Making Product
The future is Anti-Lean!
There’s nothing wrong with Lean but when you’re pushing the boundaries of science, it fails miserably, says x.ai's Dennis Mortensen.
In Summary: Lean works when you can identify inefficiency or pain in the market (eg. unused spare rooms) and develop a product that eliminates it. At the other end of the spectrum are companies like Tesla. There's no room for a 'buggy but usable v1.0' electric car.
AI isn't a moonshot but is still Anti-Lean. Anti-Lean allows for ambitious long term product development, which is how you build a truly intelligent agent in 2016
x.ai applied the same Anti-Lean approach to their pricing. They conducted in-depth research on customer personas and use cases and tapped beta customers for specific feedback on pricing scenarios.
The team focused on delivering value as a key component of the pricing strategy. For their most successful customers, the mid-tier price point is not a big deal because the product delivers huge value (in the reduction of their pain) that greatly exceeds the actual price.
8 cognitive biases Product Managers need to know
Cognitive bias is everywhere, but we're especially susceptible when interacting with products via a smartphone or computer, says AirBnB's Alvin Shia.
In Summary: Humans tend to ascribe human-like traits and intentions to non-human entities. We like things to be like us. Like humans, opinionated products that have a clear point-of-view are more interesting than products that look and act like everybody else.
The Gottman Ratio can predict everything from brand affinity to divorce with remarkable accuracy. It’s a good idea to consider the 5:1 rule-of-thumb when discussing product tradeoffs. Is your product delivering at least 5 positive moments for every one that a user might find negative?
When trying to teach new behaviour, first establish a ladder of goals for your user. As they make progress, support and motivate them with visualisations that show how close the next milestone is.
Loss aversion is what makes tactics such as 30-day free trials and limited-time sales so successful. We like to win, but we hate to lose.
The Product is the Brain!
On demand interfaces are changing product , says Matt Hartman.
In Summary: New technologies are fundamentally changing what we mean by 'the product.' A single interface — an app or a website — is no longer the product. The product is the brain itself , the set of assets behind the instance in any single channel.
On-demand interfaces that live in chat and voice (and beyond) appear when needed and disappear when not relevant. Consumers understand that Uber isn’t just an app, it’s the notion that there are so many cars driving around, connected by a brain, creating a service that delivers a car to you almost instantly.
The best voice user interfaces take care to know a user’s context. A company’s long term value will be determined by the unique insights it derives from the proprietary data that it has access to in its brain.
Why Product Strategy at Spotify is a series of Bets
John Cutler on how Spotify uses bets to achieve product focus.
In Summary: Henrik Kniberg is a minor legend in product thanks to his detailed analyses of Spotify's internal culture. Earlier this year, he covered Rhythm: Spotify's latest approach to product strategy which replaced OKRs and Priorities and Achievements.
Central to the Rhythm methodology is the concept of 'Bets.' Bets are outcome focused and can be small or large. They can range in scope from core assumptions about the business to outcomes of a small experiment.
By calling them 'bets', Spotify acknowledge that losing is an option. Bets are defined using the DIBB framework (Data-Insight-Belief-Bet) and are prioritised via stack-ranking based on company beliefs and 'north star' goals
Different parts of the company visualise their own bets and align with higher level bets, using interlinked 'Bet Boards.' Rhythm is designed to support the autonomy of Spotify's Product Teams, known as 'squads.' Whilst Bet Boards and DIBBs provide context, squads are still responsible for making the best use of their time.
The right and wrong way to build an MVP
Think valuable, not viable, says Drawbackwards' Ward Andrews.
In Summary: It's a common misconception that MVP is about stripping down a product to ship it as quickly and cheaply as possible. But, rather than helping products succeed, this is exactly how they fail.
To determine your Minimum Valuable Product make sure you clearly define your target user and the Job-To-Be-Done your product addresses. Having a defined purpose, set of core values and vision helps focus your team’s efforts in designing a more meaningful experience.
Budget is often the biggest concern for a new product, so consider whether there’s a different way to prove your concept without building a product at all.
The most effective MVPs maintain a high standard of quality of code, UX and content. They simply limit the scope. The more we shift from a mindset of viability to value, the more successful our business and our users will be.
Growing Product
Why Freemium is slowly dying...
...and what comes next, by Kyle Poyar.
In Summary: Conventional wisdom held that startups should offer a substantial part of their product as 'free forever' which would lead to viral adoption and, eventually, revenue. This has worked for some (Slack, Evernote) but, for many, a free offering attracts too many outside their target market who would never pay.
Founders and PMs need to get more creative with how they generate leads and many have turned to old-school tactics.
These include free trial, which creates stronger incentives for users to convert from free to paid, and hyper-specific free products that appeal to target buyers without cannibalising paid offerings.
Slack sells entry-level versions of their product to teams within larger enterprises as part of a 'land-and-expand' model which creates a self-funding customer acquisition engine.
Finally, as we have seen above, some companies are opting to go 'Anti-Lean' and take a more thoughtful approach to building their products. x.ai took almost 3 years to get the product to market but launched to a pool of eager customers already willing to pay.
Talking Product
Ace your Product Manager interview!
It pays to be bold, says Google's David Weekly.
In Summary: Having interviewed over 100 Product Managers, shadowed PM hiring committees and developed a class called 'The Path to PM', David's well placed to deliver a masterclass on the ninja skills that big tech companies look for when assessing Product Managers.
Great PMs start by focussing on the users and reason from first principles. They work visually and expose the tools and assumptions that underpin their reasoning.
Whilst product design skills are critical, you should also understand how the economics are going to work and whether your idea could be economically sound.
Above all, you should have an opinion about what’s wrong with the world around you and how you can help fix it. A fantastic candidate will set the interviewer’s mind reeling with an answer they’ve never heard before.
It’s much better to have 2 fantastic interviews and one that's average than 3 that are 'merely' good. This is why it pays to be bold.
Designing Product
Beyond Product Usability: Shareable Design
The obscurity of Snapchat’s design is not a bug, it’s a feature, says Josh Elman.
In Summary: Like Tinder, Snapchat's design is made to engage people and encourage them to share their experiences with others.
When intuitive design emerged in the 80s, it was a huge leap forward from previous computer interfaces which were complex, unintuitive, and required a lot of training to use. Mobile has shifted product toward physical gestures and increased the extent to which people learn how to do things by watching others.
Shareable design understands the social nature of learning and capitalises on people’s desires to learn and teach. Not only are 'invisible' features like a long press, a 3D touch 'deep' press or a swipe down from the top memorable, they take up no screen real estate at all.
Showing your friends something cool can increase your social standing. For products like Snapchat, this is immensely powerful as it converts users into evangelists.
