ABD: Always Be Dogfooding

Using your product like a customer

The idea behind dogfooding is that if you are constantly using your own product and talking with your team about what you encounter, then you can create a product that better meets the needs of your customers. It also helps to get the team behind the product more excited and invested, leading to better product development.

Dogfooding is the practice of using one's own product as a customer.

It’s important to always be talking with users, but some of the best innovations for the products I’ve worked on came from dogfooding the app.

You know your product better than anyone, users have great suggestions, but they may not know the vision you have for your product and where you want it to go.

Henry Ford famously said “If I had asked people what they want, they would have said: faster horses...”

Dogfooding Max Travel

I was reminded of the importance of dogfooding while using Max Travel to book hotels on a recent trip. I was booking and staying at a different hotel almost every night to test many bookings and the experience of checking in and out of hotels.

One thing I realized while using the app so much, was that we had not yet built a great experience for current trips. We showed upcoming trips on the Home screen, and past trips in the Profile screen. But current trips didn’t fit into either of these lists.

Involving the Team

Many heads are better than one. This is often the case when developing products. Instead of coming to the team with a solution, I shared with them the problem I had discovered and asked for their input on how to solve it.

This approach has many benefits. Even if you may already think you have the answer, because you get new ideas or ideas that reenforce the one you already had. Most importantly, it gets the team involved and even more invested in the product you’re building together.

The solution to this problem came from our backend developer. He suggested we add a special card for current trips with key actions.

So that’s what we designed and build! A new card for current trips that gave travelers easy access to important information like the check-in and check-out times. As well as actions like calling the hotel, looking the hotel up on the map for directions or Uber and viewing the full itinerary details.

Current Trips is launching today and will be available to all beta testers! If you aren’t on the Max Travel beta, you can join the waitlist here.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you are traveling, be sure to join the Max Travel beta and learn how you can earn reward points that grow!

Also, if you are interested in working with me to help optimize your app experience or growth funnel, I run Growth Funnel Agency.