Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

The whole product narrative should be in there—every pain, every painkiller, every rational and emotional impulse, every insight about your customer. It needs to encompass everything because: It’s essential for product development: Product management and marketing work on the messaging architecture from day one. In order to build a great product, each pain has to be extremely well understood and answered with a painkiller in the form of a product feature. The messaging architecture is a sister text to the plain list of features and their functionality that makes up your basic product messaging. Both need to exist side by side: the what and the why. It’s a living document: As the product and your team’s understanding of the customer evolve, so does the messaging architecture. It’s a shared resource: Everyone who is responsible for any customer touchpoints should be looking at this document, not just marketing. It should steer engineering, sales, and support as well. Every single team should be thinking about the what, the why, and the story you’re telling.