A designer’s guide to product-market fit

Greater Goods v. Passable Products.

What makes a great product?

There has been no shortage of ink (and pixels) spilled in the pursuit of answers to this question. But I’d like a way to answer this question in a way that is both parsimonious and precise — for it is often the case that the most enduring words in our literature possess both qualities.

To me, all great products possess two qualities: usefulness, and beauty.

The usefulness of a product is measured by how well it helps us perform “jobs to be done”. The beauty of a product is measured by how happy it makes us feel — independent of how well it works, or how useful it us.

Most products tend to fall on either side of the diagram — useful but ugly, or beautiful but impractical. Things that are useful but ugly get the job done, but they don’t necessarily make us feel proud to be doing it. I call these “passable products”. Things that are beautiful but impractical make us feel happy, but quickly fade away into the fog of forgetfulness, swept aside by the current of our daily workflow in which it has little part. These are the dresses worn once, the notebooks left blank. But things that are both useful and beautiful help us do the jobs we need to, in a way that makes us feel like we want to.

Flapping like a turkey to hail a taxi used to be a necessary evil. Ride-hailing apps made it addictively simple. Doing library research was once a chore. Today, people risk tumbling down the Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Prioritizing Practicality?

Now, some people might think that practicality should be preeminent in product design. After all usefulness is necessary, while beauty is sufficient. All else being equal, you might buy an ugly umbrella that keeps you dry, but not a beautiful one that won’t weather through a wet day. There is some general truth in that thinking — particularly when we have to prioritize where to put our product development dollars.

But beauty is not always about adding (or spending) more. Nor should we abandon the Agile process of developing minimum viable products. But more importantly, this is a guide to designing greater goods — not passable products. Passable products are great for learning, but greater goods are the key to earning.

“Teams may also confuse an MVP — which has a focus on learning — for a Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) or Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) — which has a focus on earning.

Teams stress the minimum part of MVP to the exclusion of the viable part. The product delivered is not sufficient quality to provide an accurate assessment of whether customers will use the product.”

— Agile Alliance

Greater Goods v. Passable Products

This difference is what separates the cream from the crop, the wheat from the chaff — the greater from the passable. And the reason for this may lie in a recent revelation about human psychology. Maslow’s model of human motivation has been for decades mis-represented as a step-wise hierarchy of needs — progressing from the practical to the philosophical. But it is not difficult to see why such a reading might be wrong. For even the hungry have aspirations for higher things, and even the enlightened must earn a living.

Take the clothes we wear — they serve both functional and emotional needs. Our wardrobes are neither uniformly stocked with plain robes, nor are they filled with the abstract art common on fashion runways. So how does this relate to prioritizing between attributes in pursuing a product-market fit?

Greater goods understand that people have both functional and emotional needs that need to be satisfied: at the same time. Passable products miss the mark by being either useful, or beautiful — but not both. Products that are both useful and beautiful will have a strong product-market fit — because its usefulness meets our functional needs, while its beauty meets our emotional needs.

So if we want to make greater goods and not just passable products, we should strive to make useful things — beautifully.

Greater Goods is also the name of the carry goods company that our team is launching on Kickstarter in the middle of 2019. As the head of product, I’m always driven by the desire to marry form and function. Too often, the most beautiful leather bags and products lack the organization and accessibility of nylon backpacks and briefcases. But it is also the case that most nylon carry goods can never hold a candle to the elegant looks of leather goods. In the coming months, our team will be revealing a minimalist wallet, padfolio, and briefcase that will hopefully change the way we carry leather goods for the better.

Thanks for listening! If you’re interested in our upcoming launch, follow us at:

Instagram: @bygreatergoods
Medium: https://medium.com/greater-goods
Facebook Groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/353143132114543/

🐦Early bird discount! Like, follow and share our various social media channels before we go live to receive a discount off the Kickstarter campaign price.