The change expands research access but doesn't legalize marijuana.

<p>I recently listened to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGElTGoN_lo">an engaging and instructive interview with Federico Simionato</a>, who is product lead for the productivity tool Evernote. I will admit to being an Evernote enthusiast, and I chose to listen to it for that reason, but I do think it offers a great insight into how product management can work well. Evernote has had a checkered history—it was once the definitive note taking product, then the company lost its way and the product suffered, and then it climbed its way out of that hole and is now much improved and improving.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="alignright size-large"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rockle/4564064909/"><img alt="" class="wp-image-12489" data-attachment-id="12489" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"5","credit":"","camera":"NIKON D40","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1272397726","copyright":"","focal_length":"135","iso":"400","shutter_speed":"0.016666666666667","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="hygiene" data-large-file="https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg?w=350" data-medium-file="https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg" data-orig-size="350,232" data-permalink="https://niksilver.com/2024/12/03/prioritising-hygiene-factors/hygiene/" height="232" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" src="https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg?w=350" srcset="https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg 350w, https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg?w=150 150w, https://niksilver.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/hygiene.jpg?w=300 300w" title="Photo by Rachel Gonzales" width="350"/></a></figure></div> <p>But for the purposes of this article, I want to pick up on one thing Simionato talked about: <a href="https://youtu.be/YGElTGoN_lo?si=nZCgmS0m3QZEHodf&amp;t=864">tackling quality of life features</a>. He says this goes against the received wisdom of product management, which is to focus on a metric and zealously optimise that. Evernote’s quality of life workstream instead jumps around and implements all kinds of small-ish features which they prioritise from extensive user research. These are hygiene factors which address users’ niggles, annoyances, and also their more positive wishes.</p> <p>Maybe this is counter to received wisdom, but I’d say it is really important, and it’s something I see all good product teams doing. There are several reasons.</p> <p>First, we want our users to enjoy using our products and services. Even the experience of paying tax online, <a href="https://niksilver.com/2024/11/26/grouping-products-into-services/#comments">discussed in last week’s comments</a>, should be as positive as possible. Our core product may have all the right features, but it’s only human for people to be distracted by small negative experiences that get in their way of doing their basic job. This is about tackling the user needs that <a href="https://niksilver.com/2024/08/20/how-user-needs-guide-us/">“surround” the core need</a>, which I discussed a few weeks ago.</p> <p>Second, from a practical perspective, those gripes and grumbles can become really distracting for the product team, and especially the product manager. Most product managers will have had the experience of wanting to make big advances in their roadmap but having their internal stakeholders persistently wanting to talk about the basic, low-level annoyances they experience with the product. Those distracting grumbles can also come from external users, too. So addressing those basic needs makes it much easier for us to then tackle the bigger features.</p> <p>Third, unaddressed hygiene factors are a rot that spreads. If they are not managed consistently then they accumulate and become so pervasive that it makes it difficult to address much of the bigger the work. Significant features become much more difficult because they are blocked my myriad smaller glitches that need fixing. This is not just technical debt, but more general product debt that extends across the user interface, internal process, language, backend technology and so on.</p> <p>So, yes, as a product team it is valuable to <a href="https://niksilver.com/2016/12/06/the-value-statement/">understand what your success metric is</a>, and then focus on that. But we mustn’t be robotic about it. We need to understand how our work gets done, how people perceive our product and our service, and therefore we need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. And that includes addressing hygiene factors.</p> <p class="has-text-align-right"><em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rockle/4564064909/">Photo by Rachel Gonzales</a></em></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share this:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-linkedin"><a class="share-linkedin sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-linkedin-12483" href="https://niksilver.com/2024/12/03/prioritising-hygiene-factors/?share=linkedin" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on LinkedIn"><span>LinkedIn</span></a></li><li class="share-print"><a class="share-print sd-button share-icon" data-shared="" href="https://niksilver.com/2024/12/03/prioritising-hygiene-factors/#print" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to print"><span>Print</span></a></li><li class="share-email"><a class="share-email sd-button share-icon" data-email-share-error-text="If you're having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. You may need to create a new email yourself." data-email-share-error-title="Do you have email set up?" data-email-share-nonce="1e5d86eee2" data-email-share-track-url="https://niksilver.com/2024/12/03/prioritising-hygiene-factors/?share=email" data-shared="" href="mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Prioritising%20hygiene%20factors&amp;body=https%3A%2F%2Fniksilver.com%2F2024%2F12%2F03%2Fprioritising-hygiene-factors%2F&amp;share=email" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to email a link to a friend"><span>Email</span></a></li><li class="share-tumblr"><a class="share-tumblr sd-button share-icon" data-shared="" href="https://niksilver.com/2024/12/03/prioritising-hygiene-factors/?share=tumblr" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Tumblr"><span>Tumblr</span></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded" data-name="like-post-frame-205744-12483-675001ac6eedc" data-src="//widgets.wp.com/likes/index.html?ver=20241204#blog_id=205744&amp;post_id=12483&amp;origin=niksilver.wordpress.com&amp;obj_id=205744-12483-675001ac6eedc&amp;domain=niksilver.com" data-title="Like or Reblog" id="like-post-wrapper-205744-12483-675001ac6eedc"><div class="likes-widget-placeholder post-likes-widget-placeholder" style="height: 55px;"><span class="button"><span>Like</span></span> <span class="loading">Loading...</span></div><span class="sd-text-color"></span><a class="sd-link-color"></a></div></div>