Philosophies behind product development: how to approach product design by prioritizing social value (Part 1)

In this article I begin to outline guiding principles and fundamentals to product design. I introduce a simple concept I’ve developed over several years of daily thought experiments. I use many tech examples in my writings because I work in tech. However, these ideas apply equally at a restaurant, at a car shop or in a high school class room.

These ideas are what work for me and have allowed me to explore different products within different domains. They keep things fun for me and allow me to step back and re-evaluate when the chaotic world of product development seems too suffocating.

My idea is the following: it’s not enough to bring value to the customer, your product must provide social value as well. Continue reading to find out what I mean.

I want to expand on this idea more, and have written over 20 drafts. I’ve added and removed chapters to this idea. I also have other pieces about other topics I am eager to publish. I simply want to test the market first. Please provide as much feedback as possible by clapping, leaving comments and reaching out to me on Twitter @mohamadthefirst.

For now I leave you with my Medium MVP. I hope you enjoy it.

Social value to drive profitability

Defining social value

The driver behind good product delivery must be one thing: to provide social value through innovation.

Social value is defined as a product that makes the customer’s life better. In this case, social is defined as “relating to the welfare of human beings as members of society” as opposed to “companionship, camaraderie and human interaction” characteristic of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Innovation is defined as the pathway or solution to the easier life. The actual innovation doesn’t have to be altruistic, grandiose or ground breaking. You just want to make your user’s life easier.

Morality behind the product is significant to a certain extent. Products like Dropbox or Coursera have equal social value in my books. They both improve the lives of their users in different yet not insignificant ways. They also utilize cutting edge technology which is always a plus. Though the domain is different, the impact of one is not better than the other, simply different.

Dropbox allows you to share photos with your loved ones across the world in seconds, providing you with immeasurable joy and love. Coursera gives you access to top academics and leads you to an array knowledge; you can feed your mind and grow spiritually. Who am I to judge which is more valuable to the user.

However, an MLM product like Herbalife does not have equal social value. In fact, one could argue it is socially valueless. The business model is inherently toxic and unfavourable to the customer/employee. There is minimal joy, happiness or growth provided to the the end user.

MLMs prey on the weak, the poor, the desperate, the old and the immigrant. They promise you a life of riches and wealth without disclosing the mathematical impossibility of such a life. These products don’t even aim to provide social value and as such fail to make the cut.

There is an important distinction that needs to be made here, a lot of companies provide value. You may not agree with the value they bring but someone does and is willing to pay for it. Herbalife, attempts to provide value in the form of “healthy” shakes and hope. They have accounting sheets that clearly demonstrates this is working and has worked for years. However the social aspects is missing. Society isn’t improving, the product is a net negative to the world.

Pathway to social value

We now understand what it is we are trying to achieve. The question becomes: how do we get there exactly?

The pathway to me is quite clear. You have to create an environment for you to produce social value; a product lab if you will. These are a few characteristics you have to have in your lab for this to work:

• Volatile, organized chaos for the rest of your existence
• Chronic scatter brain mitigated by techniques of your choice
• Strong team members, people who have identified there individual genius and are ready to double or even triple down on it
• Experts in domain only. No bosses, no reporting structure, no ego, no managers, no titles, no org charts, no official teams.
• Ownership for all
• Completely flat structure
• Customer centric design
• Customer feedback centric design (similar but not the same to customer centric design, I’ll let you clarify the difference)
• An infrastructure ready to go from ideation to feature delivery at a whim
• An infrastructure read to pivot due to market demands

How you implement these characteristics it’s up to you. There’s a bunch of tools on the market that facilitate this process. The one thing you can’t get on the market is a shift in mindset. You have to accept social value as the goal before anything else; that is what you’re working towards.

This article simply introduces some of my ideas on social value. In other chapters I expand more on finances, profitability, product strategies, team management and mentorship.

As mentioned earlier, it is very much a teaser to see how Medium readers respond to it. I am also looking to test out the Medium analytics and see how I can drive traffic to my profile and play around with SEO.

If you’ve made it this far, please consider clapping, leaving comments and reaching out to me on Twitter @mohamadthefirst. Positive and negative feedback is always welcome. I enjoy writing greatly and look forward to contributing more to the literature.