Great products are built on the opportunities surrounding them
Hi there,
This is the forty eighth of D&T Special, a more in-depth view of topics that interest the Canvs team. Today’s topic – Great products are built on the opportunities surrounding them.
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✍️ From the Canvs Research & Editorial Desk
Most product teams default to a straightforward formula: take the core service your business offers, make it into an interface, and ship it with as little friction as possible. It’s a logical starting point, but it’s not where great products are actually built. The distinction between functional and meaningful lies in a single overlooked space: the world surrounding the transaction.
This week the Canvs R&E team has spent some time pondering this concept, let’s dive into some details.
The real stickiness of a product emerges from what sits around its core function, the peripheral expectations that evolve once users integrate it into their actual lives. They’re the difference between a tool people use once and a product they keep coming back to because it genuinely understands how they operate.
Key takeaways from this read:
1. Expectations shift once features become normal
Once a feature becomes normal, people stop evaluating it for whether it works. They start expecting it to match their actual habits and patterns. The real opportunity is in understanding what people do repeatedly and building around it.
2. The medium changes what people expect
Every time the way we do something fundamentally shifts, like going online instead of to a store, streaming instead of renting DVDs, people’s expectations completely reset. They start wanting things that would’ve been nonsense before. If you spot those new expectations early, you’re already ahead.
3. Opportunities need to be built into the system
Real opportunities need to be part of how your system actually functions, like in your data, your flows, your architecture. When they’re woven in from the start, they become part of what makes the product work.
📰 In other news
✨ Product find of the week
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Some highlights from the past month of D&T
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