Gen Z: The New Age of Product Design & Software
I recently attended the Virtual 2024 Config by Figma, an industry leader in product design software. The day that I attended covered four key topics: Design Systems, Figma Deep Dives, Design Craft, and Product Management. As someone passionate about learning how to turn concepts into great products, I was particularly drawn to the Product Management sessions.
One standout session was “How to Build for and With Gen Z,” delivered by Jiaona “JZ” Zhang, the Chief Product Officer of Linktree. As a graphic design student falling under the demographic of Gen Z, her speech felt incredibly relevant leading my curiosity down a rabbit hole of research. Briefly, here is what I discovered about building for and with the first digitally native generation.
Understanding Gen Z
In JZ’s opening speech, she presented a list of headlines often associated with Gen Z: “vocal, stubborn, entitled, cynical, unfocused, lazy, resistant, unpolished.” While these labels did not surprise me, I think in young adulthood every generation experiences making mistakes and growing from it. I find Gen Z to be empowered, authentic, emotionally aware, thoughtful, determined and so much more. I appreciated how JZ challenged these stereotypes by presenting a fresh perspective on the public narrative and highlighted how Gen Z’s unique insights and experiences are contributing to product design.
What Do They Care For?
- Social Responsibility: Gen Z deeply values social responsibility and expects brands to contribute positively to society. “Two-thirds of consumers (66%) say it’s important for brands to take public stands on social and political issues, and more than half (58%) are open to this happening on social media.” (SproutSocial, 2018).
- Authenticity: Authenticity is crucial. They favor raw and genuine interactions over polished and performative content. IBM notes that “Gen Zer’s are both practical and skeptical. Their focus is on quality and authenticity — not on marketing hype. After all, Gen Zer’s are growing up at a time when ‘alternative facts’ has become a newsworthy phrase, and their familiarity with technology means they are not easily fooled.” (IBM, 2018).
- Community: Seeking meaningful interactions that can evolve into real friendships. “Communities are about connection, and to practice authenticity, this needs to be kept as a focus…The reason why people want to be in a brand community is to build a social connection […] so brands should sit in a place where they facilitate those connections being made.” (Pion, 2024)
- Empowerment: Customization and personalization are vital. Gen Z values the ability to shape how they represent themselves online. “Social media has shaped Gen Z’s attitudes about personalization, with 75% of survey respondents saying they’re more likely to buy a product if they can customize it.” (MarketingDive, 2020).
- Immediacy: “Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.” (Microsoft, 2015, Time, 2015).
Engaging Gen Z with Gamification
How might we create a memorable experience and motivate user engagement by sparking delight? Andy Allen, the Founder/CEO of notboring.software and guest speaker at Config, is another player winning over Gen Z by taking “boring” apps such as weather apps and applying gamification. One of the earliest interactions we have with software comes through games! Although I did not grow up playing games as often as my brother or peers, it has clearly stood out to me as a place where people socialize with their friends and strangers.
Gamification applies game design principles and elements such as skins, collaboration, badges, sound, procedural physics, and real-time dynamics to non-game contexts. And as quoted by Allen, “the world of apps-once an exciting canvas for creative exploration-has become repetitive, predictable, and… boring”.
One of my favorite apps in his line of notboring.software is Habits. I’ve downloaded over a handful of habit tracker apps in the past and I’ve always fallen off the train of using, never giving them a second thought until I came across Habits!
What I learned from using Habits and how gamification taps into several psychological triggers that motivate Gen Z:
- Achievement and Reward: The daily habit completion process is so entertaining and engaging that it kept me coming back day after day. You complete a task, and a combination of sound design, haptics, and visuals creates a rewarding sensory experience.
- Progression and Mastery: Just like in games, I was able to see the progress of my achievements once it was met and it paired beautifully along with procedural physics displaying the levels I had reached.
- Personalization: Gamification often allows users to customize their experiences—whether it is choosing an avatar, selecting challenges, or setting personal goals. This app gives us the ability to change the whole interface with skins that even apply to the app icon.
Overarching Takeaway: Absorb, Adapt, and Evolve
The key to connecting with Gen Z—and better said, all generations at this point in time—lies in our ability to actively listen to and continuously learn from target audience values, preferences, and feedback. So that we can effectively shift gears and take actionable steps to apply research findings to continuously improve the product.
Through insights found authoring this paper, I feel inspired to think about the overarching values of what I am designing and better connect with the people in a purposeful way. As students, we feel empowered when our voices lead to positive change, and I am glad my campus- CSULB- recently took the initiative to update the student center’s UX. It is crucial for the CSU and all its campuses to prioritize improving the resources that students frequently interact with. In my view, a stronger emphasis on enhancing the user experience of campus software would bring so much value to students by allowing us to navigate the school system more independently, without the frustration of outdated platforms. I’m also pleased to see that chatbots are being integrated into these systems. I have found myself resolving minor problems and questions in 5 minutes with this support and it can help address frequent questions we as students often have. Improvements like these can make a world of a difference in how we manage our academic journey, making it a more frictionless ride to achieving our academic goals.
