Product Thinking | How do product managers develop user awareness?

I suddenly realized that many students fell into a mistake, that is, they regarded product manager as a position in the traditional industry, and they could work if they learned the tools. In fact, tools are just ways of expressing thoughts, and product capabilities are more important than product skills.

I always believe that the most basic ability of product manager is only two, one is the ability to solve problems, the other is the ability to perceive users. The ability to solve problems is well understood, but what is the ability to perceive users?

01 The difference between “User awareness” and “I am a user”

I want to start with something really interesting. Recently I saw a lot of people doing campus products. Their idea of making campus products is very simple, because everyone has been on campus before and knows the pain points in their student days. There will be no problem if they find some scenes to make the products and then find some students to test them internally.

The same situation and do all kinds of interest community and counterparts, a few dogs Internet person who suddenly had a pet society, several colleagues like medical beauty find a breakthrough point quit venture made a medical community, most of their logic is: because I am such person, so I know what is this group of people pain points.

This is not a bad way to make a product, but it is easy to make a product that is “taken for granted.” A common mistake product managers and entrepreneurs make when thinking about problems is to think of themselves as users, substituting their own specific emotions or experiences for most users.

A university wants to develop an app connected with the campus library to facilitate students to use the library. In this scenario, what are the core needs of students to be addressed by this product?

A post-80s product manager said: “The presentation and management of books is the most important. What books are newly acquired in the library, which books are checked out, and a brief introduction of books are all very important information for students.

A product manager born in the 1990s said: “There are more lectures in libraries now, and more people go to lectures than to borrow books. Students are more concerned about when there are lectures in libraries. Therefore, the information of various lectures should be mainly displayed on the APP to attract more students.

At first glance, both seem plausible. However, after the actual user research, the results show that students are most concerned about the number of available seats in the study room of the library. It would be even better if students could directly reserve or select a place in the product.

Why is there such a big deviation? Obviously, both product managers were thinking “I am the user”, and since we had both been students, it was natural to assume that I, too, had been a user, and I knew their pain points.

Most product managers born in the 1980s grew up in a time when university books were scarce and many books they wanted to read were either borrowed or not available at the library. So they would argue that making it easier for students to borrow books is a strong need and a problem that libraries should address;

Product managers born in the 1990s are no longer so closely connected with libraries when they were students, and there are more ways to get books and materials on the Internet. However, the lectures in the library are really attractive, and they are also a good way for junior and senior students to contact the society, so they pay more attention to the lectures set by the school.

Most students now regard libraries as a substitute for study rooms. There are not only more abundant academic materials to borrow but also a quiet learning atmosphere, which is the first choice for students to participate in self-study. Therefore, booking library location directly online is the core appeal of students, which is also the most important issue of students.

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As you can see from this example, different product managers may have different “user impressions.” The first step in making a product is not to see yourself as a user, but to “empathize” with the other side and understand the differences of users. This ability is also known as the ability to perceive users.

02 Clustering is the first step in user awareness

Classification is the most common way to simplify human cognition and understanding of the world, and clustering is the first step for product managers to perceive users. Find the differences between groups, in order to better understand users.

Let me start with two real things.

The first thing I’ve seen a lot of college students’ entrepreneurial teams do campus community, their products are rightfully manager told me that all the students are their target audience, they are a community, all students can find their own position in the community, there is always that interest you.

Then I opened the product, and sure enough, it looked like a stew. I leafed through several pages, one page was like microblog, the other page was like group, and there were various club activities. Although it seems to be comprehensive and colorful, the interaction in the community is very poor. Students do not know how to integrate into the community, and gradually become a visitor from a spectator.

Around the second thing is that on one occasion, a friend who do intelligent sound product ready to change my job, I freely asked you who is this sound of users, he replied that their product is an intelligent sound, a lot of people live on have needs, so the user group of span is quite wide, minimum user is only 14 years old, one of the largest consumer age 48 years old, It can be said that the people who like their brand are their user group.

I was kind of in a trance when I heard it. These two examples illustrate a common problem for product managers: they don’t know the difference between core and secondary users, or they don’t know who the product’s audience really is.

Do car wash product manager think: all people who have a car are their audience;

Product managers of financial information products believe that all people who read financial news are their potential users;

Product managers who make e-cigarettes think that everyone who smokes is something they can market to.

There are plenty of examples where product managers think they’re building a generic product with a large audience. But with this standard, I believe it will be very difficult to find target users on the street. If you go past 10 smokers, you may not be interested in your e-cigarette. If you go to 10 4S stores, you will probably download this car wash product less than half.

In order to facilitate us to identify users and find the real target users, we need to resort to some simple and fast ways, that is, clustering.

When it comes to user groups, first we have to find a way to describe the differences between groups. Often we extract characteristics from users so that we can use these keywords to describe the characteristics of the user group. In traditional thinking, we are used to classify the objective characteristics of users, such as gender, age, region, occupation, etc. Therefore, in the above example, it is easy to generate this kind of group description: our target user group is “college students who like social activities”.

At first glance, this definition seems pretty accurate, but this kind of group is not representative for us to make a social product. This kind of description seems to be very summative, but it doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t help us judge the characteristics of this group of people, and it doesn’t guide us to what kind of product we should make. The main reason is that this group of people have different ways of thinking, different behaviors and preferences, and can not be simply lumped together.

What are the concerns of this group of “gregarious college students”?

Zhang SAN is a senior e-sports party, usually more concerned about the campus e-sports competition;

Zhao Si is a photography lover, want to find a group of students like photography together sweep the street;

Wang Wu is a postgraduate entrance examination party, is looking for the same comrade-in-arms;

Zhou Yi, an ordinary student, wanted to see what activities students could do to enrich their after-school life.

It can be seen that the above four students are all social college students, but they all have different concerns.

Zhang and zhao four although are sociable students, but they obviously is not too easy to implement in the community on campus e-sports and photography requires (a carrier) is larger than the campus, at this time, they need is not a campus community product, that is to say the campus social unable to meet their needs. If we force them onto the community, we end up in a bad mood.

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Therefore, learning to classify users correctly and make clear the target group is the premise of carrying out the follow-up user research work.

From a single user group to a user matrix

Under normal circumstances, the development of a product is extended outward from a demand point, through the construction of product function matrix to realize the expansion of the point, and gradually become a network. Therefore, at different stages of the product, there are different divisions of user groups.

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In the initial stage of the product, or even before the product is released, we need to find the user group facing the product, that is, the core users of the product.

The original vision of Zhihu was to build a knowledge-based community. In the early days, in order to build the tone of the community, they needed to find a group of high-quality people who were willing to share knowledge. In this case, the initial users of Zhihu are high-quality practitioners of Internet and art, film, education and other industries. Because of the invitation-based registration method, many people have laughed at Zhihu for a long time as the self-enjoyment of Internet elites. This kind of expansion allows Zhihu to focus on these people and meet their needs when building community functions and services in the early stage. So at this stage, Zhihu has built up a large number of loyal users.

Now, the impact of these early users on Zhihu is profound. Many of them were tech entrepreneurs, and their expertise ensured the quality of the answers. Tech entrepreneurs have a mission, which is to solve other people’s problems. Therefore, these people bring zhihu unique discussion atmosphere.

When this product has developed to a certain extent, we are able to provide richer functions. At this time, we can further expand the user base, or further refine the operation.

With content, the community needs more readers. Zhihu needs to gradually expand its user base and attract a group of high-quality readers. On the one hand, these people can become creators, on the other hand, the community tone can be stabilized through their interaction, and the activity of creators can be improved.

In 2013, Zhihu officially abolished the “invitation system”, and the number of registered users soared from 400,000 to 4 million that year.

At this time, apart from the core users of creators, the community also produces secondary users of high-quality readers and marginal users of low-quality browsers. Secondary users and marginal users will show completely different browsing habits. They prefer to interact with creators by leaving messages, following and liking, while marginal users may browse frequently but never like and are unwilling to comment. All these phenomena show the difference of user groups and their different demands.

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As the number of users in the community increases, the user groups begin to appear in sharp contrast. At this stage, Zhihu carried out intensive iterations, mainly to adapt to the changes of user groups. On the one hand, expand the diversity of respondents and convert secondary users into creators; On the one hand, lower the threshold of ordinary users, so that more marginal users participate in interaction, conversion into secondary users.

When the user base of this product becomes larger, or it has the ability to provide more personalized services, it is not only based on core users, secondary users and marginal users to extract their demands. The horizontal dimension of the product should also be divided into more fine-grained user groups, so as to help us identify user needs and determine the direction of product development.

After a large influx of users, Zhihu saw that the current q&A format could no longer meet the needs of creators and high-quality readers.

The Zhihu team found that there were many users eager to improve their professional knowledge on the platform. They communicate mainly through private letters and consultations, and the need to acquire customized knowledge is always there. In addition, high-quality creators need a way to share knowledge more efficiently and at the same time get part of the profits. Therefore, the scene that encourages high-quality users to produce content and expands becomes zhihu Live.

At the same time, the zhihu team also found that in addition to such users, there are many interest-oriented users on the platform. They are not interested in professional knowledge and skills, but in order to broaden their horizons, eager for in-depth discussion and communication, so the scene that carries interest in reading and expands their horizons becomes “Zhihu” · Reading club “.

In addition, Zhihu has successively added functions such as idea and hot list, opened registration of organization number, and established creator center. These series of function expansion are the result of constantly splitting different groups and mining the needs of subdivided groups. At the same time, these product functions turn Zhihu into a tool for generating, sharing and disseminating knowledge, gathering everyone’s knowledge and applying it to the public to realize real community value.

Length reasons, to be continued.