Solutions > Features

There was a great article shared in last week's Dev Weekly about telling your product's story.

It was largely about pitching product ideas via a slide deck and some sharp Adobe devs getting too bogged down in the weeds of specific feature details and missing the larger product narrative.

The advice given by the author is to think of the slide deck like a story, follow the essential rules of storytelling and swap out the basic narrative concepts for product and design concepts:

• The bedrock of any story is its characters (not its plot, contrary to what many people believe!)
• The main character in a product vision is your user; start out by telling us who she is, what motivates her, and what her challenges are
• Plot happens when your character/user encounters a new challenge that, ultimately, helps her solve her challenges
• Your product is the plot! Explain how it changes your character’s life
• Your product’s features are the details of your story; they should all show your user’s journey from problem to solution

This is fantastic advice around presentation and persuasion, but I think it runs deeper than that for good software design, in general. Aren't we guilty of too often thinking about product development in the exact way these Adobe devs thought about pitching the product? We get bogged down in how cool a feature would be to build - or how flashy something might be - and we completely lose sight of our true aim ... solving real problems for real people. 

I was once involved in the development of a product where I asked how we expected the app to be used - and by whom. I was told we would have to release the product to see how it would be used. This was a serious product built by a serious company with a serious budget. This shouldn't have been a serious conversation.

Let's take these concepts, zoom out and apply them to the conversation we should have around any new feature or product: 

• The bedrock of your product's story is its users (not its features, contrary to what many people believe!)
• Understand your main character. Can you explain who she is, what motivates her, and what her challenges are?
• Solutions happen when a user encounters a new challenge that is solved by a  feature/product.
• Can you explain how this particular feature/product changes your user’s life?
• Your product’s features are the details of a solution. They should all work toward your user’s journey from problem to solution.

What we have here is a pretty firm roadmap for any conversation around new development. If you can't concretely answer these questions and frame a narrative around your feature or product, you should seriously consider whether or not it should be built in the first place. If you can, then you're well on your way to your next great success!