AI has made building easier.
But building the right thing is still hard.
Ten articles every week on what is happening across product, research, design and engineering. Curated by Rory Madden to help teams decide what to build.
Explore the editions ↓The archive
Even when people say they are working in an Agile environment, there is often a big design phase, and for good reason - a single new requirement can result in a complete redesign of the solution.
Read edition ↗The biggest risk in product development is building products that customers don't want. But the next biggest risk is analysis paralysis, where teams spend all their time and budget trying to evaluate whether they're building the right thing.
Read edition ↗The presence of a moderator during a usability test influences the dynamic of a test. Nobody likes having someone look over their shoulder and judge them. This is why the moderator role is so crucial in ensuring that you get high-quality insights from your tests.
Read edition ↗It is far too easy to fall into the trap of believing that customers will love what we are building. That is why we go to the effort of breaking down our solutions, identifying assumptions, and then trying to evaluate them. But there is still one hurdle left to overcome - our bia
Read edition ↗Most advice around testing seems to focus on generative interviewing. This is critical to ensure that you build the right thing - but I believe there is a gap around advice on how to run high quality evaluative tests.
Read edition ↗You have a great idea, you just need to evaluate whether customers really want it. You want to create a landing page and some social media posts that highlight how great your new feature is. But how do you convey the value of your product quickly and accurately?
Read edition ↗When identifying the assumptions behind our solutions, we categorised them under the four key product risks: desirability, usability, feasibility, and viability.
Read edition ↗Design is creative, it's messy, there are lot's of dead ends and backtracking as you iterate towards solutions that work. Development is a more logical, linear flow of turning the design into working software. It sounds great - but it's wrong.
Read edition ↗A thorough assumption-mapping exercise might reveal 20, 30, or even more assumptions for a single feature. We don't have time to test all of them so we need to be strategic about which assumptions we validate first.
Read edition ↗Every product or feature we build rests on a foundation of assumptions about how users will behave. If these assumptions are wrong it could sink our whole feature. That's why identifying the key assumptions is critical to enable us to test our designs before we over-invest in bui
Read edition ↗It’s so obvious. If we invest a little bit more time in design upfront then we will save so much time and money by building better products that customers actually love.
Read edition ↗Have you ever left a brainstorming session feeling more frustrated than inspired? The reasons that ideation sessions often fall flat comes down to a few predictable challenges but luckily there are proven techniques to overcome these challenges and help your team generate creativ
Read edition ↗Have you ever gotten stuck in an ideation session when trying to come up with new ideas? The blank page can be quite daunting, but the common advice is to push through because quantity equals quality. But quantity on it's own is not enough.
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