Burden of new

Julie Zhuo is a product manager on Facebook, developing News Feed and mobile apps. An article on how not to turn a product into a graveyard of ideas.

There is something joyful and exciting in everything new. Do a search for images on Google , and you will understand what I mean. The word “new” is spelled completely in capital letters (as if shouted), often placed in a bright star-shaped figure and reinforced by exclamation marks. There is nothing more exciting. "New" shouts: "Look at me, I shine and beckoning! Pay attention to the future, full of opportunities that I open! Perhaps I will change your life! At a minimum, I will breathe new life into your outdated wardrobe / home / life / product. ”

“New” is a necessary medicine, a kind of hidden hope. We think that the new is always better, so we count the days until the next grand launch, dwell on the newly added feature or discuss the latest trend. Every day I watch and hear how new ideas fly in offices, conference rooms and cafes like tennis balls. It would be great if we added ... I would very much like our product to have this new feature ... I really think that you can earn stopitsot millions if you put together a team and make ...
')
Don't get me wrong, I love the flash of new ideas. I like the creative energy and the shock mood of the good hackathons, during which hundreds of new desires come true. I love the fact that I work in technology, where a good idea is like a child's toy - a small capsule that you put in a bath, watching a giant dinosaur sponge grow out of it. Awareness of its importance is based on the successful formation and implementation of new transformative ideas. This is how companies are born and go bankrupt. This is the foundation of our entire industry. Agree, it would be foolish not to try to implement the maximum possible number of good ideas in your product.

But still. Start thinking too often, and you will ruin everything. That is how good simple products get the opposite qualities back. Like the Katamari Ball , which attracts various objects to itself, your product acquires more and more functions, and one day the user will open your application and see 4 different toolbars and 50 icons cluttering up the user interface. Or wants to look at the list of your services and will have to read 32 points on 7 pages. Or click to open the menu and get 20 different options. Your application will be one of those that make my mom call me and ask how to use it (" Honey, what does 'release and trust sender' mean ?").

Maybe that's why iA Writer seems like a breath of fresh air in comparison with ponderous Word and has become “Mac app of the year”, collecting almost perfect reviews and quickly gaining popularity among my writing friends. A complete understanding of the product by the user is its advantage - ease of use is opposed to the need to understand the many incomprehensible functions.

Introducing any new feature into a product is a heavy load. I want to pay special attention to this. Perhaps the new feature is simple to implement. It may take only a few days and will require only a few people. Maybe everything can be ready by next week. Perhaps the additional cognitive load on the user is low: just another icon or an additional menu item. But as soon as a new feature becomes available, it begins to be a real tool that real people use.

You may continue to develop and improve it. Even if not (maybe you planned to just start it and move on), the fact that this function exists will inevitably create additional work for you. You will receive requests and error messages from users. You will spend time on idle meditations on how to improve it. It will probably pop up in the context of the next redesign or code update.

Of course, if the function is not as successful as you hoped for, you can think about removing it. However, it is very difficult to remove even a tiny fraction of what your users like and use. In order to decide to remove something and then implement it, a considerable amount of time and energy is required. This is not something that is impossible, but much more difficult than implementation. Just see how actively oppose the elimination of Google Reader. Just think how many times the question “Where did this strange function come from?” We get the answer “From previous versions”.

So what to do? It is clear that it would be correct not to reject any innovations in the future and not to implement all half-baked ideas. Innovations are needed! But, planning to add new features to the product, you need to think about the following two important aspects.

1. The definition of the criterion of "green light" and its use for testing innovations among a small audience. Do you have a new idea that you think will make your users happier and more productive? Will increase the number of users? Increase company revenue? Great, implement and test it. Run a small test or beta version for a very small percentage of your audience and determine a criterion that indicates the expediency / time to fully launch. This could be receiving really positive feedback, an increase in growth of X% +, an increase in income of Y% +.

Defining these criteria at the earliest possible stage (ideally before launch) will allow you to be more objective at a critical moment. It is difficult to decide not to launch fully what you have worked hard for. However, testing by rational criterion is the only way to make sure that your idea is exactly what you imagined before you decide on the costs of its implementation.

On Facebook, this is a fairly standard practice. We test many different interesting ideas that appear as a result of hackathons and team brainstorming, such as the ability to save posts for the future , which might be useful to those in a hurry and see the post they want to answer, or the article they want to read later. We were going to start this function only if enough users take advantage of it and find it useful. If this is not the case, then it should not take place as another reference action in all publications. With the help of testing, we found out that in fact this function was used only by a small group of users, so we decided not to implement it.

2. Definition of the project completion criteria. In some cases, it may be impractical and even impossible to test an idea on a small group. Then you need to ask yourself under what circumstances it would be reasonable to remove a function or product after implementation. It is also easier to be objective in earlier terms.

Nobody wants to think about failure, but if there is something to be sure of, it is that some ideas will fail. What we are talking about here is not that investing in the future is a waste of time, because the lessons that you learn from failures are often crucial in the future on the road to success. At the same time, staying unsuccessful functions stagnant is much more dangerous than getting rid of them immediately.

Speak out loud clearly: “We are launching the X function, because we believe that it will do [insert the necessary information here]. We will invest in its greatest possible improvement in N months. If after this, less than Y% of people use the function X daily, we will remove it. ” This will mark your vision of success and ensure that the X function will not just “gather dust in the corner” and distract the attention of the company and users.

At Facebook, we applied this approach to the function of virtual gifts, launched in 2007. After three years, the virtual gift business did not bring the expected results, and in order to better concentrate on other things, we closed the virtual gift store , and the team switched to other projects. (Two years later, this experience allowed us to again present the opportunity to give gifts , but now real instead of virtual!)

There is nothing wrong with the enthusiasm that you have about innovations. Dream globally, as globally as possible, if possible. Implement and implement good ideas: ideas that have potential, ideas that keep you awake at night, because you want to get out of bed soon to realize them.

Do not forget to clean up after you. Do not be a roommate who never takes out the trash. If the new idea did not work properly, stop carrying the burden. Most importantly, don't let bit by bit and centimeter by centimeter your product become unnecessarily complex and turn into a monster that you will no longer recognize and that scares people like my mother.

The worst death is death due to thousands of small punctures.

The translation was made as part of the Tolstoy Summer Camp start-up summer school.