How can you make your product user-friendly during development?

User-friendliness is a key factor that influences the success of any product. It refers to how easy and enjoyable it is for customers to use your product and achieve their goals. User-friendly products can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, as well as reduce support costs and negative feedback. But how can you make your product user-friendly during development? Here are some tips to help you design and build a product that meets your users' needs and expectations.

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1 Understand your users

The first step to making your product user-friendly is to understand who your users are, what they want, and how they behave. You can do this by conducting user research, such as interviews, surveys, personas, and user journeys. User research can help you identify your users' pain points, motivations, preferences, and goals. It can also help you segment your users into different groups based on their characteristics and needs. By understanding your users, you can create a product that solves their problems and provides value.

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Khuze Siam

CEO at Siam Computing, leading tech innovation for startups
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Understanding your users will help you understand what success looks like for them, what their pains, gains, hops and fears are, how they make decisions, what do their moments of struggle look like. With this understanding, you can build products relevant to them, aligning with their needs. You can interview your users to understand them better, draw user personas to understand their characteristics and traits, map out user journeys to identify key interaction touch points with your product to identify how you can make the experience as easy for them as possible.

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2 Involve your users

The second step to making your product user-friendly is to involve your users in the development process. You can do this by testing your product with real users and collecting their feedback. You can use various methods to test your product, such as prototypes, usability tests, beta tests, and analytics. Testing your product with users can help you validate your assumptions, find and fix usability issues, and improve your product's performance and functionality. By involving your users, you can create a product that meets their requirements and expectations.

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Shanil Mall

SVP - Digital Head- Growth ( Business Banking ) @ IndusInd | LinkedIn Top Voice | Growth & Digital Transformations | Ex Paytm, Vodafone, DishTV | Gold Medalist - MBA
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Don't just involve your users. Also involve teams that interact with your users like sales, customer services and product managers. Teams interacting with users can also share good insights because of their daily interaction with the users. Other teams are easily available for sharing feedback and they also understand the product so they can give very good feedback

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3 Follow design principles

The third step to making your product user-friendly is to follow design principles that enhance the user experience. You can do this by applying principles such as simplicity, consistency, clarity, feedback, and accessibility. Simplicity means reducing unnecessary elements and focusing on the essential features. Consistency means using the same design elements and patterns throughout your product. Clarity means using clear and concise language and visuals. Feedback means providing users with timely and relevant information and responses. Accessibility means making your product usable for people with different abilities and devices. By following design principles, you can create a product that is easy and enjoyable to use.

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4 Optimize your product

The fourth step to making your product user-friendly is to optimize your product for speed, performance, and reliability. You can do this by using tools and techniques such as code optimization, compression, caching, load balancing, and testing. Code optimization means writing clean and efficient code that reduces errors and bugs. Compression means reducing the size of your files and images to improve loading time. Caching means storing frequently used data and resources to reduce server requests. Load balancing means distributing the workload among multiple servers to prevent overload and downtime. Testing means checking your product's functionality and quality under different conditions and scenarios. By optimizing your product, you can create a product that works fast and smoothly.

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5 Update your product

The fifth step to making your product user-friendly is to update your product regularly and continuously. You can do this by using agile methodologies, such as scrum and kanban, that allow you to deliver incremental and iterative improvements to your product. Updating your product regularly and continuously can help you adapt to changing user needs, market trends, and technological advancements. It can also help you fix bugs, add features, and enhance security. By updating your product, you can create a product that stays relevant and competitive.

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6 Educate your users

The sixth and final step to making your product user-friendly is to educate your users on how to use your product effectively and efficiently. You can do this by providing user documentation, tutorials, videos, FAQs, and support. User documentation means providing written instructions and guidelines on how to use your product's features and functions. Tutorials means providing interactive and step-by-step demonstrations on how to perform common tasks and goals. Videos means providing visual and audio explanations and examples on how to use your product. FAQs means providing answers to frequently asked questions that users may have. Support means providing assistance and solutions to users who encounter problems or issues with your product. By educating your users, you can create a product that increases user confidence and satisfaction.

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Shanil Mall

SVP - Digital Head- Growth ( Business Banking ) @ IndusInd | LinkedIn Top Voice | Growth & Digital Transformations | Ex Paytm, Vodafone, DishTV | Gold Medalist - MBA
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The best product is which needs less training, no FAQs and documentation. The product usability should come intuitively to your users. If you need a lot of education then surely you need to go back to the drawing board. Focus on product designs that need little to no education.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you make your product user-friendly during development?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Understand your users

2 Involve your users

3 Follow design principles

4 Optimize your product

5 Update your product

6 Educate your users

7 Here’s what else to consider

Product Development

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How can you make your product user-friendly during development?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Understand your users

2 Involve your users

3 Follow design principles

4 Optimize your product

5 Update your product

6 Educate your users

7 Here’s what else to consider

Product Development

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