The Secret Advantage of Product Reviewers Turned Product Designers

In recent years, we've seen an interesting trend emerge: tech media personalities are stepping into product development, and they're excelling at it. Meanwhile, established tech companies sometimes struggle to create products that truly resonate with users. What's behind this phenomenon? The answer lies in the unique advantage that professional reviewers bring to product design: deep, articulated user experience.

The Reviewer's Edge: Living with Technology

Tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Linus Sebastian, and Michael Fisher (Mr. Mobile) don't just test products—they live with them. Their entire professional existence revolves around:

• Using devices in real-world conditions

• Finding and articulating pain points

• Understanding the emotional impact of design choices

• Comparing hundreds of similar products

• Communicating these experiences to millions of viewers

This constant cycle of use, analysis, and communication creates a depth of understanding that's hard to replicate in traditional user research settings.

The Language of User Experience

What sets these media professionals apart isn't just their experience with products—it's their ability to articulate what makes technology succeed or fail on an emotional level. This is why companies like Google have made strategic moves to bring in talent from the tech media world, such as hiring Dieter Bohn and Dan Seifert from The Verge.

These individuals don't just understand what makes a good product; they can express:

• The philosophical implications of design choices

• The emotional response to user interfaces

• The subtle distinctions between good and great experiences

• The broader context of how products fit into users' lives

The Limitations of Traditional User Research

Traditional product designers face inherent constraints in their research process:

• Limited project timelines

• Fixed research budgets

• Small sample sizes

• Artificial testing environments

While designers work hard to understand their target users through observation, interviews, and collaborative design sessions, they're ultimately bound by these practical limitations. Whatever level of understanding they achieve when the research phase ends becomes the foundation for their design decisions.

The Media Professional's Advantage

Tech reviewers turned product designers bring two crucial advantages to the table:

1. Extensive Product Knowledge

   • Experience with hundreds of competing products

   • Deep understanding of market trends

   • Awareness of both successful and failed approaches

2. Refined User Perspective

   • Years of analyzing user experience

   • Thousands of words written about product details

   • Clear understanding of what separates "okay" from "great"

   • Natural ability to think from the user's perspective

The success of media personalities in product development isn't just a fluke—it's the natural result of their unique position at the intersection of user experience and communication. Spending every waking hour doing self-ethnography for years gives them an intuitive understanding of user needs that traditional research methods struggle to match.

As more companies recognize this advantage, we might see a growing trend of journalists transitioning into product development roles, bringing their unique perspective to the design process. I can't wait to see how they change design along the way.

this post was totally a collaboration with Claude, exploring!