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Welcome to Product Monk, a 3x/week newsletter where we share the case studies of the most exciting tech products.

We wrote these three stories last week, hope you love them ❤️:

• Crisis-proofing your Products to Help Thrive in Downturns

• 🧩 Trending: Loom's acquired!

• Patreon's Retargeting Strategy

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🧃Juicy reads to check out

This section includes some relevant articles/videos, people to check out, and links you might find interesting from around Product management.

👉🏻 Aakash Gupta shares the modern way to write a PRD. (Link)

👉🏻 Malte Scholz, CEO & CPO of airfocus helps understand large-scale quarterly roadmaps and how to plan to execute your plan within the quarter. (Link).

👉🏻 Shyvee Shi & David Pereira, reveal the 9 product management ingredients you cannot afford miss.  (Link)

User Psychology #4: Progressive Disclosure

Hi there 👋 

After a long long time, I am back with our user psychology series! I had to put this on a back-burner because other topics were found to be more important. But I think its time to do a user psychology again today!

Today, we are going to look at the Progressive Disclosure psychology and how it is useful for product managers.

What you’ll learn:

• What is Progressive Disclosure?

• How is it useful for product managers?

• Variety of progressive disclosure strategies

Let’s jump in!

What is Progressive Disclosure?

Progressive disclosure is a design strategy often used in user interface and product design to enhance the user experience by presenting information and options to users in a gradual and structured manner.

This approach is particularly valuable when dealing with complex or information-rich interfaces, as it helps prevent overwhelming users with too much information all at once. Progressive disclosure is about revealing information or functionality progressively, based on the user's needs, experience, or context.

Main Elements of Progressive Disclosure

1. Hierarchy of Information: In progressive disclosure, information is organized into a hierarchy or layers, with the most essential or commonly used elements displayed prominently, while less crucial or advanced options are hidden or made accessible through additional interactions.

2. User-Centered Design: It's centered on the principle of understanding the user's needs and adapting the interface to accommodate them. Users are introduced to information or features as they need them, reducing cognitive load and preventing information overload.

3. Simplifies Complexity: Progressive disclosure is particularly useful when dealing with complex software, applications, or websites. By initially showing only the basics and progressively revealing more advanced options, it makes the interface more approachable for both novice and experienced users.

4. Progressive Information Display: This approach often involves elements such as drop-down menus, tooltips, accordions, expandable sections, or step-by-step wizards. Users can click, hover, or interact with these elements to reveal more details or options.

Progressive Disclosure for Product Managers

Progressive disclosure is a useful technique for product managers because it can help to improve the user experience of their products in a number of ways.

• Reduced cognitive load: By only showing users the information and functionality that they need at any given time, progressive disclosure can help to reduce the amount of mental effort that users need to put into using a product. This is especially important for complex products, where users can easily become overwhelmed if they are presented with too much information at once.

• Improved usability: Progressive disclosure can make products easier to learn and use, especially for new users. By hiding complex features and information until they are needed, progressive disclosure can help users to focus on the task at hand and avoid getting overwhelmed.

• Simplified user interface: Progressive disclosure can help to simplify the user interface of a product by hiding unnecessary information and features. This can make the product easier to navigate and use.

• Increased adoption: When users are able to start using a product quickly and easily, they are more likely to adopt it and continue using it. Progressive disclosure can help to make products more accessible and appealing to new users.

How to Strategize in Products with Progressive Disclosure?

• Identify the core features and functionality of your product. What do users need to know and be able to do in order to get value from your product? These are the features and functionality that should be visible and accessible from the start.

• Identify the features and functionality that are less essential or that can be complex. These are the features and functionality that you can hide behind progressive disclosure elements.

• Think about how users will interact with your product. What tasks are they most likely to try to complete when they first start using your product? What information and functionality will they need at each stage of their journey?

• Design your progressive disclosure elements in a way that is clear and intuitive. Users should be able to easily understand what is hidden behind each element and how to reveal it.

• Use progressive disclosure to guide users through complex tasks. For example, you can use a wizard to guide users through the process of setting up their account or creating a new project.

• Use progressive disclosure to collect feedback from users. For example, you can ask users for feedback on a new feature before making it widely available.

• Measure the success of your progressive disclosure strategy. Track how many users interact with each element and how often they use the features and functionality that are hidden behind them. This data can help you to improve your progressive disclosure strategy over time.

Variety of Progressive Disclosure Strategies

Progressive disclosure can be used in a variety of ways, such as:

• Only showing the most important information at first. For example, a product page might show the product name, price, and image initially, with additional details such as the description, shipping information, and reviews hidden behind tabs or accordions.

• Revealing more information as the user interacts with the product. For example, a step-by-step wizard might show the user one step at a time, with the next step only appearing after the user has completed the current step.

• Providing users with the option to hide or reveal information. For example, a user might be able to collapse a sidebar menu to save space, or expand it to see more options.