What Is Your Product’s Primary Purpose, and Why It’s So Vital to Get it Right

As the level of sophistication and complexity increases in everything, it is critical to always return to the question, “What is this product’s primary purpose or function?” This isn’t to diminish the secondary functions that most products provide but rather to not lose sight of why a product exists.

To be clear, this isn’t a post about marketing. It is a post about design and building software.

One of the great things about my job is I get to speak to lots of interesting people who are solving all sorts of different problems. It gives me the advantage of “seeing” across many industries and working with people who are fantastic at what they do.

If you listen closely when working with people—I mean really listen closely—you will start to notice patterns in design and thought. This should allow you to cross-pollinate your knowledge across industries and domains.

Recently, I was talking with an expert in home automation. They were so angry that they were beside themselves because of how a certain light switch manufacturer botched the implementation of an advanced light switch. They kept saying, “What good is a light switch if it doesn’t #$#^# turn the light on and off?! That is what people want first and foremost! All the other functions are secondary…”

And they were right.

Before we go further, let’s discuss two of the design patterns manufacturers frequently use when designing products:

Design Pattern 1: When a user flips the light switch, go to the home automation system and see what code should be run. Run the home automation code, including changing the state (turn on/off) of the light with the home automation system.

Design Pattern 2: When a user flips the light switch, change the state of the light (turn on/off) just like a normal switch (Analog). Then, contact the server and run the home automation code.

I am not going to get into the details, but Design Pattern 2 may be a little more limited. However, it’s the better of the two solutions. All sorts of things can go wrong when the system tries to implement Design Pattern 1. For example, what if the home network is down? Or what if the home automation system is updating? There are multiple scenarios when the system would interrupt the product’s primary purpose (from the customer’s point of view): to #$#^# turn the light on and off.

When a homeowner walks into a dark house and turns on the light, they may want additional lights in the house to turn off, or they may want the heat to turn up 10 degrees, but what they REALLY want is to turn on that lights the room they are walking into. This is the device’s primary function.

Of course, the product’s primary purpose isn’t just about systems that turn lights on or off. Here are some other examples of failures I have experienced just in the last month:

• Turn on my TV to watch TV. Instead, the TV runs an update with a black screen for 2 minutes.

• Drive my car toward my house, expecting the garage door to open. Instead, the garage door closes as I approach.

• Open a money transfer app to send some money to my personal trainer, who I pay every month. Instead, the app shows me possible new friends, which makes it difficult to pay.

• Open a text message app on my computer to respond to texts from a house contractor. Instead, I had to search all my texts because the most recent ones weren’t listed at the top.

As software gets more sophisticated, it gets more complicated. That said, the product’s primary function should always be easy to find and easy to use. Friction should be kept to a minimum when performing these primary functions. When designing products and systems, be careful not to overcomplicate the user’s intent or attempt to interpret too much.

Try to notice where companies get this right and when they get this wrong. You’ll soon discover why it’s so important to understand the product’s primary purpose in anything you’re developing and why it’s so vital to get it right.