Eat your own dog food
When building products or services
Understanding the Rule
Use your own products. Experience what customers experience. Discover problems firsthand. Teams using their own products build better ones.
What Happens When You Break It
Not using your product leads to building for imaginary users, missing obvious problems, poor quality, features nobody wants, and products teams wouldn't personally tolerate.
Benefits of Following This Rule
Using your product finds problems early, creates empathy, ensures quality, builds better features, and guarantees you build something you'd personally want.