ruven

Product Philosophy

How I like to build product.

My product philosophies are largely based on three user assumptions:

  • Assume the user has little to no memory.
  • Assume the user has very poor vision.
  • Assume the user cannot read.

I'm not saying to assume these things because your users will be these things. It's because in a world where attention and time are limited, the less you make the user do, the better. This is very much in the vein of Don't Make Me Think, a classic book on webpage design.

  1. 01

    On any page, there should almost always be a singular primary action that is clearly indicated.

    • A clearly indicated primary action should be visually distinct. Your eye should be drawn to the area of the page that is the primary action.
    • Use the "squint test". If you squint your eyes, where is your eye drawn to? Make sure it's drawn to a specific place.
    • There can be secondary actions, but secondary actions should not have equal visual weight.
    • There should never be zero primary actions or indicators. We always want to draw the user to take a specific point on the page. It should be clear what to do next.
  2. 02

    Each flow should be linear and progressive.

    • In a flow, users should always progress forward. Forward can be top to bottom, or left to right and then top to bottom. Users should not go in reverse in a flow unless they want to backtrack.
    • If there are multiple paths, they should still be going in the same direction on the page.
  3. 03

    Assume the user has no memory.

    • The user needs to be able to completely forget what they were doing and come back to your product and figure it out. The user could be distracted, or take a break from what they're doing.
    • There are a lot of ways to do this: breadcrumbs, copy, headers, instructions, etc.
  4. 04

    Rely on copy as little as possible for product flow.

    • As much as you can, rely on visuals to give the user information. Visuals are much easier and quicker to to mentally process.
    • This can be diagrams, icons, colors, separators, etc.
    • Obviously, copy is necessary sometimes. But generally, if the user has to read a large block of text to understand what they should be doing, something can be improved.
  5. 05

    🚧 More to come! 🚧