I have classical music going on Spotify as I write, but that doesn’t really make a theme song.
I’d like my theme song to be something like “We Are The Champions” or one of the big rock anthems. But that’s not really me, even though I love those songs. But “We Are The Champions” as a theme? Pretty sappy.
To be honest, the song that probably most exemplifies my life is not not one of my favorite songs.
“It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Don’t Got That Swing)” is the one. Swing dancing is a big part of my life. And this song is about the most fundamental part of swing dancing – the “swing.”
In music, “swing” means the opposite of “square,” which in turn means, “going strictly to the beat.”
And although I love classical music – and find it better for writing to – you can see how it’s the epitome of square. The beats are just so, and the music goes square to them. Dum-dum-dum-dum. Whereas in jazz or any music where the rhythm is swung, it’s going to be more like Dummm-de-dumm-de-dumm-de-dummm. And that’s the stuff I really like.
When the kids on the old America’s Bandstand show used to say, “… and it’s got a beat you can dance to,” that’s what they meant. Funk has it, jazz has it, the blues have it, some rhythm and blues has it, some rock has it, although most rock is straightahead. (It’s good for other things than dancing, if you ask me.)
I want my life to always have some pizzazz, and the things I do, and the way I think, and the way I go about things.
I can easily tie this into product management, by the way. I want customers to love my stuff, not just want and/or need to use it. And you make customers love your stuff with pizzazz, with life, with “swing.”
And most enterprise software does not swing, in either a literal or metaphorical sense of the word. There are exceptions: Slack swung, especially when it first came out. It zigged where other apps zagged. It put a little spin on things that no one had seen before, and it was incredibly engaging. Instagram swung, with its filters and its stickers.
How do you make your product “swing?” What are some things you can do give your product some pizzazz that will help people engage, that will keep them excited, that will make them want to come back for more?
The most obvious thing, and something that often product people forget, is to make sure your product ties back into what your users really want to get done. They don’t actually care about your product, do they? They care about something else, and your product is going to help them get that other thing. To the degree you can make your product less about itself and more about the thing someone is trying to accomplish, the better.
One way to do this is to not talk about “how to use my product,” but “how to use my product to accomplish X,” where X is a thing that your user wants to achieve.
And even include the types of variations that someone is likely to be facing when accomplishing X. Instead of telling a user how to export a report, tell them how to share a report with colleagues – which includes exporting – but also includes emailing, sharing via a chat, messaging. Each of which puts certain constraints on how you might do the export.