Two design rules that make products win.

Winning Products dominate. You don’t want to compete with them. Once a winning product is in someone’s hands, it’s almost impossible to pry it out. Examples of winning products include Zoom, Amazon, and Apple’s iPhone. But what makes these products winning?

A Winning Product is both best-in-class and first-in-mind.

“Best in class” means the product solves the problem so well for this group of people, it’s indistinguishable from the perfect solution. A winning product’s solution is so close to the ideal, the customer isn’t motivated to look for something better.

Customer perceptions are shaped by past products, creating mundane expectations. This opens an opportunity for a winning product to solve the problem close to the ideal way. It’s not incrementally better, it’s orders of magnitude better. Once it’s in, it’s in. The only strategy a competitor could adopt would be to solve a different but closely related problem. Or solve the same problem for a different group of people. DuckDuckGo will never beat Google in search. But they could become the search platform for people who value their privacy.

It’s possible to have a great product that still doesn’t win. “First in mind” means when I encounter the problem, I think of the product. To win, a product needs to become the first solution that consumers think of when they have the problem. This creates a loyalty loop. When the customers encounter the problem, they think of the product. They purchase the product, use it, and provide feedback and referrals. The product grows, and the cycle repeats.

But how do you design a Winning Product? If you’re in San Francisco, head to Market and 2nd, find five designers (they’re the ones wearing all black, white shoes), and ask them how to design a winning product. You’ll get five rambling answers.

To design a Winning Product, just follow these two rules.

1. The solution must start with a single primitive: have a single solution, for a specific problem, and solve it in the best way. Zoom has meetings, the iPhone has apps. There must be only one starting primitive.
2. Build on existing solutions, do not reinvent the wheel. Cobbling together existing solutions means it’s more predictable for you; but more importantly, it’s more familiar to your customers. Everything’s a remix.

Winning Products are defined by being best in class, and first in mind. You do this by offering a solution with a single primitive, which builds on existing solutions. Here are some examples.

Zoom

Problem: Talk via the internet.

Solution: The Zoom “meeting.”

Zoom is best in class. They solved the problem of “talk via the internet” so well, we use “zoom” as a verb today. This is an indicator of a winning product and shows Zoom is clearly first in mind. If I need to chat with coworkers, or spend time remotely with friends during a pandemic, I Zoom.

Zoom’s product offers a single primitive: the meeting. When designing a product it’s tempting to create solution forks. Where we solve different problems in different ways, then try to bring it all together. No. Zoom offers the meeting where you can also: chat, share your screen, react via emojis, share files, see video, hear audio, etc.

Notice these are all existing solutions. Zoom didn’t reinvent the video camera. The chat interface is blah. Recordings get stored and linked predictably. Screensharing is a common practice. None of these solutions are new or novel to anyone saying “Let’s Zoom”. They built with existing solutions.

Here’s a design secret, when someone says “this is easy to use”, what they’re saying unknowingly is “I use other products today that have similar patterns, and therefore I know how to use this and I feel powerful.” Using existing solutions is important because it’s a shortcut to the “this is easy to use” moment.

The losing product: Skype

Skype, in contrast, does not have a single primitive. Even though it also enables people to talk using the internet, Skype is solving many problems in many ways. Skype is chat, contacts, and video calling in one product. Three problems, and three separate solutions. I don’t know which specific problem it solves for me, so it’s not first in mind.

iPhone

Problem: Use the power of the Internet in your pocket without sacrificing the functionality of a phone.

Solution: The “app.”

The iPhone wasn’t the first to offer apps on mobile devices. They perfected it in a way only Apple could…

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