Working on projects like this is often tricky. You are often criticized by the company's management and numerous shareholders. Every detail needs to be coordinated when it comes to large-scale and major changes.
I recently made two improvements on GitHub, and the response I received surpassed all my wildest dreams. I have never received so much gratitude and love that the community has generously endowed me with. But what I did weren't big, solid projects. These things were tiny .
First, we made dynamic favicons for GitHub pull request pages . [This article was written in 2017.] Browser tabs now always display the current pull request build status. Prior to the release of this update, users had to periodically switch between tabs to check if a build had finished so they could continue working. Impatient users very often checked the pull request tabs.
I made the icons and Jason worked to make them dynamically update. The change took less than a week and was instantly noticed by hundreds of people. Below are just a handful of rave reviews to give you a general idea.
Tweets about GitHub favicons
My next project was to replace the indicator
...
on the new pull request pages with an arrow that indicated the direction of the merge . Before this update was released, users often confused the direction of branch merging.
It was just one line of code that I wrote in a couple of minutes. I didn't even design the arrow, it was already in our icon set.
This small change solved a relatively small problem, but it was very useful for many users. And again we saw hundreds of happy reviews and reposts.
GitHub Merge Arrow Tweets
Small effort, big results
The first change took less than a week, and the second just a few minutes. Both updates affected very small parts of the platform, but people reacted to them with wild excitement and enthusiasm. The users were very happy .
This does not mean that the results of updates can or should be measured by the number of likes received - this may not be as significant as their value for each individual user. But personal feedback speaks volumes about how meaningful even the smallest improvements can be to your users.
Over the years, I have seen this scheme in its various interpretations a huge number of times:
The obvious recommendation, shown in the first square of the table, is to work on tasks that take a little time and produce a lot of exhaust. It's funny, but I can't say that I often see companies put this advice into practice. Given how valuable such improvements are, I honestly don't understand why this principle is so rarely used.
Let's talk about how these changes can play a role in your life.
One small change can lead to a big win
People perform high-repetition activities (such as creating new GitHub pull requests) a million times a day. An individual user can follow the same route of action several times a week, a day, or even an hour. These repetitive actions become part of their lives.
If there is even one unnecessary action or inconvenience to use, it multiplies with each iteration. One sub-optimal action that takes an extra 5 seconds and is repeated an infinite number of times a day creates unnecessary fuss and is a waste of time.
This is why many users are so grateful for these updates. They value the time they save in the future.
There was a similar reaction when Netflix added a button that allowed users to skip intros in series. With this change, users no longer had to fast-forward and rewind videos to find the right spot when a new episode begins.
We can see similar feedback in response to a Chrome update, when they added a volume icon that showed which tab the sound was playing on. With this update, users no longer had to click on every open tab to find the source of the sound they were having trouble with.
There are many other examples of how such small changes have sparked a wave of enthusiastic thanks. The changes might seem quite insignificant, but they once and for all saved millions of users from the inconvenience they had to experience over and over again.
Imagine that one of your twenty tabs in Chrome is now automatically playing the most ridiculous video on the entire Internet. Through trial and error, you click on each tab to find the source of the sound. You couldn't find it the first time. How is this possible? Well, you may have clicked on the tab you want and didn't notice. You will try again and again, until finally, completely desperate, you close the entire browser. And tomorrow and all subsequent days in the foreseeable future, all this will be repeated from the beginning.
Recreation of user experience.
Compare this to the experience where the user simply closes the tab with the volume icon.
You can look at these changes in terms of saving time. The intermediate steps (when the user clicks on all the tabs in random order, trying to find the source of the noise, or puzzles over which branch is merging with what and worries about how not to break the code and destroy their company) are very short in time, but when there are many of them, they accumulate. This kind of updates can get rid of them.
When you save users from such an annoying problem, it has a very powerful effect, and sometimes even surpasses the effect of releasing major updates. Just imagine that such a small effort could lead to such an impressive result.
This is what I call a small victory.
Small victories strengthen your business
Let's be clear about this right away - big projects are important. This is not to say that if a company wants to continue to develop, then minor improvements, such as the ones I described above, will contribute to its development. So don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting everyone start planning roadmaps that are all about these little victories. The development should be based on ambitious projects.
But large-scale projects require team coordination, a lot of work and, first of all, a lot of time. These things don't happen quickly. While working on such a large project, it may start to seem that the product is not developing. For a startup (especially in an industry where there is fairly high competition), such stagnation can mean a death sentence.
To mitigate this effect, companies need to create an impression of dynamics and prove to their users that they are listening to their opinion and making the necessary improvements in the product. By releasing such small updates, companies can fill the long time gaps between major launches.
Many companies try to maintain a balance by releasing MVP versions and use them for their development. Ideally, in this way, users regularly gain value for themselves at every stage of the company's development. But each such step can still take from a couple of weeks to several months, and the end result that users observe in each new version does not always seem valuable to them. After all, often a beta version is just a small step towards a more complex product.
Unlike updates like this, the small changes I listed at the beginning are completely self-contained. Netflix's "skip intro" button is valuable to users on its own... Likewise Chrome's volume indicators and dynamic GitHub icons.
Thanks to this, users perceived these updates as fresh, independent and full-fledged features. Users understood and felt that their opinion was being listened to . These updates made a strong impression on the users, they felt the benevolent attitude of the company and, perhaps, in this way the companies won the trust and loyalty of their customers. Why, they probably even contributed to organic growth!
MVP and iterative development are powerful tools, and companies looking to grow quickly should definitely use them. But small wins have a lot more potential when it comes to filling the gap between major updates. They keep the achieved development results and improve the attitude of the user community towards the company.
Make Small Victories Work for You
Okay, we've already figured out that small wins are great and just what you need. You probably already like the idea of using them. The next step is to implement such small upgrades regularly and enjoy the fruits of your labors.
Chances are, your intuition is now telling you to open your user feedback channels and start choosing tasks. I would not advise you to do this.
I noticed one weird detail about the user issues that you solved by releasing updates - users almost never reported them.
Hundreds of people were thrilled when we added an arrow to the pull request pages. But at the same time, none of them ever wrote that he confused the direction of the merger when there were points. Many then wrote that they themselves were to blame for not noticing this inconvenience.
Tweets from people who blame themselves
People are so used to these mergers that they no longer even notice that they are doing unnecessary actions. If it is inconvenient for them to use the service somewhere, for them it is simply an integral part of life. Status quo. What they have to live with, not what needs to be improved.
How many people have noticed that scrolling through the video endlessly to find the beginning of a series is something that could be improved? How many people thought they could ask the Chrome team to fix the problem with finding a tab with sound?
"They would have asked for a faster horse" - Henry Ford
This lesson is that you shouldn't rely on your users when you decide to make some small update (as we already know, this is often the best thing to shoot). You cannot improve the product based only on feedback from users and their requests. You need to dig deeper.
Create a list and double check it
Creating a list of quick wins is a fairly simple task. It is much more difficult to make sure that what you start working on will pay off the effort. Not every new option will lead to the kind of response we described earlier, and this is the peculiarity of small wins.
Small victories are self-sufficient. These changes are small, concrete, and valuable in their own right. If a feature is not valuable and meaningful to users as a standalone functionality, it has no place on your list.
Small victories don't take much effort. Such projects are simple, straightforward and quick to execute. If the change is time-consuming and labor-intensive, it should not be included in your list.
Small victories bring big results.They affect those service components with which most users interact most often. If a feature does not make a splash in the user community, it should not be included in this list. This means that things like working on the dark corners of your system, however important and valuable that task may be, are not right for this list.
Small victories speed up work. They save users time by eliminating unnecessary steps ( physical or mental) that are required to complete the action. This approach is very useful for the changes we described earlier. It allows you to distinguish really valuable ideas from less useful, albeit easy to implement, which are not suitable for this list. At least for the first time after the update, users will still remember the unpleasant experience they had to face. They will intuitively be aware of it. This is the real reason for their love and gratitude.
Start by putting together a meeting and generating as many options as you can. Designers, developers, project managers, consulting and support departments can all have the same valuable and meaningful ideas, but the opinion of someone who has a finger on the pulse of your users is especially important. Ask yourself:
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In answering these questions, a fresh perspective will come in very handy. I had only been working on the GitHub team for a few months when I decided to add an arrow on the pull request page. I did it simply because the previous solution, in my opinion, was illogical .
Designers, like users, get used to their product and its various flaws. Sometimes it is very difficult to see what could be improved. So try to attract new employees to this business. Make it part of the workflow for new people in your company. Create an atmosphere in the company where employees can question established principles as they go through the stage of getting to know the company's product.
Once you have compiled a list of improvements, you need to evaluate the value of each feature to users and distribute them based on effort / results criteria, as is usually done with any other idea.
Now start following the items from the list.
All companies are different, so there is no single option that will suit everyone, without exception. However, I can confidently say that regularity is key. This will give the impression that the company cares about users and is growing rapidly. This will allow you to gain the trust of your users.
- Do one small win each sprint, or do one from your list every time you have time. Make sure that these mini-updates come out at regular intervals.
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That's all. There is nothing particularly difficult about this, this is not nuclear physics or writing a novel. But this gives a very powerful result.
I believe leveraging small wins can do wonders for your company. This will give you a huge edge over your competitors. This will show users that you care about them and that they can trust you. Your users can start promoting your product themselves, this will increase your customer loyalty and lead to organic user growth. Most importantly, it will improve the quality of your product and improve the lives of your users.
Imagine that all these incredible results can be achieved with just a little effort.
So ... what can you improve right now?