The Art & Science of Products
How great products don't just work well — they help people work better
Hi PMs and Founders.
Recently I was in a prospect discussion who wanted to give Ziply a try. I was excited to showcase the features and how they might be able to benefit.
I thought I had done my part. Then the customer shared some concerns. For context, Ziply helps amplify social content organically via employees, executives, channel partners and influencers to get more reach and generate warmer conversations.
Creating content is client responsibility.
So I thought.
He want to explain their main concern. That their content does not have a wow factor. I am thinking thats not part of my tool. But then I realized without great content, Ziply’s value proposition is meagre.
For comparison, think of an AI powered video maker. You can use it to create videos but will the video be WOW!.
That is a function of your creativity and your prompt.
The art and science of products
When we talk about building great products, we often focus on how they work — the features, the tech stack, the UX. That's the science of product management.
But when I came home after the meeting, I realized equally important, and often overlooked, is the art: how people actually use your product to solve real problems.
Both matter.
But they require different mindsets, different skills, and different approaches to customer success.
Now you may ask, if you train them how to use the product, then it should be fine.
Have you bought an Instant Pot? It comes with two booklets.
The user manual. The Science.
The recipe book. How best to use it. The Art.
I can be adept at setting the temperature and the timing of the Instant Pot. Whats the point if I don’t know what to make or how to make. But they help with the art of the possible.
The Science: Building the Tool
This is the obvious part — the technical foundation that product managers spend most of their time on.
How does the product integrate with other systems?
How do users sign up, onboard, and start using it?
Is the interface intuitive?
Are the features robust and reliable?
Does it scale under load?
Can we maintain and iterate on it efficiently?
Take Calendly as an example. The science is in building scheduling functionality — syncing with calendars, managing time zones, handling rescheduling logic, sending automated reminders, managing buffer times between meetings. If that doesn't work, nothing else matters.
But here's the thing: getting the science right is table stakes. It's necessary but not sufficient for product success.
The Art: Helping People Use It Well
Here's where the real leverage comes in. Once the tool works, the next question is: How should people actually use it to get the most value?
That's the art — and it's where most products leave massive value on the table.
The Spectrum: From Tools to Transformation
The most successful products exist on a spectrum. On one end, you have pure tools. On the other, you have transformation platforms that fundamentally change how people work.
Pure Tools (Science-Heavy):
GitHub (version control)
Stripe (payments)
AWS (infrastructure)
These focus primarily on robust functionality. Users are often technical and willing to figure out implementation details.
Transformation Platforms (Art-Heavy):
Salesforce (sales transformation)
Shopify (e-commerce transformation)
HubSpot (marketing transformation)
These don't just provide features — they provide methodologies, best practices, and entire business frameworks.
Most successful B2B products fall somewhere in the middle, but the trend is clear: the art is becoming increasingly important as a differentiator.
Let’s look at some more examples.
Notion: From Tool to Operating System
Notion is a powerful tool for notes, wikis, databases, and more.
The science:
Rich text editing
Relational databases
Real-time collaboration
API integrations
Mobile synchronization
The art:
Use case templates (product roadmap, CRM, meeting notes, OKR tracking)
Community-shared workflows (second brains, team hubs, company wikis)
Examples from real companies (how Pixar uses Notion, startup operating systems)
Certification programs for "Notion consultants"
Regular showcases of power users and their setups
It's one thing to know how to use Notion. It's another to use it to run your entire company from a single app.
Slack: Beyond Messaging
The science: Real-time messaging, file sharing, integrations, search.
The art: Channel organization strategies, meeting reduction frameworks, asynchronous communication best practices, workflow automation examples, remote team culture building.
Slack doesn't just enable team communication — it teaches teams how to communicate better.
Figma: Democratizing Design
The science: Vector editing, real-time collaboration, version control, developer handoff.
The art: Design system templates, component libraries, workflow examples from top design teams, educational content about design thinking, community showcases.
Figma transformed design from a specialist activity to a collaborative team sport.
The Hidden Complexity of "Art"
Teaching people how to use your product effectively is deceptively complex:
Understanding Context: You need to deeply understand your users' jobs, constraints, and success metrics — not just their immediate pain points.
Balancing Flexibility with Guidance: Too much prescription and you limit creativity. Too little and users get overwhelmed by possibilities.
Scaling Personalization: Different user segments need different guidance, but you can't create infinite variations.
Evolving Best Practices: As your product grows and changes, so do the optimal usage patterns. You need systems to capture and distribute this evolving knowledge.
Measuring Success: How do you know if users are getting value? Feature usage metrics often don't correlate with business outcomes.
You Still Need to Show It — Even If It's Not Core
Sometimes this "art" piece may not be part of your core value prop. You might think, "Our job is to provide the platform. The customer will figure out how to use it."
That thinking is increasingly risky in competitive markets.
Even if your product is a platform or a toolkit, people need help understanding:
What's a smart way to use it?
Where should they start?
What use cases are most valuable?
How do other successful customers use it?
What are the common pitfalls to avoid?
In my previous company, a CRM company, we used to say “Build your own adventure”. That;s a great tagline for the product that is so flexible and versatile. But it’s terrible from positioning and adoption perspective. Sales cycles were long. Adoption curves were longer. Even then many customers would not dare touch complex features.
Then we changed from pure platform play to use case play. Then things got better. Customers knew how to take advantage of the platform in the context of their use case.
The Resource Question: Where to Invest
The art requires different resources than the science:
Science teams need: Engineers, designers, QA, infrastructure specialists, security experts.
Art teams need: Customer success managers, content creators, community managers, solutions consultants, training specialists, data analysts who understand user behavior (not just product metrics).
Many product teams are heavily weighted toward science. They'll have 20 engineers and 2 customer success people. Then they wonder why feature adoption is low despite building exactly what users requested.
The most successful products invest roughly equally in both sides.
What This Means for Product Managers
As a product builder, it's your job to get the product to work. But it's also your job to help people get the most out of it.
This means asking different questions:
Science questions:
Does this feature work as expected?
Is the user experience intuitive?
Can we build this efficiently?
Art questions:
Have we shown users what great usage looks like?
Do we provide templates, workflows, and case studies?
Are we helping users connect product features to their real goals?
What would success look like for different user segments?
How can we help users discover unexpected value?
If you stop at usability, you've done half the job. The rest is enabling transformation.
The Competitive Advantage
Here's the strategic insight: Science is getting commoditized, but art is getting more valuable.
Today, you can spin up a sophisticated web application in hours using modern AI tools. APIs, databases, authentication, payments — the technical building blocks are increasingly standardized.
But teaching people how to transform their work? That requires deep domain expertise, customer empathy, and continuous learning. It's much harder to replicate.
The companies winning in competitive categories aren't necessarily the ones with the best features. They're the ones helping users achieve outcomes that seemed impossible before.
Getting Started: The Art Audit
Want to assess where your product stands? Ask these questions:
Discovery: Can new users easily find examples of how others like them use your product successfully?
Onboarding: Does your onboarding end with "here are the features" or "here's how to achieve your goals"?
Ongoing Value: Do you have systems to help users discover new ways to get value as their needs evolve?
Community: Are your most successful users sharing knowledge with others? Are you facilitating this?
Measurement: Do you track business outcomes for users, not just product engagement?
Conclusion
The distinction is clear: science is how the product works, while art is how it's used effectively. Science has become necessary but not sufficient for product success. Art is increasingly where products differentiate themselves and create lasting competitive advantage.
Even if teaching best practices isn't part of your core value proposition, you still need to show users what good looks like. The art side requires different teams, different metrics, and fundamentally different thinking than traditional product development. It demands customer success managers who understand user journeys, content creators who can translate complex workflows into simple guidance, and community builders who can facilitate peer learning.
Product success needs both dimensions — and the most successful products invest roughly equally in each. The companies that recognize this early and build comprehensive capabilities on both sides will own their categories. In increasingly competitive markets, art is becoming the primary source of defensible advantage because it's much harder to replicate deep domain expertise and user empathy than it is to copy features.
The future belongs to products that don't just work well — they help people work better.