I read Josh Seiden's excellent book Outcomes Over Output. It's shaped how I think about products. It also gave me language for ideas we'd been using at Rec Room, where we talked about intentions, motivations, and goals. I'd like to share some ways the book has changed my thinking, and mix in my own experience.
Outcome and output come from Josh. His book is built on a simple chain: outputs lead to outcomes, and outcomes lead to impact, the business results a company cares about, like revenue. Our work is picking the outputs that get us there.
Intentions, motivations, and goals are terms we used at Rec Room. Intentions and motivations describe the people using a product: what they want and why. Goals take the place of Josh's impact. They're principles rather than business results, the reason behind the outcomes we choose.
I've come to think of product building as changing human behavior. It's almost like all engineering is social engineering. If you put something in front of someone and they use it, you've changed what they do; without it, they'd do something else. Adding a button, fixing a bug, changing a workflow: each one of these changes behavior. Even personal projects can influence our own behavior.
That sounds sinister, as though we're manipulators. But it doesn't have to be. Influence is unavoidable, so what kind of influence do you want to have? We should aim to build products where people look back on their time as meaningful. If every minute someone spends in your product is time well spent, you've done something good in the world.
An outcome is one of these changes in behavior: people building more games, lapsed players coming back. We usually see outcomes through metrics like button clicks, page views, or games created. Qualitative feedback can become a number too. If players keep saying they can't find their friends, you can count how many players join a friend in their first session, then work to move that number.
An output is what we do to the product. The button, the bug fix, and the new workflow are all outputs. Outputs are easy to count, so it's tempting to measure our work by them. But shipping a feature nobody uses doesn't change anything. Outputs only matter when they lead to outcomes.
People come to products wanting specific things. Some want to share what they make. Some want to play with friends. That wanting peaks at certain moments. Someone who wants to share is most ready right after they publish. Someone who wants to play with friends is most ready to party up when they sign in or switch activities. Ask at those moments and you're working with people. The best outcomes to go after are the ones people already want, at the moments they want them most.
There's also a reason behind each of these. You want to share because you want to build a following. You want to play with friends because you want to feel part of a community.
An intention is an inclination toward an outcome, like sharing or playing with friends. A moment of high intention is when that inclination peaks, like right after publishing. These moments tell you where outputs belong.
A motivation is the reason behind an intention, like building a following or feeling part of a community. Motivations are hard to see in analytics. You usually find them by talking to people, reading reviews, or watching how they play. Once you know someone's motivation, you can tap into it. Show a creator how many people played their game, and they're more eager to share the next one.
At Rec Room, every product change started with a clear understanding of the goals it was meant to serve. Good goals are the underlying principles that guide our decisions, and they stay relevant over time: "Foster a vibrant community" or "Enable creativity." Compare that to "Raise daily active users by 10%," which isn't an end in itself. You can raise daily active users with spammy notifications and leave players worse off.
The sum of all your outcomes should align with your goals. If people have positive social interactions, join friends after signing in, and create and share content, those are outcomes that support the goal of fostering a vibrant community.
So a goal is the reason behind the outcomes we choose. The best goals mirror your players' motivations. Players want to feel part of a community, and you want to foster one. That's how you build a product where time spent is time well spent.