vol.33: 15 Mindful Product Principles from Allen Zhang, Father of WeChat

“Everyone only has 24 hours in a day. The mission of developers shouldn’t be to make users spend all their time on their phones aside from when they eat and sleep. We are more concerned with when our users communicate, post a picture, read an article, make a payment, or find a Mini Program, that they can do it as quickly and efficiently as possible... See more

We have to stay really close to our users. We call it participatory design. We talk to hundreds of users on WeChat constantly. We have daily conversations. Not only about product, but also to understand what they think and what they like in pop culture. We need to be immersed into the American teen culture. We always share our wireframes with these... See more

His product philosophy focuses on combining intuitive design, human psychology, and what’s technologically feasible. After these are melded, economic viability naturally comes afterwards.

Here’s what stood out:An obsession with efficiencyAlignment between product strategy and acquisition strategyA singular focus to build a magical, sticky product through rapid iteration and endless optimization

I'm posting here three products that are doing very well. One is Google Earth - I often use it to learn geography. This product is great but not profitable. Scratch -- programming for children. I don’t know whether it makes money or not, but it’s also really great. Roblox, a kind of UGC sandbox game, which is very different from games that we usual

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