

How to Give Your Product Personality - jasonshen
http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/how-to-give-your-product-personality/?

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alanh
A lot of the examples in this article are kind of gimmicky. MailChimp, for
example. You would be better off ignoring the chimp, who usually links to
YouTube time-wasters as if they were important messages (the chimp is usually
the "visually loudest" item on the page). Personality? Yes. But maybe not a
good inspiration for your own product's personality. Maybe too much trading-
off of utility.

To me, the web product that had the best personality of any is Feedburner.
Kind of funny, creative, and slightly self-deprecating in consistent ways
(e.g.: "troubleshootize" offsets the selling-out nature of "monetize"). The
same clever, helpful, friendly voice is present _on every page_ without
getting in your way. The jokes are still actually, clearly communicating
content. A tremendous achievement, IMO, and I believe it has kept me loyal
despite their Google acquisition.

Groupon's email "personality" has attracted a lot of praise, but it’s
polarizing, and I cannot stand it.

Another positive example is Pandora. The interactive, conversational tone
encountered when setting up a station -- this was back in, what, 2005 -- has
been a personal inspiration to me.

A counter-example is Stack Overflow, IMO. All the "site" messaging feels off
to me. I’m always unceremoniously and orange-ly invited to "Read the FAQ."
Told I can do something, and then prevented from doing so for having violated
a secret policy, with a note that puts the blame _on me_ ("Oops, edits need to
be 6 characters or greater!"). Told I have "been logged in" and that I should
click to refresh the page. It’s a personality, but it’s not a friendly one.
It’s a red-tape-with-a-technical-explanation-from-a-lazy-programmer-with-no-
UX-concept personality. An anti-pattern in site personality.

Be like Feedburner!

~~~
cliftonmckinney
I have to respectfully disagree with your point re: Mailchimp. They are a
company that makes it easier to make email newsletters. Nothing knock your
socks off amazing there. But that chimp and the subsequent marketing around it
has played a major role in customer loyalty. They recently hit 1M customers
and, to celebrate, they gave away plushies, hats, and t-shirts all with the
mailchimp theme. And they gave them away _quickly_. Really says something
about customer love and loyalty imo.

<http://blog.mailchimp.com/one-meeeellion-users/>

Also, they do give you the "non-cheeky" option, so there's that.

Completely agree re: Feedburner. :)

~~~
epo
Customer love? You can't be serious! The only thing it really says is that
people love freebies.

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alabut
I was so happy to see that my dogs stayed on the pricing page after the recent
redesign of isocket, thanks for featuring them! Strangely enough, it's
probably one of the more popular things I've ever designed. Using humor in
your marketing pages is a great way to cut through the corporate clutter.

Here's a pic of two of them (the chihuahua and pug) to prove that they're
real:

<http://cl.ly/1t053y1m0Z010C2l0J16>

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vineet
This is definitely something that is missing from the startup ecosystem - tips
on giving your product personality. All the great companies seem to have a
personality.

Surprise is a really good point and something that we can generally apply.

But I am not a fan of the theme/brand point. Lots of people say it, and it
seems easy to say once a company is successful - but hard to figure it out
when you are in the early stages.

~~~
jasonshen
Hey Vineet, I agree that figuring it out early on is hard, but it's not just
something successful companies "say" they did.

You as the product creator have to make decisions about what your product
means, what it stands for and how it will come across. Imagine your product
was a real person - how would they behave? What would they say? Those are the
kinds of things you'll then need to build into the product.

No one said it'd be easy, but I think it's worth it.

~~~
vineet
Jason, I actually agree.

I did not mean to say that I don't like doing it - just that I have heard it
so many times and that making it happen is hard. I would love to hear more
people breaking this branding thing down.

~~~
jasonshen
Sure. It's a complex and fuzzy process, which is probably why it hasn't been
explained well. It starts with you & your customer.

I see that you're behind architexa and I can see you're not sure what kind of
personality you want for your product. Why did you decide to make this? Is
this a personal problem you have? Who is your target customer? Why do they
want your product? Do they want to work faster? Or prevent mistakes? Or use
something with very little friction? And don't say all of the above, because
no product can be all things to all people, just like no person can be
likeable to everyone (well, except Ryan Hupfer).

Answering those questions starts you down the road of developing your
product's personality. Also check out 37 Signals's article on finding an enemy
- <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php>

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ryanhupfer
Hey, if we can add personality to the ad industry then anyone can do it. I
personally think that a lot of people devalue what helping people have a
little more fun can add to a product and many are scared that fun/personable =
unprofessional, which isn't the case.

I think another awesome example of a product having some personality is
HipChat -- they're all over. They're a goofy and fun group of guys and they
have built a product that reflects that.

All you need to do is look at either their Easter egg emoticons
([http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-of-the-hidden-emoticons-
on...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-all-of-the-hidden-emoticons-on-HipChat))
or the billboard that they had on 101 ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/22/y-u-
no-have-lame-billboard-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/22/y-u-no-have-lame-
billboard-hipchat/)) and you can tell that they have personality literally
oozing out of their product. Yeah, I said "oozing".

~~~
jasonshen
So true. Hipchat has been great about adding quirky little bits to their
product. You might not like their Y U NO billboard but it's definitely got
personality.

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brownday
An example of a product that has great personality that I personally love
using is WuFoo

~~~
agosnell
Yeah, in the blog post Jason added the example of our thank-you cards, but I
personally think the actual product design is even more important. Kevin gives
some examples in his "Designing Web Apps Users Love" presentation:

[http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/09/sunday-video-
wufoo...](http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/09/sunday-video-wufoo-co-
founder-on-designing-web-apps-users-love)

Edit: Also, thank you! It's always nice to hear feedback from people who use
Wufoo.

~~~
jasonshen
Totally agree. Wufoo has so much personality it would take an entire series to
write about them and I didn't think it'd be fair to the other websites. =)

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Tichy
I have just disassembled a piece of furniture, so I might be a bit biased, but
what went through my head is "my screwdriver does not need personality". I
don't even care if the screwdriver is rather boring.

Probably it is true for some products, but I think if you offer a great
service or tool, people won't shun it just because it is boring. For example
the tax industry is huge (in Germany anyway), software companies selling tax
accounting software rake in the money. I don't think little artificial pets
would help with their products.

~~~
andrewflnr
Personally, I can see value in tax-management software having a personality.
People might really appreciate that if it made the task less onerous, as long
as it was done in a way that didn't interfere or give you the feeling it
didn't know what it was doing. Couldn't that be a big differentiator?

~~~
Tichy
Clippy?

~~~
andrewflnr
"Done in a way that doesn't interfere." :) Good point, though. I was thinking
more along the lines of wording of dialogue and descriptions.

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s3b
If you're interested in this sort of thing, there are lots of examples here :
<http://littlebigdetails.com/>

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aresant
Great read.

A shortcut to injecting personality touched on but not highlighted in your
article is building around a spokesperson.

These come in three flavors:

Anthropomorphic mascot that doesn't age, doesn't go on benders in Vegas,
doesn't get divorced, etc:

-= GEICO Gecko

-= Aflac Duck

-= Reddit Alien and follow-up of HipMunk.

-= Mickey Mouse

Or your "over the top" fictional people:

-= Old Spice guy

-= The Most Interesting Man in the World, etc.

-= Betty Crocker

And the grand finale if you can't pull it off, the founder as hero /
personality

-= Steve Jobs

-= Dave from Wendy's

-= Larry Ellison

~~~
jasonshen
Great point. Spokespeople / mascots are great. I think Alexis Ohanian is
adamant about how having a mascot was a big part of what made Reddit succeed
in growing and building a cult (and now massive) following.

~~~
kn0thing
Indeed! :) breadpig.com too. I've given a couple classes on Making Something
People Love that hits on a lot of these. So happy to see more people talking
about building brands with personality.

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chrisabruce
Great article. It think you nailed them, I especially like the "Surprise" item
as this is often cited in game design as an element of fun.

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bmahmood
Always wondered how to bring personality and voice to a product. The examples
cited make it really simple to understand.

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guyht
GitHub has a better 404 page

<https://github.com/404>

~~~
VivekReddy
Big fan of the github 404 page. The Star Wars theme seems perfect for their
target market and I love the movement

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capkutay
I like this article, but it seems mostly geared towards social or web
products. It'd be really interesting to discuss giving less "charismatic"
types of products personality such as software for data integration or other
enterprise services....

