What Is Product Thinking and Why Does It Matter?

Product thinking is the practice of asking "what makes your product useful?" It keeps teams focused on solving real customer problems rather than just building features. It's the big picture behind everything you build, and it needs to live across your whole organisation, not just in the product manager's head.

What Is Product Thinking?

Product thinking answers the question: "What makes your product useful?"

People buy products to solve real problems. Product thinking helps you identify what those problems are and how your product solves them. Instead of focusing on individual features, product thinking asks you to see the product as a whole, and to build solutions that deliver genuine value and real delight to your customers.

We know that customer experience is central to any product. We know the dimensions that shape it, and we know that what qualifies as good customer experience is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder: your customers. But the road to good customer experience can be full of potholes. Product thinking is one of the key ways to navigate that treacherous path.

How Is Product Thinking Different From Design Thinking?

Design thinking and product thinking are related but they operate at different levels.

Design thinking asks what features will make your product as useful as possible. It's a cyclical process that continuously answers detailed questions about how people need the product to look, feel, and work. It's essential. But without the product, there are no features to design.

Product thinking delivers a more holistic view. It's the big picture of why your product exists in the first place. It's the common purpose behind all of your combined actions as an organisation. It's the reason you're doing the work you do.

In design thinking we create a lot of maps. Empathy maps and journey maps help us orient ourselves to where we are in the product development process and where we need to go next. Maps are useful for showing you where you're going and how to get there. Product thinking is like the globe that gives you a model of the entire world you're mapping.

To mix metaphors: product thinking steers the ship while design thinking is in the engine room, giving feedback to the captain about what's working or not to keep things moving in the right direction. Product and design thinking are in constant communication with each other.

Is Product Thinking Just for Product Managers?

No. And assuming it is can sink an otherwise good product.

It's easy to assume that maintaining a strategic, holistic perspective on your product is only the responsibility of the product manager and business leaders. But that's not enough.

For a product to be successful, everybody on the team needs to hone their product thinking skills. It's nearly impossible to build great products without everybody having an understanding of what the product means to customers and why it exists in the first place.

Everybody in the organisation shapes the customer experience in some way. That means everybody needs this mindset and this commitment to stand on a common purpose.

Product thinking is a culture of customer experience that motivates every decision. Leaders are often responsible for setting the vision and purpose. Product thinking is the connective tissue that ties that bigger vision to the detailed decisions produced by design thinking.

Why Does Product Thinking Matter? And How Do You Do It?

Product thinking is central to good UX design because it prevents us from building things that nobody wants. The point is to make sure we're focused on the full user experience, not just a collection of nice features.

Without it, it's easy to get lost in creating good design and experiences and forget the core reason customers hired your product in the first place.

Here are three basic steps to help make sure you're thinking in terms of product first and features second:

• Identify the customer and their problem to be solved. You need to be sure you're solving a real problem that real people need to solve.
• Uncover the jobs the product is hired to do. You need to know why you're building the product and how it's going to solve the core needs of your customers.
• Identify the desired outcomes. At the end of the day, you need a vision of what you want to achieve with the product and the features that will help you achieve that vision.

Let's Help You Improve Your Product Thinking

Drawbackwards is uniquely positioned to help your organisation define a common purpose because we've worked on all three levels of product development, from strategy and vision, to product thinking, to design thinking.

Let's talk about what's missing from your strategy and how we can help.

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FAQ

What is product thinking in simple terms? Product thinking is the practice of focusing on why your product exists and what real problems it solves for customers, rather than getting caught up in individual features or design details.

How is product thinking different from design thinking? Design thinking focuses on the features, look, feel, and usability of a product. Product thinking sits above that. It's the strategic, holistic view of why the product exists at all. You need both, and they work together.

Who is responsible for product thinking in an organisation? Everyone. While leaders set the vision, every person on the team shapes the customer experience in some way. Product thinking needs to be a shared mindset and culture across the whole organisation, not just something the product manager owns.

Why do products fail without product thinking? Without product thinking, teams can drift into building features that are well-designed but don't solve real customer problems. You end up with a polished product nobody needs, because the core reason customers would hire it was never clearly defined.

How do I get started with product thinking? Start with three questions: Who is your customer and what problem are they trying to solve? What job is your product hired to do? And what does success actually look like? Answering those honestly, before you touch a feature list, is where product thinking begins.