Two people smiling in front of a wall covered with several award plaques, celebrating their innovative product design philosophy.

Product Design Philosophy

I’m sharing my core product design philosophy that I’ve learned and formed over the decades of working with Harman, Fender, Gibson, Acer, Foxconn, Steinberg, Dolby and other brands on creating lasting and profitable products.

  • Don’t reinvent anything that’s not broken.
  • Find the simplest and most straightforward solution–Make it easier and more economical for the program to be adopted widely, even in low, medium-income countries.
  • For functionalities that’s outside of our core mission (or is too big or expensive for us to take on), select partners who are the best in class (i.e. developing a large language model from scratch, student information system). Always remember your core competencies. If certain billion-dollar companies concentrate their entire R&D budget to a certain feature (i.e. contact center, LLM), do NOT try to home brew it without good reason. The landscape would change before you even get anywhere.
  • Collaborate and before investing our own resources.
  • Building a feedback loop into the product to incorporate continuous improvement and relevancy (It is real world user and market testing that’s much more reliable–people lie and most people have no idea what they want
  • Don’t forget to make it fun. Assume that people are busy or lazy, so you have to earn the intended action.
Caitlyn Wang Avatar

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Touched by what you read? Join the conversation!

  • Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards
    Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards

    “If I use rewards to motivate my child, how will they develop their own drive?” This is a great question from one of our software developers in Canada. Around the world, there are so many different beliefs and attitudes about motivation, where it should come from, and what it should look like. Some psychologists claim…

    Read more >> about Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Rewards

  • Your first followers and biggest fans
    Your first followers and biggest fans

    Several friends around me vow never to have kids because they know how much bad parenting can hurt from personal experience and don’t want to wield the power of “ruining my kids’ lives.”  I see parenthood as the easiest way to experience unconditional love and a second chance at healing wounds from your childhood.  How…

    Read more >> about Your first followers and biggest fans

  • Addicted to Achievements
    Addicted to Achievements

    Growing up as a high-achieving Asian, much of my confidence came from the accolades, and the praise my parents, teachers, and peers gave me for coming in first in the class, competition, etc. Before I realized it, my identity and self-esteem were tied to my accomplishments. My very well-intentioned mom pushed me to not only…

    Read more >> about Addicted to Achievements