It’s a simple question. One that speaks to a deeper need to understand why you should care and put effort into solving a problem. Knowing the answer to this question — and believing in it — is one of the keys to higher engagement and greater performance of teams.
I recently experienced the need to clearly communicate the why of a new project we were starting for WordPress.com. Working on our new editing experience had dropped me directly in to a point in our user journey that needed major work. I’d experienced first hand via user interviews, customer feedback, and key product metrics that our users expected more flexibility when editing the layout and design of their website.
The design team that worked with me had shared in that user pain, and had worked through early iterations of an editor experience that we felt confident would begin to address the needs of our users. When it was time to consult and get creative input from our engineering teams, the missing why became clear.
Always be Communicating
When you’re deep in to the product, and directly experiencing a user pain point, it’s easy to forget that new people coming into a project do not share that same understanding. In this instance our engineering teams were finishing work on a different product area and had not been fully brought up to speed before consultation.
As they did not have the full picture for the reasons why we were doing this work, some of the feedback on our design efforts so far was of concern. There were many technical challenges, and was this even something that would make a difference? Questions that a clearly communicated why would be able to circumvent.
As a product person it’s vitally important to communicate what the problem is you are trying to fix, and most importantly why this is a problem for your users. Use both qualitative and quantitative inputs to bring clarity and weight to your message.
This should be communicated early, ideally as the first step. It should be repeated often to connect new and existing teams back to the problem, grounding their daily decisions in user outcomes.