I recently asked a woman what factors she considered when buying a new pair of jeans. She didn’t hesitate in her answer. She said, “Fit is my number one factor.” That seems reasonable. It’s hard to find a pair of jeans that fit well. I then asked her to tell me about the last time […]
Don’t Rely On Confidence Alone
You find yourself in a conference room with your product team. The white board is covered with sketches. You have an idea that everyone is excited about. You mapped it out. You have a plan. Your engineering team is anxious to get started. This is what makes building products fun – the appeal of the […]
How to Estimate the Expected Impact of a Product Change
Your design team is excited about a new signup process. They are convinced it will increase registrations. Your sales team keeps asking for the same feature over and over again. They think it’s responsible for lost sales since your biggest competitor features it prominently. Your product manager wants to increase the rate at which you […]
You Only Prefer It That Way Because It’s Familiar
This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Tell me how many times you’ve experienced the following: You’ve just introduced a new concept design – maybe it’s a new way of doing an old feature or maybe it’s a whole new metaphor for your current product. Small or large, it doesn’t matter. […]
Turn Your Inside View Outward
This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. One of the most common questions I get at my company, is why don’t we have a mobile app. We are in the age of mobile, how can we possibly survive without a mobile app? There are a lot of reasons why we don’t […]
Why You Only See What You Want to See
This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. You arrive at the office one morning, excited to tell your team about a new idea you had the night before. They look at you nonchalantly. One of them says, “that might work.” You were expecting more. You don’t hesitate. You jump right in […]
Be Prepared To Be Wrong
This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. As startup founders, product managers, designers, it’s often easy for us to come up with all the answers. Should we add this feature? Will users take this action? Will changing this copy increase conversions? And of course, we assume we are right. It turns […]
