In many design, product management, engineering, or even venture capital interviews and pitches, you’ll be assessed on a dimension called “product thinking,” sometimes also called “product sense.” If you’re a builder aspiring to create something new and valuable (or someone who invests in such builders), having well-honed product thinking will help you — and the products you work on — stand out from the crowd.

在许多设计、产品管理、工程、甚至风险投资的面试和推销中，你都会被评估为“产品思维”，有时也被称为“产品感觉”如果你是一个渴望创造新的、有价值的东西的建筑师(或者是投资于这些建筑师的人) ，拥有经过精心磨练的产品思维将有助于你——以及你所开发的产品——从人群中脱颖而出。

But how exactly do you define product thinking? There’s so much noise out there on this very question that it can be hard to find the signal, so I thought I’d share what it is, what it isn’t … and how one gets good at it. Because product thinking alone isn’t enough; you also have to be able to apply product thinking to design and build toward better outcomes. And while well-honed product thinking is often at the start of many company, analyst, and investment theses, product thinking influences all stages of technology development beyond that too, from adding new product lines to helping an established product adapt to new market trends.

但是，你究竟如何定义产品思维呢？在这个问题上有太多的噪音，很难找到信号，所以我想我应该分享一下它是什么，它不是什么，以及人们是如何擅长它的。因为仅有产品思维是不够的; 你还必须能够应用产品思维来设计和构建更好的结果。在许多公司、分析师和投资论文中，精心打磨的产品思维往往处于起步阶段，而产品思维影响着除此之外的所有技术开发阶段，从增加新的产品线到帮助已有产品适应新的市场趋势。

Nurturing and developing product thinking is therefore relevant to anyone in the business of covering trends or building great products. And in a time where technology companies focus more on product-led innovation than, say, financial engineering, it’s not just an academic or technologist exercise — it’s one that actively contributes to market value, too.

因此，培养和发展产品思维对于任何从事报道趋势或制造伟大产品的人都是相关的。在科技公司更加关注产品主导型创新而非金融工程的时代，这不仅仅是一项学术或技术人员的工作，也是一项对市场价值有积极贡献的工作。

What product thinking is (and isn’t)

什么是产品思维(什么不是)

The simplest way to define product thinking is that it is the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people. As with all skills, it can be nurtured and developed; it’s not just an instinct one does or doesn’t have (and even instincts are trained, after all).

定义产品思维最简单的方法是，知道是什么让一个产品有用、受到人们喜爱的技能。就像所有的技能一样，它是可以培养和发展的; 它不仅仅是一个人有或没有的本能(毕竟，即使本能也是经过训练的)。

Product thinkers love to discuss their favorite products, of course, but not just what they personally liked or disliked; rather, they seek to understand the broader question of why a product might or might not work for a broader set of people. The very best product thinkers are voracious about understanding why things work. A product thinking mindset might lead one to study what makes TikTok so popular, or what leads to Figma’s growth within an organization, or what the characteristics of popular marketplaces are.

当然，产品思考者喜欢讨论他们最喜欢的产品，但不仅仅是他们个人喜欢或者不喜欢的; 相反，他们试图理解为什么一个产品可能对更广泛的人群有用或者无用这个更广泛的问题。最好的产品思考者对于理解产品为什么有效非常贪婪。产品思维心态可能会引导人们去研究是什么使得 TikTok 如此受欢迎，或者是什么导致了 Figma 在一个组织内的增长，或者是什么特征使得流行的市场如此受欢迎。

They view it as a puzzle: Why has App X skyrocketed in popularity? What specific product decisions led some of my colleagues to like productivity Product W, while others resist it? What is Service Y doing that keeps Aunt Laura using it for years; was it feature Z or W that let it grow beyond early adopters like her? What attracted cousin Elias and his friends to try out this new app? Were those push notifications compelling, or annoying? And from those insights, how can we learn to build better products, or help others on our team to do so?

他们认为这是一个谜: 为什么 App x 的受欢迎程度如此之高？是什么具体的产品决策让我的一些同事喜欢上了高效产品 w，而另一些人却反对呢？是什么使得服务 y 让 Laura 阿姨使用了这么多年; 是特性 z 还是 w 让它超越了像她这样的早期使用者？是什么吸引了堂兄 Elias 和他的朋友们来尝试这个新的应用程序？那些推送式通知是令人信服的，还是恼人的？从这些见解中，我们如何才能学会创造更好的产品，或者帮助我们团队中的其他人这样做呢？

Product thinking is a habit, an eye, a mindset.

产品思维是一种习惯，一种眼睛，一种心态。

If you’re trying to understand whether you already have some product thinking instincts, or are assessing someone else on this dimension, these types of questions get at the product thinking mindset:

如果你想知道自己是否已经有了一些产品思维本能，或者正在从这个角度评估其他人，这些类型的问题就是产品思维心态: