Ethical Product Management
Building Software Products that Serve Humans
Abstract: Ethical products are products that get a job done better for a specific someone, where the positive outcomes strongly outweigh the negative (unintended) consequences). As Product people and business leaders, we have a responsibility to making products that meet a specific customer demand.
Pitfalls:
Copy-catting (inferior version of market leader)
Mitigation strategies:
Moments of contemplation (considering intended and unintended consequences)
Introduction
The market is flooded with software products that no one wants. A copy of a copy of a copy. An inferior version of the market leader. Solving a problem that only a handful of people care about (or the classic: only the founder).
In harsh words: digital trash.
The role of a business in society is to produce and distribute goods and services to satisfy a public need or demand. If that’s ignored, we’re hit with a tsunami of unnecessary products, obtrusive marketing messages and sometimes unethical sales tactics. The hungriest sales reps or marketing managers will do what it takes to shove even the shittiest product down your throat.
Trust in tech companies eventually erodes, so that even those that do offer a great solution will be ignored and innovation will come to a grinding halt.
I bet you can name a few people in your circle who have lost faith in what their company is building or selling.
So how do we avoid building digital trash?
About 10 years ago every tech startup wanted to make the world a better place. We collectively got sick of that, and moved to a new phrase: We want to create customer value. But what does that mean?
I personally go with this: “Getting a job done better for someone”
Bit less aspirational, but also a lot less lofty.
There are plenty of concepts and frameworks around ethical product development (reliability; service life; maintainability; product safety) and design (dark patterns, accessibility, transparency), but getting a job done better for a specific someone is the beating heart of it all.
In this article I explore three dangerous pitfalls I’ve witnessed many startups step into, and three powerful tactics to help your business stay on the right track.
(Red: pitfalls. Green: mitigation strategies. In bold: the points I’ll discuss in this article)
Getting a job done better for someone specific
Let’s break it down.
Job. I’m a big fan of Jobs-thinking.1 So far, this is the best lens I’ve encountered to look at a target audience through (certainly much better than demographics, which are awfully limiting and invite discrimination in through the backdoor)2.
Better for someone (specific!). Startups that follow a differentiated growth strategy seek out a little pond in which they can become the biggest fish. Rather than trying to please everyone, they focus all their efforts on a niche: A narrow, tightly-knit, ideally self-referencing target audience, with desires and pain points that aren’t fully being met or solved. Their singular focus on a very specific someone, allows them to create something better than the market leader, who is ‘stuck’ pleasing the crowd.3
The Pitfalls
Copy cat
What’s the ‘better’ that you are delivering? What’s your USP, special sauce or unique value proposition? If you can’t tell a convincing story which can be understood within five seconds, you’re in trouble. Do you believe in it? Does your team? Do your customers?
The improvement you seek to make in the lives of your customers should be the unwavering destination of your work. Without it your product will end up an inferior version of something that already exists.
Especially when you’re building an MVP, you have to strike the right balance between ‘right to play’ features - the stuff that isn’t special, but necessary to even be considered by prospects - and USP features - your special sauce. If you waste all your time getting the ‘right to play’ right, you’ll be yet another copy cat.
Getting users 'Hooked' & trigger abuse
Getting users hooked on your product makes a whole lot of sense from a business perspective. The idea is to create habit-forming products that users will eventually start coming back to on their own, without external pushes. Great for retention, and we all know that retention is everything. Companies like Twitter, Instagram, Slack, Whatsapp, Youtube, and Netflix are amazing at this. Nir Eyal wrote an authoritative book on how they did it.4
Every hook starts with a trigger, either external or internal, something that tells us what to do next. External triggers can be marketing messages, push notifications, emails, etc. Internal triggers can be emotions that lead to action. They tend to be negative ones: boredom takes you to YouTube, uncertainty takes you to Google, loneliness to Facebook, etc.. As Nir puts it: “Products exist to make us feel something different.”
Nir wants to help companies create richer lives for their customers, by helping them understand internal triggers and thereby build healthier habits.
That’s hard to argue with, but the science behind the ‘hook’ model can easily be used for the dark arts. Those habit-forming products I listed above cause more harm than good. Most of us aren’t thrilled about the fact that we can’t have a conversation with friends without them constantly glancing down at their screens, that we’re all addicted to the dopamine rush of social media and stay up late at night to watch online pulp.
Especially when we talk about how users should be left wanting just a little bit more and unsure about what they’ll get next (‘variable rewards’), things start feeling just a tad manipulative. Driving users to take certain actions is nothing new. In behavioural design, we happily nudge people toward behaviour that’s better for them, like taking the medication they need or choosing an apple over a chocolate bar.
So where do you draw the line between wrong and right manipulation?
I go by two simple rules of thumb:
Am I creating habits that will make a positive change in my customers lives? Do I believe that my product is the best thing out there to get their job done?
If I put myself into my customer's shoes, would I think this product decision (think: push notification, survey, tooltip) is helpful, or a nuisance?
Of course, you can only follow those rules, if you’ve put in the work to build a deep level of understanding of your #1 target customer.
Staying on track
When building a product, my goals are twofold:
Make a positive difference for my target customer
Avoid causing (too many) unintended negative consequences (such as the exclusion of certain groups, addiction, shortening attention spans, lock-ins, or worse: creating fertile ground for hate speech, discrimination,
Processes for Contemplation
By intentionally creating moments and frameworks for contemplation, you set the stage to create products that matter.
Leadership team
Regular (monthly) target audience alignment sessions, where the following key questions are addressed.
Is every team facing in the same direction? Is everyone serving the same market, ICP, segment, persona?
Are we serving that customer the best way we can? Do we have faith in the work we’re doing? Choose a framework that works for your team (I like stop, start, continue, do more, do less)
Is it time to niche down, adapt or add a new target customer? How certain are we (for example, based on learnings during sales conversations, LOIs, etc.)?
Cross-departmental collaboration only works in a culture of open, constructive feedback, where team members are encouraged to look outside of their department (kill silos!). Nonviolent Communication can help set the right tone.
Product discovery & delivery process
Threebility proposes a Digital Product Ethics Canvas, which can be used when creating a new product.
But ethical product considerations shouldn’t be a one-off, pre-launch exercise.
Product owners/managers must continuously ask themselves whether their product-decisions are in the best interest of the customer, and whether there could be any (unintended) negative effects. Empathy is a muscle you can train.
Stay close to your customer and try to put yourself in their shoes. Your decision-making will improve dramatically, and you will be able to transform yourself from ‘feature-shipping machine’ to value creator.
Dedicate a time-boxed moment during the backlog refinement session to product ethics, so the entire product/development team can raise concerns.
Make a habit out of customer discovery. Set rules for yourself that you can follow. E.g: Talk to 2-5 power users per week. Extra points if you involve Design & Engineering in these conversations.
Analyze data meticulously, but don’t be afraid to trust your instincts and more importantly - your moral compass.
Eat your own dog food
I can’t stress this enough: Use your own tool on a regular basis. Have new joiners sign up and get onboarded. Continuously look at the product through the eyes of a new or regular customer.
Diverse teams
If you’re working within a fully homogenous team, you’ll not only fail to create an equitable product: you will also fail to create a great product. A team of your typical run-of-the-mill ‘cut and paste’ people will create a run-of-the-mill ‘cut and paste’ product.
And when I talk about diversity, I don’t only mean age, socio-economical background, ethnicity, and nationality. The best functioning teams include people with the most wide-ranging professional backgrounds. I’ve had the pleasure of working with several such career switchers: Philosopher turned CEO, doctor turned Product Manager, artist turned engineer. Don’t be blinded by the fact that they haven’t done their current job for 20 years, their versatility and wildly different perspective will more than make up for it.
Controlled experimentation
Successful products are built through experimentation. According to Marty Cagan, we are wrong about which features will be successful about 50% of the time, so of course we can’t rely on upfront research alone. We need to throw things out there and see what works.
We’ve all heard the mantra “Fail fast, fail forward” (John C. Maxwell), and the slightly unfriendlier version “Move fast and break things” (Facebook).
Experimentation is key to creating a great product, but ‘move fast and break things‘ is dangerous.
Always consider potential unintended consequences of your experimentation. Don’t let ethics and equity be an afterthought.
Wanna learn more? I’d start with Jim Kalbach’s ‘The Jobs to be Done Playbook’. I also like Tony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven Innovation (a JTBD predecessor),
Check out David Allison’s brilliant book ‘The Death of Demographics’. Both David and his book are brilliant.
That doesn’t mean they can’t become unicorns. Tesla, Twilio, Uber, Paypal, Salesforce, and AirBnB are all examples of companies that started by serving only a small vertical at first, and expanded vertical by vertical.
