A Hierarchy of Product Needs

I'm not much of a blogger, so sometimes it's fun to express what I'm thinking about in other ways. I first came across Maslow's hierarchy in relation to education and found it fascinating. The premise was that you’re not going to have much success trying to teaching kids in a classroom if you haven't taken care of their basic needs first.

I find it's also a useful lens for thinking through products/features. When you’re making a product in the real world, so much expertise and effort is involved that it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. But just like trying to teach kids before you’ve made sure they’re not hungry, you can undermine your own success by focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time. To go far, you have to build on the right foundation, in the right order. Sarah Tavel has a wonderful post on this subject from a related perspective.