Creating change that ‘clicks’

“Recently, I finished reading Click: How to Make What People Want by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. It’s primarily aimed at testing prototypes to learn faster so I wasn’t sure how the ideas would translate to Ufi’s strategic goal of creating systemic change within the UK skills system but, spoiler alert, it did.

I wanted to highlight four ideas from the book that might help us build solutions that not only work, but click, even in an ecosystem as complex as ours. These ideas may not be especially new, but I found them useful reminders.

1. People don’t want products. They want outcomes

Knapp reminds us that people don’t actually care about your product. They care about getting something done. In an adult learning context, most of our users aren’t waking up hoping to engage with a new digital skills platform. They’re trying to achieve an outcome like prove they’re still employable, or change careers, or improve their English to get a better job.

We often start from broad social goals like “close the skills gap” or “upskill the workforce”. But unless what we’re building helps someone do something they care about right now, it probably won’t land.

It’s easy to get buried in the details of a new feature design, but it’s often worth a brief zoom out and reminding yourself what your users are actually trying to achieve.

Ask yourself: Is your product laser-focused on supporting your user’s ultimate outcome?

2. Find the sharpest point of value

Click emphasises that the best products have a “sharp point.” They do one thing exceptionally well, and this becomes the hook to build from.

This can be hard in social impact projects, where there’s a temptation to try to solve everything at once. But trying to be all things to all people often means you don’t solve anyone’s problem particularly well.

If we focus on the sharpest pain point a specific target user has, fix that, make it easy, make it fast, make it repeatable, then that sharp edge can be your wedge to create deeper change.

Ask yourself: What’s the single, biggest and most challenging moment your learner faces and are you solving that?

3. You don’t need a MVP to know if it clicks

We often hold our breath until the MVP is launched and wait for the feedback forms to arrive (this one definitely resonated with me). However to quote Click, “desirability often shows up early. If your thing is solving a real problem, people will lean in.” You often don’t need a full MVP to see that.

Ask yourself: What could you do to test if your users ‘lean in’. Is it a sketch, an email, a conversation?