How to Break Up With Your Product
By: Davis Levine
Tags: Product Design, Workshop, Design, Product Development, Facilitation

Working on a digital product is like being in a relationship. You go through an experience of growth, connection, and learning. You constantly think about it, day in and day out. It can be a frustrating and rewarding experience.

For some people, they’ve devoted years to building, improving, and maintaining a product. They intimately know it’s history as well as its strengths and shortcomings. But like most relationships, things change and sometimes you just need to move on. The product just isn’t serving the right needs for its users anymore (or your organization).

What do you do when you know the relationship is over?

The Breakup Letter

On a recent project, our team spent a lot of time aligning around change. At the core of this change was a critical product that we all recognized needed to be retired or completely overhauled in some way. Letting go is hard though, especially when you’re in a relationship with a product that you’ve devoted countless time and energy into. As one last exercise before jumping into a future vision session I facilitated a relationship ending milestone...

We wrote breakup letters to the product.

It sounds silly (yes, people were very skeptical), but this kind of closure experience was both cathartic and illuminating. The letters allowed us to project our frustrations, disappointments, unmet expectations, challenges as well as some fond memories about the work. Some letters were short and to the point, others were drawn out and emotional, some were very funny. Mostly they were a mix of all of the above. All of them packed with meaning.

This format works because it has a commonly understood structure, but finds itself in an unfamiliar context. It takes a light-hearted approach to what could be a very serious discussion. Participants are able to remove themselves from having a direct conversation and use the letter to translate deeper emotions in a less vulnerable way. This can be an emotional exercise.

After reading the letters out loud there was a collective sense of letting go. We were able to voice the practices and conditions that just weren’t serving us anymore. No comments or reactions from the group were necessary. Each letter represented a truth for that person that couldn’t be refuted and needed no discussion. There was a clear acknowledgment of the emotional labour that can go into this work.

This kind of passion needs to be acknowledged and recognized in any change initiative.

A closure experience like this isn’t just about catharsis. It also helps a team identify the patterns and behaviours that we don’t want to replicate in the future.

By learning what didn’t work, what hasn’t served us, we are able to move forward and identify what we want and need in our new relationship.

Activity Steps

This activity is suitable for any kind of closure experience where reflection or letting go is desired. Activities like a project ending, retiring a product, the end of a workshop or conference. Break up letters don’t have to be antagonizing! They can be mutually desired and amicable.