Product Management requires one to be a jack of all trades. You must possess an array of qualities like empathy, strategic thinking, data acumen, product sense, etc. You will surely be asked a Product sense question whilst interviewing as an IC (individual contributor) PM. So let’s dive in to understand what Product Sense is and how you can build it.

Most people confuse product sense with design sense, limiting the product scope to just the visual interface. It is much more than just how a product looks. It is a skill of creating products that have the intended impact on its users. It is the ability to make the right decisions even with considerable ambiguity. The scope ranges from recognizing the most important opportunities, the most important goals and identifying methods to achieve those goals most effectively.  

Product sense lies at the cusp of empathy and creativity. Having domain knowledge upgrades it. It is about seeing the invisible needs instead of just the obvious and coming up with solutions that effectively address them. Popping up the OTP automatically from your SMS while paying for that Swiggy order or being reminded about forgetting to attach the attachment you mentioned in your email are examples of deeply understanding latent user needs.

Now how does one hone this skill?

• - Understanding psychology is a great starting point to improving empathy. Knowing the different biases, and mental models helps you identify them in products you use every day. Growth.design is one of my favorite resources to learn more about applying psychology when designing products

• - Observation: When you become highly observant of the things around you, you come out of a lot of that habitual thinking and doing. I regularly go to the app store or to Product Hunt, download random apps from different categories and use them. I actively take notes/screenshots of the interactions I liked, what could be done better, why something was done the way it was done and how different design and psychology principles are applied. This exercise is called Product critiquing or teardown. While you do this deconstruction, also ask and answer questions like what is the purpose of this product, what actions do you want to take, look at it and how do you feel as you do those actions. You can take it up a step further by comparing products in the same category which makes good or bad product decisions very apparent

• - Relying on just your experiences is not enough because at the end of the day we build products for other people. I remember giving my mom an app that I was building and observing moments where she was confused, excited, and skeptical. It was a light bulb moment to see how some things were obvious to me whereas for her they were not. This can very well be replicated by conducting usability tests.

Pro tip: From several usability tests that I have conducted, I have noticed that people are mostly time-crunched and highly distracted. The crowded app store only encourages them to drop off the flow if they feel confused. While building products you should ensure that visual cues are obvious, the right defaults are selected and the right comparisons and social proofs are laid out.

Learning from mentors who already have great product sense can fast-track your progress. Attending product reviews helps you identify patterns in the questions and in feedback from people who are good at it. Ask mentors questions like:

• - What user insight prompted them to build a feature/product?
• - The different decision points that they took in the process.
• - The alternative approaches they considered before picking the final one
• - Any mental models or frameworks that helped them in the process.

• Being aware of emerging trends is required to crack the creativity part of the equation of product sense. Platform shifts like AR/VR, AI, Web 3, behavioral shifts, for example, the ones brought in by quick commerce, social shift, for example, working from home, new regulations like the Apple privacy protection help you create products that fit in these constraints or take full advantage. There are many resources where you can find this information, like analyst reports, Twitter, etc. I personally really like this substack called PATENT DROP, which talks about different patents companies have applied for to give you a glimpse of what's coming.

You must invest the time in developing your product sense which will help you make better decisions which only compound over time.

Here are some resources that I found useful:

• 1. https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/product-sense
• 2. https://blog.tryexponent.com/improve-your-product-sense/
• 3. https://jackiebo.medium.com/five-exercises-to-practice-product-sense-57b9104ef8da
• 4. Check this goldmine

‍