It felt like a slap across the face.

I picked up my phone and read the email a second time to try and comprehend the words, trying to take away something from this email that was positive and actionable.

Wow. You’ve ruined this interface. It looks like it was designed by monkeys instead of humans. How could you fuck this up? This is still the best app to discover new music so, I’m still going to use it, but, you are stupid. God Help You. I’ve sent detailed feedback on how to make this product better and I’ll be updating my review only when you fix the app with the changes I have requested…

Waking up to an email like this from one of your product users is hard. That morning after having read a full page of product tweaks requested by Joe, I started thinking about “Product Owners” and their roles in building consumer facing software products.

Who really owns these software products? Is it the product and dev team responsible for building them or is it our users?

Mobile Software

Mobile software is inherently different than any kind of product that has come before it. You touch, poke, prod and pull at these things with your hands, and the emotional resonance that these products create in its users is inherently different from any other kind of product. The software reacts to your touch, and the content is malleable because of it. It becomes Yours.

Over time, unlike other physical products these products do not get old, staid, dirty or boring because the content is constantly changing with use and the payoff over time for continued usage keeps increasing. ie, the more you use it, the more value you derive from it. This is true of some desktop software, but, the personal aspects of mobile computing amplify the feeling of the software becoming Yours.

Product Owners

Products go through phases and evolve into their true potential over time. Initially, as a product is being conceived, the product owners are the team members that are building the product. It is important to have a product minded person who can make certain overriding decisions about the product strategy and features and help keep the product ethos in balance – maintain its point of view so to speak.

Over time, as your product becomes successful and starts seeing adoption the role of the team is still that of owners and they are completely and totally responsible for the features and direction that the product must follow. At critical mass (of a few million users) something strange begins to happen: users that have invested their time and effort into the product start claiming ownership of the product, and rightly so.

This process may be amplified in products with an emphasis on user generated content and community, or products with a strong daily voice like Band of the Day. I’d like to explore the intensity of ownership and causes of this shift in a future blog post, but whatever the reasons for it may be, it’s powerful stuff.

We never realized how powerful and scary this stage can be until it actually happened to us with Band of the Day. With well over 3.5M downloads (iOS only) and a seriously engaged and active user base, we’re now in constant dialogue with them about the product. Not every one of these users are placated by the product changes we execute, but, the dialogue helps them be a part of the change. I’d highly recommend reading The Cluetrain Manifesto where the authors discuss various strategies to create this honest and open two way dialogue with people that are using your products.

Human beings have an inherent tendency to categorize themselves into groups and this “us vs. them” tendency can either be used to catapult your product to the next level by allowing users to participate in the product direction or alienate them by shutting the door on the conversation.