A Year in User Experience

2020.07.30 – 2021.06.30

A year of product user‑experience work deserves a summary. This is the preface.

01 What Exactly Is User Experience

Almost everyone in the internet industry knows that user experience (UX) is important, and almost every product manager will invoke UX when raising a requirement.

But what is user experience? When we talk about UX, what are we really discussing?

One fact is that the industry has no universally accepted standard for UX, and the metrics used to measure it are wildly varied (NPS, CSAT, Google’s HEART framework, etc.). Each metric has its own rationale; interested readers can look them up on their own.

However, if we set aside all existing knowledge and return to the root of the problem, what is UX?

In my view, UX can be abstracted as “whether the product meets user expectations.” Good UX means the user can achieve their goal unobstructed, efficiently, and often beyond their subjective expectations.

Thus, UX is a subjective metric, embodying the “a thousand users, a thousand Hamlets” principle.

This also explains why UX issues can appear as large or small problems during product rollout, and why product managers need strong empathy, insight, and design literacy.

02 How to Guard the Baseline of UX

In a year of UX improvement work, there were few cases of “good → better.” More often the scenario was “after fixing a problem, we reached the UX baseline.” That is probably the reality for most UX efforts.

Below I share some methods and insights on how to protect the UX baseline.

Start with Respect, Awe, and Gratitude

Before diving into this section, let me tell a short story.

In 2016, on my first trip to Taiwan, whether at a fruit stall, a 7‑Eleven, or a department‑store counter, the vendor always said a sincere “thank you” at checkout. That simple gratitude struck me deeply. The core of it was the vendor’s genuine feeling of appreciation—thank you for choosing me among countless options.

The internet has stretched the distance between us and our users. We easily see only cold DAU numbers and forget that they are real, living people. This sense of distance can make us abandon the pursuit of good UX. It’s simple: it’s hard to tell a familiar aunt downstairs, “We won’t build this feature,” but it’s easy to decide not to build a feature that serves only 1 % of the UVs shown in a report.

As product managers, we must thank every user for their choice and trust. We should always treat them with respect, awe, and gratitude.

That is the first—and most crucial—step toward good UX.

Product Values Shape Product Logic

In a 2016 WeChat public lecture, Zhang Xiaolong delivered a talk titled “WeChat’s Values for Products and Platforms” (full text: https://developer.alipay.com/article/3235). Reading it again in 2021 still left me amazed.

When explaining product values, Zhang gave a whitelist example: WeChat does not open a whitelist because it could foster competition and imbalance, which is not the culture WeChat promotes.

Excerpt from “WeChat’s Values for Products and Platforms”:
“From an external perspective, we prefer the platform to have fair and just rules for users. You’ll see WeChat offering certain privileges—for example, many friends ask if they can have more than 5,000 contacts. I say that’s impossible because the system simply doesn’t allow accounts with more than 5,000 contacts. In my view, a whitelist is a system flaw. Some friends request a whitelist to raise the red‑packet limit because they want to send an 800‑yuan packet. Creating a whitelist is a trivial task for us, and those users would feel they have a special privilege to show off. We have done this before, but we recently shut it down because we realized that a whitelist creates competition and imbalance among users—something not aligned with WeChat’s culture. There are only two ways to handle this: either have a whitelist with no special privileges, or, if the demand is widespread, the system should provide a rule that satisfies many users, rather than catering to a few through relationships or a whitelist. That is not the direction we encourage.”

The whitelist case sticks with me because Alipay now has many whitelists. Although the scenarios differ from the competition issue described, the essence is still a form of privilege.

Is that the value we want? What product values should we champion?

This question matters because values dictate product logic, and many UX problems stem from underlying value conflicts. Values, too, require daily self‑reflection.

Keep Core Design Principles in Mind

The hard part is easy to act on. After every design is finalized, review it against these three principles, line by line:

• Is the flow complete? Have all branch scenarios been covered? Are weak‑network or offline prompts in place? Are solutions offered to the user?
• Is what the user sees and gets clear? Does the user receive a definite outcome? Is it easy to understand?
• Is the interaction and visual language consistent? Are the copy and UI elements harmonious?

UX lives in these details. If you can’t keep going, return to the first principle.

Product Release Process as the Final Safeguard

Even if a product manager follows the first three suggestions diligently, problems can still arise.

The reason is simple: the first three points rely on “human governance.” For UX, we still need a process or system that provides a basic safety net, helping product managers stay on the line when implementing features.

For example, a relatively standardized product launch workflow (note: such a workflow does not currently exist):

• Design stage: Share product requirements—including copy—with all relevant parties for evaluation (e.g., legal, compliance, privacy, marketing, PR, customer rights, security, etc.).
• Development stage: Ensure the built feature matches the requirements and collaborate with the customer‑rights team to create a user FAQ.
• Launch stage: Publish an external release note as needed, and send an internal launch notice to all stakeholders.
• Retirement stage: If a product will no longer be maintained, devise a decommission plan and manage the transition between old and new products, switching to the new system as promptly as possible. (Believe it or not, there are hundreds of Alipay mini‑programs with sizable MAU that lack a clear owner. Also, you may not believe it, but today a mini‑program can have N different entry points, processes, and technical solutions, making related requirements a nightmare.)

The process is complex and hard to sustain, but we must return to the original intention: approach users with sincere respect, awe, and gratitude.

03 Avoid Product “Purism”

I used to work on business‑experience improvements. When I first tackled platform‑level UX, the biggest challenge was product complexity.

On one hand, I pursued perfect UX; on the other, the inherent complexity of the product led to imperfect solutions, causing a painful period of conflict. Then, at some point—without any particular reason—I had an epiphany: as long as the core baseline is protected, some compromises are acceptable. The flawless solution that a “product purist” dreams of often doesn’t exist in reality.

That’s my final piece of advice.

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Too many insights are hard to capture precisely in words; I hope that when I revisit this later I’ll still be able to stay the course.

If you’re also working on UX, let’s connect—this road can feel lonely, and I’m looking for companions!

2021.07.19

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WeChat public account: 一只产品汪的自白 (A Product Dog’s Confession)

Recording product thoughts, reflections, and reading notes.

Thanks for following.

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Originally written by Estela Young and published in Chinese on 一只产品汪的自白. Translated and edited for DriftSeas with permission.