If you make it to the top, you'll have one of the best and most delightful products in your market The product design and user experience design industries are full of vague phrases like "delightful experiences" without a lot of specifics about how to get there. Many...
Articles in the "Product" Category
Smart People Always Want to Mess This Up
Several weeks ago, my company released a new product: a tool that helps small service businesses with client follow-up. We did it very quietly, late one night after most of the department had gone home. A few of the product leaders made the decision, flipped the...
What Ancient Greece Taught Us About Innovation
It’s a little disturbing to realize how much of what we do is simply imitation. If you start analyzing your business objectively, you’ll probably come to the (somewhat depressing) realizing that a lot of it is simply rehashed ideas and behaviors adopted from your...
Product Design as Haiku
You probably already know roughly what haiku is — a Japanese form of poetry that roughly follows a pattern of 5-7-5 syllables (or, more technically, morae) — but you might not be aware of some of the more subtle constraints of this exceptionally restrained style of...
Why Business Owners Fear Customer Research
Customer research is fundamental to the design process. It’s been well established that relying on assumptions alone leads us to make biased decisions that often fail to reflect the reality of the customer’s needs and wants, leading to poor results (including reduced...
Being Best Beats Being First
Sometimes being "first to market" means you're doing all the hard work for someone else. Maybe it's time to slow down and reconsider. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout is undeniably a classic text and should be read by anyone in this...