Great but Painful

If you want to build a product that people will use, find something that people already do and make it less painful. People are notoriously bad at knowing what they want. If you ask someone what they want then they will typically tell you what they think a socially virtuous person is expected to want. They will tell you that they want to eat healthier, understand people with different political opinions, know whether news stories are reliable, make more friends, be a better parent, and serve their community. Silicon Valley is littered with the graves of products that tried to solve problems users said they wanted to solve. These products typically got enthusiastic responses when shown to users, and the developers were surprised to see them get little usage after they were launched. In practice, the biggest sign that a user will use a product is that they already do the thing the product lets them do, and gain a clear benefit from doing so, but the current way they do it is painful. Pretty much all successful consumer tech products succeeded by following this formula. Original Facebook: Harvard students are looking at directories of people’s faces and names. This is great because they can find out the name of someone they met (particularly a member of the opposite sex). This is painful because you have to walk to the physical facebook to do it. Facebook wall: Students are writing and reading messages or each other’s walls. This is great because they can see what others are up to and know when they might want to talk to someone. This is painful because you have to go to their dorm room and read the whiteboard outside their door. Facebook news feed: Facebook users are periodically browsing through the most recent wall updates shared by all their friends. This is great because it lets them know what all their friends are up to and identify opportunities to socialize. This is painful because they have to manually click on each of their friends. Original Twitter: Influen