Summary of Lecture 7 - How to Build Products Users Love (Kevin Hale)

00:00:00 - 00:45:00

In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses how to build products users love. He emphasizes the importance of empathizing with your users, and cites examples of successful products that have been able to do this. He also discusses the importance of customer support, and how it can be improved by making everyone in the company responsible for it.

• 00:00:00 Kevin Hale discusses how to make products users love, emphasizing the importance of first impressions and human nature in product design. He discusses how Wufoo, a company he founded, was acquired by SurveyMonkey.
• 00:05:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses how first impressions are important for the starting of any relationship, and how good product designers discover and capitalize on other first moments. He gives a few examples of how good design can create an enchanting experience for the user. Finally, he discusses how one call to action can dictate the personality of a website or product.
• 00:10:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses how to build products that users love. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your users and their needs, and cites examples of successful products such as MailChimp and Stripe. He concludes the lecture by discussing how understanding customer support is key to building successful products.
• 00:15:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses the importance of building a product that users love, and how customer support is a critical part of this process. He explains how customer support can be improved by making everyone in the company responsible for it, and discusses the four horsemen of customer support- criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. He also talks about the importance of having QA in a "nice elegant solution," and how the lack of customer support can lead to churn and ultimately poor product quality.
• 00:20:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses how to build products users love by focusing on their emotional state and how this impacts their ability to use the product. He also discusses how increased knowledge gaps lead to decreased usability and how focusing on user experience can help mitigate this.
• 00:25:00 Kevin Hale discusses how Wufoo developed strategies to improve customer service and conversion rates. One example is the Wufoo system, which tracks user data to gauge the impact of new features. This helps keep users engaged and satisfied. Another strategy is providing handwritten thank you cards to users every Friday. This shows appreciation and improves team morale.
• 00:30:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses how to build products that users love. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on your most profitable users, and how to create a culture of customer intimacy. Additionally, he discusses the importance of getting functionality right and avoiding humor when developing a product.
• 00:35:00 The speaker discusses how to balance the need to work on product while also maintaining other skills and tasks essential to a company. He describes how King for a Day, a feature where someone randomly gets drawn to be the king and have direct control over features in Wufoo, was a hit and morale boost for employees. He advises that, while working remotely, employees compensate for lost efficiencies by having to compensate for other benefits such as networking and camaraderie.
• 00:40:00 Kevin Hale discusses the benefits of remote working and how Wufoo implemented it. Employees were given a four and a half day work week and half day on Friday was for all business meetings and other tasks. Each employee had a 15-minute rule for any complicated issues. Employees were only evaluated on their ability to do customer support. This process led to few need for layoffs.
• 00:45:00 In this lecture, Kevin Hale discusses the importance of empathy in engineering and how it can be used to handle stress. He also discusses one unsuccessful experiment in which employees competed to win a vacation.