Complaining is Product Sense

Whenever you feel the urge to complain about a product or service, you are channeling your product sense.

To turn that complaint from a vent or a rant into product sense, stop. Take a deep breath. And think about it in a structured manner.

When we complain about product or services it is because we had an expectation that a job we hired the company to complete wasn’t done, or wasn’t completed to our expectations.

There are some different ways to turn this into a mini product sense lesson:

1. Reflect on the Job to Be Done

   1. Who is the product-optimizing

   2. Is their failure a miss given their target user

   3. Would it make sense strategically to focus on your use case? Why or Why not?

2. Turn it into a blog post covering the following:

   1. Product name

   2. Problem it solves (JTBD)

   3. Product goal (your guess)

   4. What went wrong

   5. Why it is a problem for the product

   6. What you would do differently as a PM

3. Get Ahead

   1. Write a review of your favorite products

   2. Test a Favorite product and write a review.

Looking for inspiration

I have started writing the PM version of an Unboxing YouTube video. When I encounter a new product, I write a quick review from a product sense point of view. Generally speaking, I try to guess:

• The problem(s) it (tries) to solve

• Things going well

• Things going poorly

• What the experience taught me about being a product manager.

Alternatives to a Blog Post

Try the good old-fashioned product teardown.

Some Examples

Here are some quick articles I penned to reinforce how you can use the product review format to improve your product sense.

• CreatorMind

• CoverQuick