Design for the 99%

#5 - May.2021

Prioritizing the next feature you want to deliver to your customers is always a challenge. If you are evolving any tech product is certain that you already faced this type of decision and most of them are not trivial.

It is easy to get lost in noise. Everyone has a slightly different understanding of what's important, urgent, and valuable. There are countless techniques for prioritizing but wanted to share a simple intuition that might help you: design for the 99%.

Focus on providing the best experience for 99% of your customers; focus on removing blockers from the 99% of users struggling with your software; try to keep as happy as possible 99% of your customers. Avoid "just-in-case" features if the basics are not ready yet.

Sometimes we get distracted by immediate problems or customer pain-points (or fires). Things will burn. Aim for features that provide value for most of your customers (high impact) and don't get distracted with the 1%. Instead, invest on faster iterations. Learn to live with these fires until you find leverage opportunities to add value.