I've been doing a lot of thinking about what makes products excellent throughout the entire user journey. I reflected on some products that I personally thoroughly enjoy every day and have enjoyed throughout my user journey with them. The currently popular term for this is Product Led Growth (PLG), essentially products that sell themselves because they have a superior discover, learn, try, buy, get started, use, get help, and expand experience.
This won’t be a through research-based assessment with appropriate sample sizes, controls for bias, etc. This is simply a sample size of one, me, reflecting on three products that I love to use and have loved the entire journey of getting to use them. I honestly regularly take a moment out of my day to appreciate the true excellence in all aspects of these products.
Are there things I would improve upon? Sure. But on balance, these three products have achieved a level of excellence that would be extremely difficult to even match. I do encourage other companies to try to match this level of excellence because we would all benefit from that. And, other companies may already have matched these but I’m not aware of them because I’m so loyal to these product given their excellence that I’m not even looking around for others.
The three products that I’ll be describing my experience with are my Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor, my iPhone 12 Pro Max, and my M1 MacBook Pro.
Tesla Model 3
Discover
I was initially intrigued by electric cars and loved that Tesla’s first vehicle was a great looking sports car, the initial Tesla Roadster. I first saw it in person at the Toronto Auto show. All the other electric cars on the market were ugly and seemingly made for the diehard environmentalist who was willing to forfeit design for doing the right thing for the planet. Tesla’s choice of starting with a sports car got my interest and the interest of the press giving the company free advertising. A smart move. Lead with design.
Learn
The huge buzz about anything Tesla led me to check out their website and loved what I saw. I also checked out one of their first showrooms together with a colleague in Austin, Texas, not far from our design studio and lab there. She and I were extremely impressed and we didn’t even experience driving one yet. I first experienced a moving Tesla as a passenger in an Uber in Madrid when my team and I were running workshops in the city. My excitement for the car was building stronger and stronger as I got closer to the experience with the car.
Try
I then took one for a test drive myself back in Toronto and first experienced the absolutely incredible instant acceleration and amazing handling. The salesperson sitting beside me had me turn on the self-driving feature and joked that he was reaching into the glove compartment for a deck of cards that we could play because the car would take care of the driving. We didn’t play cards but the self-driving feature worked really well on the highway. There was also no need to unlock the car, start it, and no need to turn it off or lock it. No need for a key, just your own cellphone.
Buy
I decided to buy one and that too was super easy. I selected the model on the website and ordered it right there on the website. It was the first purchase of that size and of course the first car I had ever bought on a website. I also DMed a message to request the vegan steering wheel when that became available and got a quick reply saying that they would ensure the vegan steering wheel would be installed. The rest of the car is already vegan. When the car was built, I got the message to come pick it up, which I did. Unlike every other car I’ve ever bought, there were no problems whatsoever with the car. Previous cars I had purchased would require me to make a list of the problems that would then need to be fixed by the service part of the dealer.
Getting Started & Use
Driving my Tesla is sheer enjoyment every time I take it out. The incredible instant acceleration is thrilling. It does 0-60 mph (roughly 0-100 k/hr) in 3.1 seconds!. I only ever get close to that kind of acceleration when I’m driving by myself because passengers feel uncomfortable or even sick if I drive like that with them. You can even buy an upgrade on the Tesla app to increase the acceleration even further but I absolutely don’t need that.
I just need to walk up to the car which unlocks it by accessing an app on my phone. You don’t have to turn on the car; you just have to indicate whether you’d like to forward or in reverse. The navigation system usually already has the destination I’m going to be driving to, either based on my previous driving history or by finding an address in a calendar entry.
I either drive the car myself, simply by depressing or releasing the acceleration pedal. While there is a brake pedal, I virtually never use it. The car has regenerative braking which recharges the battery when braking and that also slows the car. It’s called single pedal driving. Some of the time I don’t want to drive myself which is typically on a long trip on the highway or stop and go traffic in the city. In both of those situations, full self-driving works very well. I occasionally use full self-driving more generally within the city and now it’s pretty good but not good enough yet for me to use it routinely.
Getting Help & Service
After three years of owning it, I haven’t had to do any maintenance on it, no oil and grease jobs, not even having to replenish the fuel. All I do is plug it in the charger overnight at home and the odd time I need to get a charge when I’m driving farther than a single charge can take me, I just charge up at a SuperCharger and I’m on my way. The small handle to control the passenger seat movement broke so I indicated that in a message on the Tesla app and the came out to my house and replaced it.
I live in Canada so have to have winter tires on seasonally. Tesla used to come out to my home to do that but I now use a 3rd party service that I just schedule online and they come to my house and make the seasonal wheel swap.
Expand
I did purchase the onboard WiFi service that enhances the navigation and other experiences. I also bought their cellphone charging pad but that’s about it for any additional products or services that I purchased. I bought the full self-driving package when I got the car.
MacBook Pro
Discover
I was of course aware of Apple for years but I wasn’t an early adopter of the Apple IIe, iBook, or PowerBook but I did use them somewhat. However, it was the MacBook line that got my interest. Like the Tesla, word of mouth generated the buzz.
Learn
I learned more about the product from friends and the Apple website. The design of Apple’s website is exemplary with it’s beautiful pictures and videos of the products. That alone makes them so desirable.
Buy, Getting Started, & Use
I made the case for getting a MacBook Pro at my work and then I got one so I didn’t purchase my first one. Subsequently, I’ve bought MacBook Pros for each of my family members. I typically either just order them online and have them shipped or I pick them up in the store.
Getting started is straightforward with everything on your old computer being easily moved automatically to your new computer.
Everything I do at work, at home, and at the university is done on my MacBook Pro. Having moved from Microsoft PowerPoint to Apple Keynote was a game changer. I’m still sometimes forced to use PowerPoint but Keynote is so far superior. Keynote is my primary application in addition to mail, calendar, etc.
Expand & Service
I absolutely love the integration of products in Apple’s ecosystem. I don’t have to sign into my MacBook Pro. My Apple Watch does that. I don’t have to sign in to approve purchases or other authentications. My Apple Watch does that too. It’s also straightforward to move assets between my MacBook Pro and iPhone. I often take pictures with my iPhone and then include them in blog posts or presentations.
I’ve never had the need to service my MacBook Pro. I do appreciate the automatic operating system and app refreshes and the fact that they don’t interrupt me. I particularly appreciate the [command] [spacebar] key combination to find anything on my computer.
iPhone 12
Discover
The Steve Jobs announcement of iPhone hooked me immediately. His mantra of “an iPod with touch controls, a phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device” all in one product and the way he generated excitement around it made it a must-have product.
Learn
I watched the video of that announcement many times and also the material on the website. I was aware of the gestural interfaces and multi-touch technologies during my graduate school days and seeing demos of data gloves with multiple wires all over the place. Seeing all of that capability in one device captivated me.
Buy
I immediately ordered the iPhone on the website but then had to wait about six months before it was available. I’ve bought every version of iPhone since then up until the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I think the iPhone has achieved a level of perfection that I don’t have a desire to buy a new one. The only draw is always an even better camera.
Getting Started & Use
The first experience with the first iPhone has been pretty similar to my experience with every version since: super straightforward to get working with. The skeuomorphism in the early iPhones I think helped to get familiar with the interface.
The recent versions with facial recognition, voice recognition, and blazingly fast performance make it a joy to use. Not having to key in passwords, the ability of the iPhone to unlock the Apple Watch, and the amazing wealth of apps in the App Store make it my main technology device. I marvel at what all I can do with it when I’m aware from my computer. I used to use standalone cameras but I would often forget to take them with me. I now have an amazingly high quality camera right in my pocket at all times and I use the camera several times a day.
Getting Help & Expand
The iPhone is so prevalent that if I ever have any question, I can usually just Google it and get the answer immediately. I haven’t had any need for service but my family’s iPhones have and I then just book an appointment using the app on the phone and take the phone into the Genius Bar.
Getting more apps is of course dead simple just using the App Store. I also appreciate the family sharing and the ability of apps to automatically update. That’s magical.
Conclusion
This blog post may sound to you as being too positive and enthusiastic. I know that other people have had different experiences with these three products and I also don’t think that they are perfect.
However, I truly believe that these products improve my life and that they’re exemplars of the concept of product led growth. What makes them so great, talented designers, researchers, product managers, and engineers working closely together with a laser-focus on creating an amazing user experience.
We also take the excellence in these products for granted and some even think that getting to this level of excellence is easy. It’s not. Think about the complexities involved in creating everything that’s in a Tesla today, or the MacBook, or the iPhone. There are competitors that are copying these products and gleaning the benefits of Tesla and Apple’s pioneering work. However, I for one am loyal to companies that create an amazing user experience and the competition generally still doesn’t stack up in my experience. And I think we should be encouraging all companies to look for opportunities to innovate greatness by creating awesome user experiences including the experience in discovering, learning about, buying, getting started, using, getting help, and having the opportunity to further expand with more capabilities from the company.