I was once asked to explain what makes a product good in a product manager interview, which embarrassingly was the first time I thought about the question so explicitly. I made something up on the spot and it was good enough to move on to the next round, but I felt bothered that I hadn’t thought about the question more seriously. I do remember that I successfully resisted the urge to reference a supreme court case and say “A good product is difficult to define but I know it when I see it.”

Jokes aside, there’s a lot of truth to that statement. What makes a product good is highly subjective – and thus, this is what makes that interview question such a good interview question. I see two ways, logically, to approach answering: using inductive reasoning or using deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning

A product, as defined by the Oxford Language dictionary, is “an article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale.” A good product, therefore, can be measured by the manufacturer or the buyer.

From the manufacturer’s point-of-view, a “good” product fulfills either their business and/or their mission goals. Business goals for a product could include that the product is purchased widely, profitable, and (hopefully) ethically sourced. A company also hopes that its product fulfills its core mission. For example, REI might consider trail maps of local trails a “good” product to sell even though it may not be very profitable, because it fulfills their mission of hoping to “… inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.”

From the buyer’s point-of-view, a “good” product fulfills a need and provides them value while delighting them over a certain threshold. As a consumer, my personal threshold of “good” requires a delight in the experience. An “okay” product means that I can perhaps extract the value from the product, but not in any particularly enlightened or taxing way. A “bad” product means that I extract the value from the product, but only in a taxing way. A “terrible” product means that I can’t really extract the value.

Delight implies that the product designer understood me as a consumer. The product is easy to use; it might guess what I need before I ask for it; it could be that it is pleasing visually or to the touch; it may have a sense of humor. It’s difficult to list all the ways a product could potentially delight us, since delight partially stems from novelty. Interestingly, the prior list corresponds to some of the various jobs on a product team: the engineers executed well; the product manager did their job correctly; the designer did their job well; and a writer or marketer did their job well.

What I think is an interesting question is whether or not a “good” product, from the buyer’s point-of-view, factors in the price. Despite a product being overpriced, could it be considered “good”? If one says, “I think it’s a good product but it’s overpriced”, do they really mean, “It’s a good product, not for me but for someone else”?

Ever the academic, this is my favorite way of thinking. But using inductive reasoning for this question strikes me as more fun.

Inductive reasoning

What do the Rubik’s cube, Toyota Corolla and the iPhone all have in common? Well, they are all on the list of best-selling products of all time.

Assuming that a “good” product is one that sold very well, you can look for common features across any of your favorite, and generally popular, products.

For me? Some of my favorite digital products today are Sketch, Discord, and Spotify.

What makes Sketch so well-designed is that it is incredibly intuitive, and to pick up in the first place. I know most of my designer friends have since moved onto Figma, but it’s hard for me to leave Sketch. I have almost never needed to Google anything to understand how to do things in Sketch: the icons, on-hover text, naming conventions all are designed to allow a person to not get stuck in the tool when creating something.

Discord is very clever and thoughtful. Discord, a chat app that launched into a very crowded space, understands human communication very well: a person is a singular identity, who joins and leaves conversations at many different rates. You will want to see communication related to your existing conversations, just so you don’t miss anything. Discord’s organization of communication is brilliant.

Next, I adore Spotify, because completely solves my problem of wanting to listen to music without expending much effort or money.

Lastly, all these products are physically very appealing, albeit in very different ways. Spotify feels very digital and retro, Discord is very youthful and irreverent, and Sketch is very plain and minimalist.

So, in this vein, “good” products to me are intuitive, clever, thoughtful of me as a user, visually appealing, and solution-oriented.

Conclusion

I think there are many ways to define good products, but it comes down to who you are and what your expectations and values are. This makes a good interview question because it allows a product team to hire people whose products values align with the team’s. If a company is very user-centric, they’ll expect an analysis from the user’s perspective. If the company is more business-oriented, they will expect an analysis from the business perspective. Great product teams will be looking for both.