Before designing a user experience, try “product thinking” to discern whether the experience is worth using.
The term “user experience” often conjures up simple, beautiful, easy-to-use feature sets that make the user’s life easier. But the core user experience is not a set of features; it is the job users “hire” the product for. Uber’s core user experience is to get a taxi. The countdown, displaying when the taxi will arrive, is a feature that expands this experience. But Uber’s product works regardless of the feature. The countdown, on the other hand, cannot live without the product. There is a one-way interrelationship between feature and product: Features don’t work without the product. This is why designers should think in terms of products first.
