How user-centric product design helped me craft a great product from afar

This summer, I had the unique opportunity to work on a project in Costa Rica. For the first time in my career, I found myself literally an ocean away from my users. This geographical distance presented new challenges and forced me to double my efforts to truly understand my customers. Despite the physical separation, it was crucial to stay connected and empathetic to their needs and experiences.

I’m going to share the insights I gathered along the way and especially how Karen, one of my testers quickly became the core persona of my product.

Enhancing User Experience :

In today's competitive tech landscape, the user experience (UX) has become a critical differentiator for successful products. As a product manager, my goal is to create products that not only meet market needs but also deliver a seamless and delightful user experience.

I had a lot of doubts regarding my project for a Costa Rican bank. I’ve never been there, and I can’t say I’m entirely familiar with Costa Rican culture. I had no idea what the uses for mobile or computer devices were, what was premium or not in people’s perceptions, whether my customers had easy access to the required documents, and so on. It was crucial to get all those answers in order to have higher user satisfaction, increased retention, and robust word-of-mouth referrals. On the other hand, I knew that a poor UX would most certainly result in user frustration, churn, and a tarnished brand reputation.

Creating a good user experience begins with understanding your users' needs, preferences, and pain points. And for that, a few methods helped me gather and incorporating user feedback into my product design process, here are my favorites :

1. User interviews : Conducting direct interviews and surveys allows you to gather qualitative insights into user behavior, motivations, and challenges. Open-ended questions can reveal deep insights that quantitative data alone might miss. Personally, I tend to speak a lot—and quickly—so being comfortable with silences was initially challenging. But I learned that letting users fill the silence often led to the most surprising insights. I remember asking, “How do you find this screen?” and then not saying anything after the customer responded, “Cool.” They soon jumped in with, “Though, I’m not sure I understand this...” — revealing that the screen was, in fact, far from “cool.” Interviews for instance helped me break a significant misconception I had: I assumed people would prefer using a computer for their administrative tasks. It turned out that most of my users actually preferred using their phones, even for complex forms, because it felt more convenient and immediate.

2. Usability testing : I once conducted a peculiar test with Karen : she had to upload her ID in a digital form. Instead of opening her documents’ file on her phone, she went to her car and searched for her wallet (which she couldn’t find) in order to take a picture of it. Usability tests can expose assumptions, like users’ instinct to take new photos rather than uploading existing files, which I hadn’t considered. You’ll find fascinating to see other people use what you’ve been working on, you often fail to see what is intuitive or not when you’ve had your nose on prototypes for weeks.

3. Analytics and user behavior data : Analyzing user behavior data helps identify patterns and trends in how users engage with your product. Tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, can provide valuable insights into user interactions, drop-off points, and feature usage.

4. Customer feedback : It's essential to have a system in place to collect, analyze, and act on this feedback promptly. Your customers often leave comments when something frustrates them. If you are working on an app, Theodo Apps created an amazing tool for you : Argos Chat 2.0 analyzes and compares user reviews on App Store and Google Play.

Once I gathered a deep understanding of my users, my next step was to translate these insights into actionable design strategies. I couldn’t just do all the things the customers asked for and had to prioritize.

⚖️ To do this, I made a list of all the features identified for my product and sorted them based on the value they would deliver relative to the time and effort required. Features that provided the most immediate value to users were prioritized first, while lower-impact or “bonus” features were set aside for later.
For instance, one of our stakeholders wanted us to develop a chatbot for assistance. However, we managed to convince them that this feature was over-engineered for our initial release. Through user interviews, we discovered that customers feel chatbots take too long to provide answers and rarely deliver the information they need. By using this evidence, we were able to focus on higher-value features that would better meet user expectations.

Prioritization is just the beginning. It’s then vital to keep a user-centric attitude throughout the entire project, not just at the start.

Here are my two key principles for creating a customer-centric product design :

💭 Empathy-driven design : I tried to put myself in my users' shoes : when writing specifications for the tech team, I always start by asking, ‘What would Karen do in that situation?’ and try to connect the features to the added value for her.
Understanding their context, emotions, and goals can guide you in designing products that truly speaks to them. Empathy maps and user personas are useful tools to visualize and communicate user needs within your team.

🔁 Iterative design and prototyping : I adopted an iterative approach to design, in which we continuously test and refine our product based on user feedback. For instance, we had some doubts regarding the UI of the product, it’s hard to know what is or isn’t seen as “chic” or “premium” in someone’s perception. We ran some tests and showed screens to customers and collected their feedback. What we thought was ‘very demure, very mindful’ was perceived as ‘sad,’ so we incorporated more color and images in the final design.

Rapid prototyping allows you to experiment with different design solutions and gather user input early and often. Users and colleagues usually love to be involved and to co-build the product.

The risk of isolated product development

This being said, if you’re thinking, “My boss won’t let me disturb his clients that much”, keep reading.

One of the most critical mistakes product teams can make is developing a product in isolation. While the intent of the stakeholders might be to perfect the product before revealing it to the world—or the competition 😱, this approach can be detrimental to its success.
When you design a product without user feedback, you risk creating something that might be technically brilliant but fails to meet the actual needs of your users. Without iterative testing and validation, you might end up investing significant time and resources into features that users don’t need or understand and won’t use (ever heard of the Google Cemetery ?).

The best products are the result of continuous learning and adaptation. By involving users early, before the product is fully formed, you gain invaluable insights that can guide your decisions, and ultimately create a product that resonates deeply with your audience. This lean approach also mitigates the risk of a disastrous launch by ensuring that your product evolves in alignment with user expectations and needs.

Here are some tips to convince your stakeholders to use your users :

1. Highlight the risks of skipping user involvement

2. Present customer-centric success stories (like Apple or Amazon)

3. Propose low-Risk, low-cost experiments (like using internal testing or restricted pilot with NDA)

4. Share Data-driven argument

I’ve faced this challenge firsthand. My stakeholders were adamant about keeping our project secret, afraid that talking to users would tip off the competition. So, I had to find creative ways to gather insights.

The trick we found was to leverage company employees. Knowing that my stakeholders were not the typical end users for our product, I asked them to put me in contact with the agent field. I interviewed bank agents who worked directly with customers every day. I also asked about their personal banking habits to get a broader sense of user expectations. This approach allowed us to gather meaningful feedback while keeping the project confidential.

Conclusion

My experience working on a project abroad highlighted the importance of staying connected to your users, like Karen, no matter the distance.
Embracing a user-centric design approach isn’t just about data and feedback—it’s about respecting users’ realities and crafting solutions that feel natural to them. More importantly, user-centric product design isn’t just a phase but a continuous commitment. As product managers, we have a duty to champion empathy and iteration.

At Theodo, we learn to always put our users at the heart of our design process, ensuring that the interactions they have with our products is positive and impactful.

And you, what steps are you taking to make your designs more user-centered?