Today, consumer expectation for good software is so high that anything that is not well-crafted and well-thought out will not be able to gain traction in a competitive category. Nailing that first-time customer experience is super critical and can determine the success or failure of the product. Consumers are less forgiving of cumbersome and non-intuitive softwares that does not meet their high expectations.

High consumer expectation for software drives demand for good design.
In order to thrive, businesses have no choice but to meet customer expectations for a good user experience. Many tech companies do not compete based on price alone which can be a race to the bottom. They compete based on differentiation, superior innovation and customer experience to edge out competitors.

For decades, many early-stage tech start-ups have taken shortcuts in product design and development due to limited time and resources. With short runways to prove product-market fit before funding runs out, it’s common for these companies to release a hastily built, half-baked first version to the market.

The idea with MVP culture is to ship a quick but functional and viable first version in the market, get early customer feedback and iterate quickly. Some teams took it perhaps too far, focusing too much on the “minimum” and not enough of the “viable”. This way of product development may have worked & was celebrated in the early 2000s to 2010s. Today, customers are increasingly expecting polished products right off the bat.

Generative AI cannot save a company from bad design & user experience.
Even generative AI & the most cutting edge design tools cannot help teams with low UX maturity level to dig themselves out of years of technical and design debt and bad software development culture. Software teams in such organizations need to unlearn all the bad habits cultivated over the years. That type of organizational change does not happen overnight.

This is a risky situation for any established company to be in because they can be easily unseated by a younger startup unshackled by legacy issues and hungry to win over the market with fresher, more thoughtful solutions.

Customers who are not impressed in their first experience with a product are highly unlikely to come back for a second time. They may make a mental note not to come back to brands that give them a bad first impression. They may even share those bad experiences with their friends or on social media, further ruining the startup’s brand reputation very quickly.

Today, it’s getting harder & harder for new products to get that 2nd chance to win customers. Nailing that first-time customer experience can be a make-or-break factor for new products.

Competitors who come in at a later stage having studied the market & customer needs at a deeper level can simply swoop in and offer superior & differentiated products & services to win and dominate the market.

Design has become more accessible to more organizations, but why is good design still rare?
As I mentioned earlier, tech startups and teams have been so used to taking shortcuts & making compromises in product design & development for years & decades, it has resulted in a culture of compounding tech & design debt. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

In fact we have seen this play out in recent years. Young upstart software companies with beautiful software, on point branding & messaging hits a nerve with consumers, quickly rising to the top of their categories, unseating long-established companies with huge resources.

In my view, good design meets customer expectations. Great design exceeds customer expectations. For this to happen, you first need to understand your customer expectations & needs to establish a baseline. Deep imagination and creative exploration of what a great experience for your customers can be will take it to the next level. It’s the difference between a 5-star and a 10-star experience. It’s a completely different mindset than approaching software design with a “what’s the least I can do here?” which can be one of the negative side effect of the MVP mindset.

A high-performing product design team can define design principles that align with the company’s vision and target customer base, apply those principles to create a coherent design strategy, and execute it in collaboration with the broader software team. Achieving this requires immense focus, exceptional teamwork across various functions and a relentless commitment to overdeliver on customers’ expectation.

As the landscape of software design evolves, the bar for what constitutes a successful product has never been higher. Consumers expect intuitive, well-crafted solutions that not only meet but exceed their needs. MVP culture, once a celebrated approach, is no longer sufficient in a world where generative AI and cutting-edge design tools are making possibilities endless.

The companies that will thrive in this new era are those willing to break free from shortcuts & compromises, prioritize thoughtful design, and relentlessly pursue innovation. It’s time for teams to embrace the raised expectations, learn from past missteps, and commit to delivering exceptional, user-centered products that define the future of software.