Product Discussions

Product Discussion

Here, we discuss how to hold product strategy and design discussions — or, put more concretely, how to run a meeting.

What Are We Actually Doing When We Discuss?

The goal of discussion is to reach conclusions and make judgments.When making judgments, we should integrate facts and values.At ICBU, PDs responsible for product logic and interaction design should focus on factual judgment, and balance value judgments based on factual reasoning.

What Is a Factual Judgment?

• Any decision related to achieving the final goal is a factual judgment.

  • For example, when optimizing the last frame of a product image to improve user engagement, our choice of optimization method directly affects user perception — this is a factual judgment.

• We can verify factual judgments by asking:

  “Does our judgment align with reality?”In fact, this is almost the only way to validate factual judgments.

What Is a Value Judgment?

• Decisions that guide the choice of ultimate goals are value judgments.

  • For PDs in charge of product logic and design, large-scale value judgments include choosing between D-O and D-AB; smaller ones include deciding whether semi-managed fulfillment should first support “per-box” selling.

• Because value judgments often involve moral or cultural factors (e.g., “users prefer A over B because of cultural background”), it’s difficult to quantify or compare them precisely through data.

Which Discussions Should Happen Immediately?

Given the nature of factual and value judgments:

• We shouldn’t overanalyze or attempt to quantify which value judgment is better. Value judgments should be decided quickly and then verified.

• We should focus discussions on the assumptions or premises underlying factual judgments:

  • When assumptions or premises are validated (or have high-confidence evidence), make factual judgments logically based on them.

  • When assumptions or premises are not validated, verify them as soon as possible.

Therefore:

• The user flow and fulfillment capabilities must be discussed first and clearly understood (e.g., whether “per-box” selling should be the core model).

• Purely logical product designs or details should be judged by logic (e.g., economic shipping should be cheaper than standard shipping).

• Design details related to conversion rate (e.g., whether the SKU panel should be full screen) are hard to discuss meaningfully.

  • PDs can qualitatively discuss user preferences but can’t precisely quantify the impact of such designs across user segments.

  • Thus, these design decisions should be continuously tested via A/B experiments to validate assumptions.

  In short: discussions on design details have low ROI. Once logic paths are unblocked, quickly A/B test to reach irrefutable conclusions.

What Are the Standards?

• Use precise language to clearly define the problem to be studied — only then can we accurately measure the intended outcomes.

• Only through specific descriptions can we identify concrete user scenarios linked to the problem or goal.

• “Reconstructing and hypothesizing usage scenarios” requires accurate language describing user behavior, and these behavioral expectations are the foundation of all discussion.

What Should a Product Manager Do?

Establish Clear and Precise Conceptual Understanding

• From both factual and value perspectives, build clear understanding of the problem or pain point:

  • What type of users encounter this issue, under what circumstances, and how does it hinder their goals?

  • What type of users would be interested in this new capability, and how would it help them achieve their goals?

Build Precise Vocabulary and Analytical Methods

• Define accurate and shareable terminology to describe problems and pain points, ensuring discussions remain faithful to the original meaning.

• Define universally acceptable analytical methods that closely align with user behaviors, so that proposed solutions can be discussed and evaluated within the same framework.

Focus on Current Decisions and Anticipate Future Impacts

• Focus on problems and the product itself, not on unrelated or weakly related decisions.

• Evaluate long-term effects of decisions — consider how a choice impacts future goals.

  • For instance, when recruiting products for semi-managed fulfillment, attention should be paid to category quality, not just quantity.

Why Write This Much?

If our problem definitions and methodological descriptions do not reach a higher level of critical thinking, we cannot expect to make rapid progress in distinguishing and validating correct product principles and methods.