What is a good product supposed to do? I think about that a lot, because I am in the business of making good products.
Judging by the Internet, everyone has their own definition of what good is, expressed with words and feelings slipping and sliding over each other. Trying to tease good out from this can feel like a futile endeavor.
But definitions matter. It matters because building good products is something I aspire to do every day. Without the ability to define or articulate it would be like trying to chart a course with just eyes and gut intuition. More importantly, I won’t be able rub my fingers on my chin in a pondering pose and utter the phrase, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good”.
I thought about this long and hard and here I present the six principles of a good product:
The first good is Utility. If a product is good, it must be useful. The product must serve a purpose that the user finds value in. It can be productive like spreadsheets or trivial like entertainment. Utility is not a judgement. Put a different way, is it valuable? A good product must perform a valuable function for the person. Without that, it ceases to have a reason to be in the person’s life.
Then we look at Quality. Quality is the characteristic that produces consistently useful outcomes with robustness over time. Quality comes in multiple parts: how it is built, how it responds to use, and how well it holds up over time. A product that is shoddily built is not good. A product that is useful but degrades quickly does not have good quality. A good product must have a certain level of durable good.
Following that is people’s ability to Access it. This ranges from the technical, whether it is available on a computing platform of their choice, to financial, whether people are able to afford it. As an example, a medication may be good because it can solve serious health problems, but it is of limited good if the people it is meant to help can’t afford or administer them.
Then, follows Usability. I see Usability as a spectrum. A moderately usable product is neutral. Good usability raises the good bar, while poor usability lowers it. Interestingly, Usability is not always synonymous with ease of use; it depends on a person’s skills, knowledge, and expectations. An automatic transmission increases a car’s usability for commuters by simplifying driving. Conversely, the same controls reduces usability for car enthusiasts by taking away the control and feedback they want.
A good product is also Aesthetic. People like beautiful things, and a visually appealing form factor enhances their enjoyment. When people spend time with a product, it is more pleasurable if they enjoy looking at it. Additionally, aesthetics are often intimately tied to social signalling. A product’s appearance isn’t just about functionality; it can be used to showcase status or signal belonging to a particular group.
Lastly, a good product Respects the person and puts their interests above all. This is especially salient in software services, where sometimes otherwise well-designed products reckless siphon data or attention for the financial gain of their owners. While Respect might be an unusual term to apply to a product, it works because we instinctively expect products we use to be on our side. Any attempt to breach this trust, even covertly, feels disrespectful.
These attributes are somewhat ordered, but not always. For example, a beautiful product that is not useful can hardly be called good, whereas a high-quality, useful product that is ugly can still be considered good. The English language offers a useful way to frame this: a good product is a respectful, beautiful, usable, accessible, high-quality and useful product–in that order.
This framework is not meant to be the definitive guide to evaluate good products. That said, I find it helpful for breaking down what I specifically like about a thing I find. More importantly, it helps me articulate my mixed feelings when something feels both good and slightly off–the It’s good, but not that good kind of feeling.
AI disclosure: this article is edited with ChatGPT (GPT-4o)