Finest-5 Product reads #27
Design principles, mapping and other reads
Hi Happy Tuesday,
Working in an established org vs. in a startup is a great lesson to learn for PMs. In a startup, the amount of uncertainty skyrockets and it tests if you are a true generalist. If you are interested in discussing a challenging problem and some experience of product management in a startup, revert to this and let’s talk.
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10 design principles every designer should know
Design principles look never-ending and can sometimes be too much for a Product Manager to grasp. What I believe is more important is to know those basic concepts of UX that define the common sense of design.
Key Takeaways:
In your designs, refer to principles like Attractiveness bias, Golden Ratio, Countour Bias, and rule of thirds to affect aesthetics.
Support the reversibility of actions, or build in “safety nets” — processes that prevent catastrophic errors or failures.
Signal degradation occurs due to many reasons: absence of hierarchy, information overload, highly stylized typography or charts, unclear icons, and inappropriate visuals, etc.
Your guide to self-serve onboarding
Onboarding marks the major drop that occurs on day 1. 40-60% of people that never return after they have been on product are mostly due to unfound value.
Key Takeaways:
Ask new employees to sign up for your product and have them screen share as they do. You’ll be blown away by what you find.
Audit your new user onboarding and find every major area where you’re asking for something from the user. Then write a 1-2 sentence explanation of why - from the user’s perspective.
Add a checklist or progress bar to the console during user onboarding. Alternatively, pin the product tour so users can go back to it later.
Product Discovery Lessons: Going from Zero to One
Zero to one is one of the most written about topic in Product, at the same time it’s still so complex. You always come across a new revelation when you hit a roadblock.
Key Takeaways:
Inventing something new? Look far and wide for inspiration.
During product discovery, ask yourself: What can we do to decrease the time from hypothesis to insight?
The mantra of product discovery: Strong opinions, weakly held.
Strategy is now
We all strategize, it can be at a personal level, granular level or at a 10,000 ft. view. I see many people being obsessed with frameworks of strategy or road mapping. But, we miss the most major step of taking decisions before coming to the next step.
Key Takeaways:
Information becomes less valuable the longer you wait and more costly the more perfect it is.
A top reason that strategies fail is that no hard choices are made. Your strategy is trying to accommodate everyone and everything.
In this consideration of your options, the question will be whether making a decision now closes off possible future directions in the future.
Why Map in Discovery: 3 Mapping Methods
Mapping in discovery can be your most important productivity tool to handle the ambiguity. Putting things together in a structured format can help you break problems and find better solutions.
Key Takeaways:
Picture-superiority effect: People remember and keep information better when it’s presented in a visual format
Ecosystem map is a visual representation of the people, organizations, products, and services that a user may interact with during a particular experience
Chronological maps visualize the experience of a user over time.
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