How do product people quickly write in-depth product experience reports?

In this article, the author analyzes several high-quality product experience reports , summarizes the highlights of these reports, and tells you what points you should pay attention to in several essential modules in the report based on his own understanding. Here, I would like to thank many predecessors for their excellent work, which guides product newcomers like me.

1. What is the role of product experience report?

First of all, the product experience report may be a very useful stepping stone in the job interview of product manager , because the interviewer can get a general understanding of your product thinking and your potential to become a product manager through your product experience report;

Second, product workers can use product experience reports as a way to improve and train themselves in their daily work, motivating themselves to use products extensively, improving their thinking, analytical and writing skills, and broadening their horizons.

Third, in many product positions, your boss may ask you to write a competitive product analysis to compare your own product with other products. The prerequisite for writing a competitive product analysis is that you need to have an experience and analysis of these products. Therefore, good product experience ability is also a prerequisite for writing an excellent competitive product analysis.

2. Methodology

1. Clarify the purpose and move forward

The author has read many product experience reports and found that the reports that make people feel in-depth have one thing in common, that is, the analysis of a certain module is deep enough. Whether it is market conditions, user needs or functional processes, as long as there is a point that can conduct in-depth and innovative analysis, then your report will definitely not be bad.

Of course, the choice of this point can be based on your job direction. For example, if you are mainly responsible for interaction design, then you should focus on analyzing the interaction. If you are responsible for product design, then you should analyze user needs and functions. You can also use the type of product as a reference. E-commerce apps mainly discuss the consumption process, while fitness apps discuss the needs of fitness users, and so on.

Here is a method I can tell you: write down the key points of this report at the beginning of the article to give readers a targeted reading experience. On the contrary, if a report talks about every aspect and module in general terms, it will appear too superficial. Because the purpose of writing a report is not to make people guess about your words and content, but to allow readers to have a clear understanding of the key points you want to express at a glance.

2. Module Content

As mentioned in the previous point, it is necessary to clearly define the focus of the report, but this does not mean that the entire article should only be written in one module. Just like building a house, after building the foundation and exterior walls, you still have to add bricks and tiles. So some content is indispensable.

A complete product experience report may have different names, but it must include the following modules:

• Experience Environment
• Product Introduction
• User Analysis
• Market status and analysis
• Product Analysis
• Competitive product analysis
• Suggestions (if I were the PM)
• Summarize

Next, the author will make corresponding suggestions for each module. As for the writing method, it will not be discussed in detail here. You can read more product experience reports and write based on your own use and thinking of the product.

(1) Experience environment

It generally includes the experience model, system version, APP version, experience time, network environment, etc. Don’t think that this module is dispensable, nor is it just to make up the word count. The experience environment can actually provide your readers with a reference. For example, some products have significant differences between the Android version and the iOS version. Some products also behave differently under wireless networks and data traffic . For example, NetEase Cloud Music , when opened under wifi, enters the song recommendations, while when opened under 4G, enters your playlist.

In addition, when you complete an experience report, the product may have gone through several versions. The iteration of the product is often determined by the company's strategic positioning at each stage. Therefore, you can clarify the company's strategy and business model from the differences and deployment priorities of each product version. This also provides a very useful reference for many readers who want to understand this product or company.

Secondly, in addition to their own accumulation, some product colleagues want to benefit from the current new media and develop their own fans. If they can experience some hot and latest applications, it will make your work more popular.

(2) Product Introduction

The introduction can basically be obtained from channels such as the product's entry page, official website or news reports. From this information, you can get information about the product's positioning, value and the needs it solves. The slogan and introduction of the product must have been carefully considered and screened by others. A little analysis will help you grasp the overall view of the entire product.

For example, KEEP’s “Self-discipline gives me freedom” and WeChat ’s “WeChat is a lifestyle” are sentences worth pondering.

In addition, try to write as comprehensively as possible about the product positioning. If it is too one-sided, readers will feel that your analysis of the product positioning lacks refinement. For example, if you only say that WeChat is a chat tool , then this is definitely not accurate enough. User Analysis

(3) User analysis

Including: user groups, user characteristics, usage scenarios, user needs analysis, etc.

User groups: Some products will solve the needs of more than one type of user. For example, some are divided into teacher side and student side, some are divided into the general public who listen to music and the creative musicians, and some are divided into merchants and consumers. This requires us to describe it comprehensively.

User characteristics: At the same time, you can obtain actual data about the product's user characteristics and analyze them from some data websites, such as Baidu Index, Penguin Intelligence, Analysys , iResearch , etc. The data includes many aspects, such as gender distribution, age distribution, occupation distribution, frequency of function usage, etc. One thing to remind you here is that some students will do regional analysis, which is fine because it can determine the key areas for product promotion . However, some analysis results say that there are more users in the eastern region than in the western region, and more users in first-tier cities than in second-tier cities. However, the number of users is closely related to the popularity of the Internet and regional economic differences. As far as China is concerned, there are already many people using the Internet in the eastern region and first-tier cities, so this kind of analysis is unscientific.

Usage scenarios: Some people divide usage scenarios into user portraits and usage scenario analysis. User portrait is a stage for making up stories and using your imagination, but it does not require you to make up stories. Needs and functions must be reflected in the user portrait. By using scenario analysis, you can construct a story based on user portraits, or you can simply do analysis. So how can we conduct a thorough scenario analysis? Is there depth? Here is a method: classification. Let's imagine what scenarios a user may encounter when using a product. For example, the scenarios for WeChat users may be social , financial, or gaming . The scenarios for e-commerce products can be divided into weakly purposeful, random browsing, and strongly purposeful, specialized browsing. More broadly speaking, most products are also divided into strong-demand scenarios and weak-demand scenarios. After classifying the scenarios, analyze the user characteristics, psychology, and behavior of each scenario.

User needs analysis: How to do user needs analysis? Backward reasoning method. Because people who are not in product companies generally do not have complete APP operation data and user information, or need to obtain it at a high cost, they can first analyze the functions of the product, that is, what effects this function brings and what user needs it meets, and then refine it. Demand can also be classified, such as core demand and supporting demand (main line functions and branch line functions), external demand and internal demand (industry status and product functions).

(4) Market status and analysis

This module mainly searches for reports related to the industry from the several data websites mentioned above. However, we do not need to conduct a long or in-depth analysis of the market. We only need to extract the key points and have a general overview of the entire industry. At the same time, you can also obtain the overall difficulties and development prospects of the product from some news reports, especially some articles during the outbreak period, refer to other people's ideas, and integrate your own views and opinions. Of course, this is more suitable for popular industries such as group buying, takeout, tools, sharing, etc.

(5) Product analysis

Product analysis can be divided into: product structure diagram, functional flow chart, and functional experience analysis.

Don't be in a hurry to talk about the product. You need to do a functional walkthrough, click on each function and button, and list the product structure diagram (mind mapping is very convenient) to overlook the functional distribution and design of the entire product. For example, some products are "wide and shallow", while others are "narrow and deep".

The functional flow chart needs to reasonably divide the core demand functions and their extended functions. At the same time, the main line and core of the product should be clearer during the analysis process. Pay attention to the following three points:

• For products with unique processes (different from similar products), we can focus on analyzing the product features from the process.
• The process should be considered carefully and comprehensively, and multiple possibilities should be considered.
• From the process, we can understand the design purpose behind the designer. Why did they design it this way? Can be analyzed.

In the functional experience analysis, you can analyze certain key functions, and it must also be consistent with the purpose you set for this product experience report at the beginning of the writing. For example, whether to focus on analyzing interaction design or functional layout. Of course, if you don’t have a very strong purpose, you can also analyze the product from multiple dimensions. I have listed several dimensions here for your reference.

• Information architecture: rationality of information classification, simplicity of information processing, and completeness of information.
• Operation process: operation complexity, operation area settings, smoothness of interactive behavior, page logic, etc.
• Product functions: the degree to which functions meet requirements, whether functions are redundant, function settings, and the rationality of classification.
• Information presentation: aesthetics of the interface, rationality of the layout, uniformity of information, completeness, etc.

(6) Competitive product analysis

If you want to make a comprehensive comparison of competitors, you can only choose 1-2 competitors; if you want to analyze a certain function or business process, you can choose 3-4 or even more competitors to reflect comprehensiveness.

There are many ways to analyze competitors. I will not elaborate on any one method first, because competitor analysis does not take up too much space in the experience report, and we must avoid being too top-down. We can analyze from the following dimensions:

• Comparison of basic functions, borrowed from the great god's picture (if there is any infringement, please let me know and remove the picture, thank you!)

• Comparison of basic attributes, such as download volume, market conditions, financing , operating model, etc.

• Analysis of special features, such as special features that the other party does not have.
• Data analysis can be done by comparing various data of several competing products in the form of charts from industry reports and data websites, which is professional and intuitive.

Competitive analysis is not a useless task. Analyzing competitors of your own products in your company helps you understand the market situation and improve your own products. Competitive analysis in product experience reports can broaden your thinking about products and not limit yourself to the limitations brought by the product surface. At the same time, it can also provide something to say in the next module (suggestions).

(7) Suggestions (if I were the PM)

One thing that needs to be made clear here is that the key points of experience that you mentioned at the beginning of the article still need to be followed in this module.

Don't just complain about other people's products. You can divide them into advantages and suggestions. At the same time, don't take it for granted and propose too macro approaches, such as what functions to add or how the sorting should be. You should know that what you can think of must have been considered by the product manager, so don't try to teach an expert how to do it. In addition, perhaps the suggestions or complaints you can make are relatively micro, but if you can extend from the reasons you proposed to the strategic positioning of the entire product, it will help to elevate your suggestions and is worth referring to.

Another tip : When we make suggestions, we ourselves feel that some of them are uncertain or easily influenced by subjectivity. It would appear unprofessional to make them rashly. Therefore, you can suggest conducting a certain test and explain the testing method to enhance the reference value of the suggestion.

Finally, UI design is easily influenced by subjective and personal aesthetic impressions, so here we only need to state the facts without making too many judgments.

(8) Summary

In the summary, write down your thoughts and reflections, or briefly summarize the key points described in each chapter. Finally, the summary of the experience report should be as concise as mine! concise! No more simplicity! ! ! The analysis in the previous article is enough to reflect your thinking, and too much summary would be redundant!

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The author of this article @有填儿的丸子 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map