enough to not actively repel users, but not so much that it bothers at work. They understand that sometimes ugly is exactly what users need.

Your beautiful product may fail because you solve a bad problem. You do it nice when it’s best to make it work. This is a trap. And now you know learn how to avoid it.