When you hear the term “rapid prototyping,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us who work with digital products, we tend to think of wireframes or mockups. We equate prototyping with a quick way to get user feedback on our designs. But when we think of rapid prototyping and usability […]
How Compare and Contrast Decisions Lead to Better Product Outcomes
This past week I was in London speaking at Mind the Product. As usual, the Mind the Product team hosted a phenomenal event. You can watch the video here: Full Transcript This transcript is the script of the talk as it was written. It is not word-for-word the talk as given. Hi everyone. I’m excited […]
Why Drawing Maps Sharpens Your Thinking
“Could it have been the drawing of maps that boosted our ancestors beyond the threshold which the other apes just failed to cross?” – Richard Dawkins Have you ever wondered why the Business Model Canvas spread like wildfire? To me, the answer is clear. It’s a simple, visual tool that communicates the key elements of […]
Why You Aren’t Learning As Much As You Could From Your Experiments
I love that A/B testing has become so popular. It’s an important tool in our toolbox. But it frustrates me that we use it so poorly. Most teams make one of the following two mistakes: They either gate releases with an A/B test trying to understand whether or not the feature had the intended impact […]
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 […]
What Product Assumptions Are You Making?
When a team sets out to develop a product, they generate a series of hypotheses. In my experience, good teams are explicit about these hypotheses and test them before they invest too much time into a particular product plan. However, more often than not, I see that development teams are not even aware that these […]
