How to Be a Better Product Thinker

Good morning. This week, I discovered a new way of eating cookies. But it wasn’t just cookies. Apparently, sweet chocolate chip cookies are not enough anymore. They must be dipped in something. So I got cookies and a chocolate pudding dip. I had never seen that before, and my product brain started to run…some baking product thinker must have thought about how dipping sauce works well for nachos, and they applied it to their cookies. Let me tell you, it’s magical.

So, today, let’s discuss the art of product thinking and how we can get better at it.

Thinking outside the box is great, but we often forget. We get bogged down with day-to-day reactive tasks—the not-so-fun kind. But we must remind ourselves to have fun, be curious, take risks, and color outside the lines. This is how we can find inspiration and sharpen our product thinking skills.

Whether you are a product person, designer, engineer, or innovation manager, you want to find the best ways to surprise and delight your users with your products. You start on the task and enter the product thinker's mindset.

Wait, isn’t product thinking where you look at a whiteboard for 8 hours and then draw up a new design that makes your app slightly less terrible?

Product thinking shouldn’t start when you sit down to create or improve something. It’s a constant mindset that grows like a muscle the more we flex it.

The best product thinkers still need to discover problems that are worth solving. But their solutions surprise users and provide a delightful experience.

So here is the problem. Working our day jobs and staying in our box of thoughts will not generate original, outstanding ideas.

Today, we’ll talk about what does.

5-minute-read

Color outside the lines

Do you want to build the best products?

Here are the things we usually learn doing:

• Talk to your users

• Understand their problems

• Ask the users what they want

• Look at your competition

• Test what you have built and improve

• Ask your users some more questions

Many product development cycles are streamlined, leaving little room for breakthrough innovation. We are stuck with the same old package in a new way. There are no surprises or delights, but there are moderate improvements.

Nobody talks about how Dawn Dish Soap has added more lemon to its formula, even though the ads make you believe that it changes everything.

Or even how their new premium formula lets you leave your dirty dishes out for five more days, and you’ll still get them clean. These are examples of marginal improvements. Nothing big.

New ideas become small improvements when we examine only our industry, talk only to our users or colleagues, and read industry news. Startups examine other startups; corporates examine the competition.

What’s worse—and this is my pet peeve—social media algorithms learn what you are interested in, and they are not versatile enough to connect me with the new, the unknown. Why? Because it might not be interesting to me. I am forced to stay in my lane unless I make the effort to break out.

We need to “flip da script.”

The beauty of cross-pollination

Imagine a product manager who creates fitness trackers. They could look at popular games like EA Sports games for interesting UI patterns.

Or, if a designer is working on data dashboards, why not look at mobile apps that show the weather, wind, and precipitation and learn their patterns for visual hierarchy, clarity adn focus?

💡Henry Ford is famous for inventing the assembly line in car manufacturing and revolutionizing the industry. He drew inspiration from a slaughterhouse. One day, he walked into one of the meat-packing houses in Chicago and saw how instead of workers going to pick up the meat carcasses, these would just come to them on a line. So he connected the dots… if he could bring the work to the workers, they would spend less time walking around.

💡Steve Jobs credits a calligraphy class he took after dropping out of college, for inspiring Apple’s focus on typography and beautiful design aesthetics. Without this influence, we may not be able to select different fonts and add our personal touches in the ways we do today.

3 things you can do to sharpen your product sense

It has to be an ongoing process. And it can only come with time. The more you explore the richness of the world around you, different places, disciplines, and industries, you might someday be able to connect the dots.

1. Know how you can apply your learnings

It starts with awareness. As you see innovation or experience new things, you will keep thinking about how they might apply to the problems you are trying to solve.

Things you can innovate on:

⭐ Products or services

⭐ Processes and systems

⭐ Ways to communicate

⭐ Pricing models

⭐ Business models

⭐ Design patterns

2. Develop observation

Observe products and how people use them. What works well in one industry that you could apply for yours?

Make it a habit — You can set a time on your calendar to analyze one product you recently used, found on your desk, or talked to you about. Try to understand why it exists and how well it performs the task.

Check featured apps—I love going to the app store and checking featured apps. It helps me discover new design patterns, and I love reading user reviews.

Subreddits — Subreddits exist for everything. Some personal favs at the moment: r/shutupandtakemymoney , r/ineeeedit - for interesting product ideas, and r/ObsoleteSony - it gives me nostalgia and the feeling that in a world of touch displays, I want some form of buttons back.

Once you start your product thinking and design exercises, you will draw from all these observations when needed.

Keep a catalog of good ideas. Writing helps you keep track, and organizing it helps you find it again.

3. Be inquisitive

Try to find out WHY something is working so well.

Be curious. Pay attention to your reaction to a product. How does it make you feel? Are you delighted? Does the product surprise you? Is using it a waste of your time? Does it annoy you?

You already do this for whatever topic you enjoy—music, cars, or architecture. You have to have at least one topic that you are passionate about. That doesn’t have to be your industry. But as a product thinker, you must develop an opinion.

Talk to people. Talk to your friends who are passionate about the products they use. Find out why and ask them why they react the way they do.

After a while, you will anticipate how new products might perform. And you will see the hidden reasons behind a product’s success or failure.

You will enjoy thinking and debating about why TikTok is so addictive, why ChatGPT has so many users, and why Snapchat and Instagram succeeded over thousands of similar apps.

Bring it all together.

Of course, regularly working on your product muscles doesn't guarantee success. However, it increases the dataset you can draw from when looking for patterns.

I’ll leave you with one last exercise:

Use the phrase: “How might we…” and make some creative combinations

How might we apply game designs to SaaS app interfaces for business apps?

How might we apply a subscription box model to pet products?

How might we create fashionable fitness trackers?

How might we…

This is an enjoyable way of thinking and growing a product mindset. We don’t know what we will come up with next, but I am sure someday we will be able to connect the dots.

How are you growing your product mindset? I would love to hear your best practices.

Have a great rest of the week,