“Users don't just buy products or use features — they "hire" them to accomplish specific goals or tasks.”
I loved this. Wish I could send this article to the PMs that own the customer portals I use for work — they all have an overwhelming amount of data, most of which I don’t know what I’d use for 😅 While I’ve mostly gotten used to this not so great experience with customer portals, it’s interesting to think that it doesn’t have to be like this — PMs can make a big impact to bridge the insight gap by putting themselves in the shoes of the customer.
Thanks for your comment, Adriana! It's great to hear this resonated with you. You're spot on about those overwhelming customer portals - they're a perfect example of the insight gap in action. It's amazing how much of a difference it can make when PMs really focus on what users are trying to accomplish.
When designing for clarity and action, we want to provide insights that resonate with users. How do we know we are moving towards insights that might resonate?
Thanks, Rasmus. Great question! To understand which insights resonate with users, we use multiple feedback mechanisms, including:
- Direct user feedback through interviews and surveys
- Behavioral analytics and trends (e.g., clickthrough rates, drop-off points in user flows)
- Observational studies during product demos and experiments
- Targeted follow-up questions on specific features
No single method provides a complete picture. However, combining these approaches helps us piece together a clearer understanding of what works, what doesn't, and why certain aspects may or may not be immediately helpful to users.
You've highlighted a common problem among data scientist too, the "contextual disconnect", which happens when we build dashboards that fail to help stakeholders extract meaningful insights from KPIs. This usually happens when we fail to show how metrics change over time and how they compare to a baseline or target metric.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Andres! Totally, that contextual disconnect is all too familiar from my days in the trenches with dashboards and customer interactions.
“Users don't just buy products or use features — they "hire" them to accomplish specific goals or tasks.”
I loved this. Wish I could send this article to the PMs that own the customer portals I use for work — they all have an overwhelming amount of data, most of which I don’t know what I’d use for 😅 While I’ve mostly gotten used to this not so great experience with customer portals, it’s interesting to think that it doesn’t have to be like this — PMs can make a big impact to bridge the insight gap by putting themselves in the shoes of the customer.
Thanks for your comment, Adriana! It's great to hear this resonated with you. You're spot on about those overwhelming customer portals - they're a perfect example of the insight gap in action. It's amazing how much of a difference it can make when PMs really focus on what users are trying to accomplish.
Great read Rohan.
When designing for clarity and action, we want to provide insights that resonate with users. How do we know we are moving towards insights that might resonate?
Thanks, Rasmus. Great question! To understand which insights resonate with users, we use multiple feedback mechanisms, including:
- Direct user feedback through interviews and surveys
- Behavioral analytics and trends (e.g., clickthrough rates, drop-off points in user flows)
- Observational studies during product demos and experiments
- Targeted follow-up questions on specific features
No single method provides a complete picture. However, combining these approaches helps us piece together a clearer understanding of what works, what doesn't, and why certain aspects may or may not be immediately helpful to users.
You've highlighted a common problem among data scientist too, the "contextual disconnect", which happens when we build dashboards that fail to help stakeholders extract meaningful insights from KPIs. This usually happens when we fail to show how metrics change over time and how they compare to a baseline or target metric.
This was a great article overall Rohan!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Andres! Totally, that contextual disconnect is all too familiar from my days in the trenches with dashboards and customer interactions.
"The challenge is delivering insights that resonate with users, no matter the complexity of the AI tools behind them"
Thank you for teaching me the concept of progressive disclosure. Users often don't need more information, they need simple insights they can act on.
Thanks for reading, Mandy! Happy to hear you learned a new concept.
Loved the article Rohan! I was not aware of JTBD framework. Thanks for sharing.
Goal oriented thinking is actually a very critical way of thinking across all engineering roles as well I feel.
Thank you, Kartik - I'm glad you learned something new!
For sure, it's such a great way to approach complex problems and design effective solutions across so many domains.