top of page

In which I pretend to be a PM for apps like Ditto that have received a lot of love from users and help product teams manage their words from design to production. I talk to Mariana, a "SCAD grad", a potential user of Ditto and currently doing great things at rocketship startup Signifyd

​

As a PM my objective is to help build products that provide value to high-frequency use- cases so it can acquire newer users at lower cost and retain existing ones at higher value. 

​

  • Use-cases: How often and how severe is the use-case. Is there a higher frequency, higher severity adjacent use-case. 

  • Acquisition: What are barriers to try and switch. 

  • Retention: Can value be delivered sooner to avoid risk of churn. 

​

Takeaways:​​

  • Managing words from a marketing objective (eg: website) is a low frequency (3:40), high severity (6:55) job for Mariana. Signifyd is a mature Series E startup that provides credit card fraud protection for huge online retailers. Despite that, the last time she needed to think about this problem was a year previously when the website needed translating into multiple languages. 

  • Despite bringing up product personality and product voice as important considerations, the risks of inconsistent copy appear to be manageable on a day to day basis and spike infrequently like during an annual audit or when the site needs a first time translation. 

  • "What happened next" as a conversation hack to get detailed and reliable user feedback worked (eg:11:10)

​

Next steps with Mariana and others:

  • Mockups: Mariana mentions how highlighting inconsistent language in code could be useful. This type of "reimagining" of experiences is risky to act on, and should be followed up with a low cost, lightweight mockup even if in Keynote and validated more thoroughly with multiple prospects. 

  • Asks: See if Mariana would be open to sharing her solution to the problem (style guide) to understand it better. 

  • Probe: Actively find inconsistencies on Signifyd's website if any, point them out to Mariana and see if her opinion on severity changes. 

  • Talk: to more core personas (designers, PMs, devs). 

  • Test: hypotheses like the problem could be more high frequency, high severity for personas like legal, deal desk. 

​

Big thanks to Mariana for her time and knowledge! 

©2023 by Aditya Sudhakar

bottom of page