Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Product quality strictly requires utility, then usability, then craft and beauty

Katie Dill · Why Design Matters: Lessons from Stripe, Lyft and Airbnb · Y Combinator · Oct 16, 2024 · at 10:34

Katie Dill, Head of Design at Stripe, explains how teams should evaluate product quality before shipping.

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“First and foremost, it has to have utility. It has to serve a purpose and solve a problem for the user. Secondly, it has to be usable, right? ... And then third is craft and beauty. Obviously craft and beauty is not, like, you know, nice to have. It's absolutely material to increasing the utility and usability of a product and also making it far more enjoyable. But there's no reason, you know, crafting something nicely if, like, you can't actually sit in it, for example.”

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