Facing the "uncertainty" of products and operations, my two working methods and judgment logic

When developing products or doing operations , you will always face many "uncertain" situations, namely: you want to do something, but you have no idea whether users will approve of it, like it or not, and whether it will make sense after you do it.

Whenever this happens, you tend to become very conflicted.

I personally always like to rely on two types of working methods.

2.

Method one is to do it for data and rationality. In other words, every decision you make needs to be supported and reviewed by data, and also needs to be continuously adjusted and optimized based on the data.

For example, if a WeChat official account wants to open a new content column, but we don’t know how many people will like it, we can try to publish a few corresponding contents first, and then make the next decision and adjustment based on the number of readings and user feedback after publication.

For example, if WeChat wants to launch a "pay to join a group" feature, but is not sure how users will respond to this feature, and is even less sure whether a large number of groups will suddenly start charging fees after the feature is launched, and users will be annoyed by advertisements flying everywhere. Therefore, they can first release a test version with this feature on a small scale, let some people try it out first, and then decide whether to officially launch this feature to all users by monitoring the data of this small version.

In other words, for every decision you want to make, you need to think about the corresponding data that can be used to review and verify the decision before making it, and monitor it. Similarly, after obtaining the monitoring data, you also need to rigorously refer to the data to think and evaluate how to advance and adjust the next product and operation direction.

3.

Method 1 emphasizes logic and rationality, which is rigorous and objective. However, the problem is that the evaluation and communication costs are very high. For example, you may have discovered a key clue from a pile of data, and after doing a series of tracking around this clue, you came to a particularly important judgment. However, when facing your boss and colleagues, in order to explain the logic of this judgment clearly, you may need to make a lot of statements and analyses, and make sure they can understand.

For example, if you are unlucky enough to be in a startup team that is "just short of a few programmers", you will find that most of the time you simply don't have the opportunity to see so much data - because there are simply no resources to help you build the data background, data collection points, and a host of other related things.

In addition, data also has its own limitations. For example, things like tone and community atmosphere are difficult to define through data.

4.

So, there is a second method.

The second method is to do it for yourself and your intuition. The specific approach is to turn yourself into a typical user first, and then create something that makes you "feel" something, something that you really like or even love from the bottom of your heart.

I once told a story - I have a friend who, for a period of time, was working on an "anti -social social product" that was aimed at a group of users who "are afraid and resist the burdensome social interaction in the real world, but are still full of yearning for beautiful things. Although they have a lot to express, they don't want to be seen by those 'aliens' who don't understand them."

Yes, it is such an abstract product and user group, but she is able to take it very well. In her team, she is the one who makes the final decisions on whether what is displayed on each interface is good or not, whether users will like each piece of content to be pushed and published, and how the core logic of each product should be set. They rarely look at data for analysis, and most of the time, she is the one who makes the final decisions. The amazing thing is that she rarely makes mistakes in her decisions. Almost 90% of the things she decides on a whim are later proven to be very popular with users.

The secret to it all is simple. You know, she is a person who "is afraid and resists the heavy burden of social interaction in the real world, but still yearns for beautiful things. Although she has many things to express, she does not want to be seen by those 'aliens' who do not understand her." Because of this, in a sense, she is actually making a product for herself. Therefore, there is no need for data or complex logical judgment. Many times, you just need to make sure that what you make can make her approve and like it.

She knew that as long as she could do this, it would probably be something that users would like.

This logic may sound magical, but it really works.

5.

Four years ago, a few friends and I started a business and created a learning website. We provided a variety of learning courses for a group of "learning-obsessed" users - from how to go to bed early and get up early to how to learn to play Texas Hold'em in 2 hours.

At the beginning of my business, in order to be closer to my users, I spent almost two months turning myself into a typical “learning addict”. To do all this, I traveled back and forth in two months, attended about 50 offline learning courses and salons with different themes, communicated and chatted with users a lot, and tried to complete the things that our target users do most often: taking notes, drawing mind maps, writing diaries, getting up early, etc., until I could slowly really make myself enjoy it all.

Then, something wonderful happened. After that, I found that for any course we launched on our website that I really liked, the sales and enrollment volumes after going online were basically not bad. As for the other courses, which I don’t like very much, the endings are usually very miserable.

Even if there are two courses with the same topic but different instructors, sometimes I can roughly judge which one will be more popular with users after just one glance.

Since then, many of the decisions I made based on this intuition have been successful.

I have to say, it’s a very exciting feeling to be in this state. At that moment, as a product or operation, you have the ability and space to drive changes in your products and services, and you can gain recognition and praise from a large group of users entirely based on your own standards and judgment. There is nothing more exciting and satisfying than this.

It feels like you are a savior who has a huge mission and possesses some special abilities to save the world. That will give you a huge sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

6.

The second method is one that abandons strict logic and rational analysis and relies more on sensibility and intuition. The advantage is that once you can really turn yourself into a typical user, the decision-making cost of judging an event will become extremely low, and you will also be able to gain a higher sense of work accomplishment from it.

But the downside is that it’s also easy for you to hit a ceiling or get stuck in a limitation. Just like my friend who makes "anti-social social" products, if she insists on making only one product that can satisfy her at the moment, then no matter how beautiful it is, it will be a very niche product.

7.

In actual work, these two methods often need to be used in combination to be more successful.

Personally, I prefer to use the logic of the second method to determine what must not be done and what may be done, and then use the logic of the first method to determine what can definitely be done.

For example, when operating a WeChat public account , I will fully understand the users and judge what we will not do and what we may do based entirely on our own preferences.

Let me give you a real example -

A year ago, I made the following judgment based on my intuition: WeChat public accounts must not blindly repost so-called " dry goods " that have long been circulated all over the world; they must not post a lot of industry information that we ourselves cannot read; and they must not post a lot of self-indulgent activity summaries.

In contrast, we may need to make this official account more stylish through a lot of detailed work such as copywriting , interaction, activities, and operation mechanisms; we may also be able to make a series of analysis reports, step by step leading everyone to learn how to understand and analyze products, as well as to take the initiative to analyze and interpret many classic operation activities in the industry - I think this will be much more valuable than just reading a lot of "dry goods" where everyone has their own opinions.

Then, after relying on method 2 to reach the bottom line of "absolutely not do it" and the guess of "maybe I can do it", I will use logic and data to determine one by one what can definitely be done. For example--

• After our product analysis report has been released to the public for a while, are the readings, reposts and likes really that good? In other words, what frequency rhythm would be more appropriate?
• Do you really like to read our stories about people?

Of course, you will also notice that the official accounts are beginning to contain an increasing proportion of reports on Internet industry product events and reviews of operational activities.

Then, it was precisely relying on this kind of working method and judgment logic that we turned this WeChat public account into one that has some fame in the Internet circle and a pretty good reputation in just less than a year.

In my opinion, a good operation or product must be able to switch between these two states.

8.

Following this logic, I had some new ideas about WeChat public accounts at the end of 2016:

I feel that because there are so many and diverse methodologies and statements about products and operations, many concepts tend to become more vague and abstract the more you listen. For example, many people find it very difficult to understand the concept of " user operation ". So, maybe we can try to start from the essence of things and lead everyone to rethink and sort out a similar concept and topic every week.

I feel that what many newcomers lack is not “dry stuff” but more some learning methods. So, maybe in addition to methodology and case analysis, I can actually take some time to try to talk about the learning methods of Internet people.

I also feel that we should try to open some columns around some non-standard issues, allowing users to work with us to create some valuable content.

…

I think if half of these things can be done well, this official account might become better, sexier, and more influential.

Starting from January 2017, I will try to implement all these ideas according to the logic mentioned today.

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