Do you have more guesses? if yes why not add a comment!

This is what Amit Ranjan wishes to say!

“So this is essentially a wrap up of key learnings we have had while building a (web) product for a world audience. You could think of them as design principles, work practices or simply some observations, an appreciation of which, could help make your product better aligned to market realities. I must add that all these learnings are experiental; they are based on the mistakes we have made and the lessons we have learnt while building our product.”

To sum up all that we have learnt….
1. The Proof of pudding is in the pie
One is known by the company one keeps. Good suppliers, better Quality of raw materials, and competent people are prerequisites to get you on the evaluation agenda

2.Design is a Differentiator
Good design is a big differentiator; it sets you apart from your competitors,A great designed product ensures that you define the industry standards and others play catch-up. The example of Apple is a case in point.

3define by the user interface

4Users are distracted
Every day, they are being exposed to newer applications/products, all of which promise them the moon. The product that you built (after all the hard toil) is just one drop in the deluge.
Latest research indicates that users are making like/dislike decisions for new websites in as little as 50 milliseconds! This has huge implications for how you plan to introduce your product to first time users.

5Users are empowered
Every user now thinks of himself/herself as an amateur journalist, a photographer or a movie shooter- thanks to user generated content. Users are in the driver’s seat

6 The requirements document is dead
Product development is increasingly being seen as an evolutionary and flexible process with actual user feedback influencing product design, as opposed to the rigidity of the requirements document model.

7 The only certainity in life is death, taxes & DESIGN CHANGES
This is a corollary of the above learning but it is more internally focused (within the development team). The team has to be made to understand the logic behind frequent design changes that the agile product development process entails. They need to appreciate the fact that design changes, being affected, are not an outcome of management indecisiveness; rather they are necessitated by changes needed to the product based on feedback from users

8 B.Y.O.M.
experience shows that for making a great product, you should have the freedom to restructure/redesign parts of your product at any stage (based on user feedback). This freedom/flexibility is usually not afforded by an externally financed model.

9 K.I.S.S.
Keeping it short and simple is possibly the most abused product mantra. In a technologically overloaded environment, your product should be great at doing something, rather than be good at doing everything. Every new product feature adds complexity, costs and confuses the users, so one has to be very stingy in adding any new features to your product. The 37Signals philosophy of ‘building less’ explains this best.

10 Prevention >>> Cure
Early stage user testing works live preventive medication. While this has always been understood, it assumes special significance in an agile development model. Letting users interact with early product prototypes not only throws up bugs, it also gives fundamental insights into product design inadequacies that would otherwise surface only when the product has been launched.

11Welcome the Devil’s Advocate
the importance of having people from diverse backgrounds participate in product design decisions. Such people tend to act like the devil’s advocate, asking the right questions and being a safety net against the tendency of software engineers to ‘geek out’ with the product development. We at Uzanto, have a mix of people from different backgrounds (i.e. cognitive psychology, software engineering, marketing & market research)

12Execution is all that mattersFinally, it is always the execution that matters. The product idea, by itself, is nothing; the devil lies in executing the idea really well. As the saying goes, success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

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Some Adapted from amitranjan’s blog

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