Why #ux Design Must Be the Foundation of Your Software Product
▻https://hackernoon.com/why-ux-design-must-be-the-foundation-of-your-software-product-f66e431cc7
“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.” — Martin LeBlanc, IconfinderIt is an open secret that product design today is primarily about convenience and benefits for users. The best, most successful products embody flawless user experience.We at SumatoSoft strive to incorporate best practices in software we build for clients — and user experience design (UX) is one of them.So what is exactly user experience design?User experience design is the process of creating products that provide relevant and significant experiences to users based on their behaviour analysis. By analyzing the behavior of users, UX design identifies their motives and creates optimum digital experiences for them. The main objective of UX design is to improve the way users interact with (...)
#user-experience-design #data-driven #product-design #user-experience
]]>What is Patent Thinking?
▻https://hackernoon.com/what-is-patent-thinking-511be4141b40?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
Patent Thinking is a new design methodology which combines Patent Design and Design Thinking. Using this new ideation methodology teams, startups, academia and enterprises can develop new ideas, products and processes by prototyping a lean patent application. The applied method could take the form of an individual work or a group activity.Patent thinking includes principles from technology, product management, product design, business and intellectual property.Patents are considered to be one of the most classic and well known forms of clearly depicting and protecting an innovative product/service or invention by a sole inventor or a group of inventors. #patents have clear rules and structure. They have high value due to the large effort, thought and resources inventors put in to get (...)
#design-thinking #patent-thinking #product-management #product-design
]]>My Travel #insurance Concept — #product Design — Stage 1
▻https://hackernoon.com/my-travel-insurance-concept-product-design-stage-1-ebcce06a21e7?source=r
Travel Insurance Experiment Stage 1It’s been more than 6 weeks since I wrote the last piece on experimenting on creating a new-age travel insurance product for the modern traveler. I must say, it’s been a journey of discovery and reflecting so far. Much of the foundational work is what I usually go through at startup accelerators and it’s nice to be on the discovery end for a change.So here are some of the points I attempted to solve?What do we stand for?What could the product look like?Who are we selling to?Would the product be something people are willing to pay for? What is the customer value?How does an insurer operate?What are the current pain points users face with travel insurance?Of Note: Travel Insurance is a fairly vanilla type of insurance and serves a specific purpose. Since we are (...)
]]>Simple #prioritization technique for #product Managers
▻https://hackernoon.com/simple-prioritization-technique-for-product-managers-4ccfff20b2c7?source
A Simple Prioritization Technique for Product ManagersOne of the important tasks as a Product Manager is to prioritize. Deciding on what (and when) to do is a critical job for the role of a Product Manager.This post is NOT about the importance of prioritization and why prioritization is a perennial challenge for a product manager.This post deals with a generic framework which a Product Manager can easily apply for prioritization.There are lot of techniques and framework available for prioritization like RICE framework, MoSCoW technique, value vs complexity quadrant, Kano model etc. But there are situations when we don’t have enough data to use a particular framework or the particular framework itself is not applicable exactly. Instead of using the framework, we tend to fit in the (...)
]]>Everyone’s Doing It, But That Doesn’t Make It Easy: What To Consider When Building A Good Voice Or…
▻https://hackernoon.com/everyones-doing-it-but-that-doesn-t-make-it-easy-what-to-consider-when-b
Everyone’s Doing It, But That Doesn’t Make It Easy: What To Consider When Building A Good Voice Or Gesture ProductThis article is written by Marcin Kloda, the Vice President Of High-Technology and GM Americas at intive. intive is a software company focused on digital product development with more than 18 years of experience and 150+ apps.We’ve always been fascinated by communicating with machines — yes, even before Siri and Alexa. In fact, conversational systems go back way further than most people might think. Consider Audrey, for example. Born in 1952, Audrey was a 6-foot tall computing system developed by Bell Labs, which could recognize the sound of digits from zero to nine — at least, with voices it was familiar with.Almost 70 years later, we’ve come a long way. No longer a novelty, more and (...)
#artificial-intelligence #ai #product-development #product-design
]]>We’re Saving Time For Home Seekers- Here’s How!
▻https://hackernoon.com/were-saving-time-for-home-seekers-here-s-how-c40a1c84148f?source=rss----
Imagine that you are moving to a new city and looking for a place for rent. What will you do? You will ideally ask for recommendations from someone you know. Maybe you will look online for those localities that are close to your office. You will probably search properties on a real estate portal and get in touch with the owner of a property you liked. Just because you liked a property doesn’t guarantee that you will get the property. You will need to convince the homeowner why you will be a better tenant. If it doesn’t work out the process restarts.Too much work right?Several members within our team had similar personal experience. We planned to listen to hundreds of customer conversations with the agents and homeowners and did a market research to understand crucial aspects that come (...)
#housing #product #product-design #product-management #real-estate
]]>#ui/UX and the Company Experience. A refined know-it-all guide on all about the Product.
▻https://hackernoon.com/ui-ux-and-the-company-experience-a-refined-know-it-all-guide-on-all-abou
UI/UX and the Company ExperienceA refined know-it-all guide on all about the Product.About the authorPavel Pekanov is a seasoned #creative Director, Art Director and Designer (and a Developer, but tss-s tell no one). Started his creative career in 2004, followed by the launch of his own Creative Agency in 2008. Ranked a top earning freelancer on Upwork (former Elance) in 2013. Launched a few startups of his own. Featured on CSS Design Awards. Former Creative Director at QUOINE. Pavel has been helping startups, founders and well run businesses with Branding, Product Design, UI/UX and Brand Experience for 14+ years.Personal website: pekanov.comPortfolio website: pekanovdesigns.comUI/UX & Product DesignUI (User Interface) and #ux (User Experience) go along together these days. Thought it (...)
]]>#product Management Skills NO ONE talks about ;)
▻https://hackernoon.com/product-management-skills-no-one-talks-about-5d50debfb815?source=rss----
Product Management skills NO ONE talks about ;)Let me tell you a secret that the product management industry is hiding from you, or maybe not saying it out loud — we don’t care ‘too’ much about the hard skills. And what hard skills? Writing a PRD? Doing user interviews? Understanding UX? Knowing business and tech?There’s more than what meets the eye here. And more than UX, Business, and Tech, that’s required to become a better Product Manager.Few years ago, when I started my Product Management career, almost every Google search on, “What do PMs do?” or “What skills are required to be a good PM?” landed me on a Venn! This Venn:Source: What, exactly, is a Product Manager?The Venn diagram tells you Product Managers sit at the intersection of tech, design, and business. This Venn was a good insight into (...)
]]>The Right Way To Onboard People Into Your Product
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-right-way-to-onboard-people-into-your-product-137ccc58fafd?source=rs
Do you remember all the dating sites before Tinder came along? Match.com, eHarmony, OkCupid — the list goes on. What did they all have in common? The worst #onboarding experience imaginable.I remember it like yesterday, the hours 21-year-old me spent setting up my OkCupid profile. Searching for photos, cropping them, uploading them, updating my preferences, writing and having friends edit short-form essay questions about myself — all of this just to start using the service.And then Tinder comes along. Login with Facebook and… you’re done.You went from 0 to actually fully productive and using the app in a matter of seconds. All your pictures are uploaded for you. Your name, age, and location are already pre-filled. All you need to do is update your preferences and start swiping. You could always (...)
#product-development #product-design #how-to-onboard #customer-experience
]]>What’s a Product Roadmap good for, anyway?
▻https://hackernoon.com/whats-a-product-roadmap-good-for-anyway-57e4bea18f84?source=rss----3a814
Product development starts with building a product roadmap, I was told. But what is the right way to do that? Here’s what I discovered about product roadmaps when building one.Photo by slon_dot_pics from PexelsI just delivered a Product Roadmap.I was appointed Chief Product Officer at SIG last September and gathered a small Product team. Mostly first-timers at this game, including myself. Our mission: provide the functional design of a new platform to propel our organisation into a new level of growth.“Start by building a Product Roadmap”, I was told.Ok. Can do. But what does that mean exactly?What kind of stuff needs to go onto a roadmap, actually? How far into the future should it extend? How much detail should it provide? In what form should we cast the content? Spreadsheet? Commercial (...)
#product-development #product-design #product-roadmap #build-a-product-roadmap #product-management
]]>This Is The Single Most Costly Mistake Engineers Make — And How To Fix It
▻https://hackernoon.com/this-is-the-single-most-costly-mistake-engineers-make-and-how-to-fix-it-
This Is The Single Most Costly Mistake Engineers Make — And How To Fix ItEngineers are known for wanting to do things the hard way.We prefer building things from scratch, even if 90% of the technology we need already exists. We like pushing boundaries. And we’re drawn instinctively to complexity. It’s like we think of the complexity of a given problem as a proxy for how much mental weight we’re capable of moving.That drive, however — to show off, to impress our colleagues with our mental strength — is exactly what holds so many engineers back.See, complexity breeds more complexity. The more parts a product has (and the more complex and custom those parts are), the harder and costlier every production activity around that product becomes. More complexity means more development time, more testing, (...)
#startup-lessons #product-design #startup #entrepreneurship #engineering
]]>The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Five European Banking Experiences
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-five-european-banking-experiences-3f28ea361afa
A quick review of mobile banking apps & the future of fintechEuropean Central Bank (picture from Wikipedia)There’s a hot race in Europe between incumbent banks and #fintech startups to capture the biggest possible share of digital native clients (think Millennials & Gen Z).Their goal is to secure a dominant position at the end of the transition period from the traditional brick and mortar model to a mobile only business model.Since I’ve been following closely the evolution of fintech in Europe for quite some time and I’ve been recently a customer of several banks, I wanted to share with you a comparison of 5 mobile banking experiences ranked on several qualities, followed by some thoughts on the future of fintech.These are the 5 contenders:N26. A German fintech bank backed by venture (...)
#european-banks #venture-capital #european-fintech #product-design
]]>Where’s The Love? Build Some Delight Into Your #product
▻https://hackernoon.com/wheres-the-love-build-some-delight-into-your-product-6d8a09605bcf?source
What do you think of as “essential” when building a new product? Well, you need a login system, CMS system, good user flows, and analytics hookups, among other things.But what about the more human aspects of the product? Those small touches and unanticipated experiences which actually make customers happy and (fondly) remember and share the experience they had with your product?What I’m talking about here are the sort of hidden gems you often come across in the gaming industry, like the “invincible frying pan tactic” made famous in PUBG, or the seemingly endless secret rooms or easter eggs players stumble upon in Super Mario. These are the kinds of surprises which become sensations on YouTube and in threads on Reddit. These are what make these games truly memorable, shareable, and (...)
#product-design #customer-experience #design #product-delight
]]>Your Brain At Work”.
▻https://hackernoon.com/your-brain-at-work-c319be34f30e?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
This is what happens to your brain at workI recently read “Your Brain At Work” by David Rock. Many of my friends were interested in the findings of this work as it dives into what happens to your brain when you’re at work and applicable to the masses. I decided to put together a list of the top 16 takeaways that might be helpful as you navigate the complexities of managing your brain at work.When you have competing things going on, write them all down, and prioritize them. Work on the hardest problems first. New concepts take up more space. When trying to decide between options, the optimal number of items to compare is two. Memory degrades when you try to hold more than one idea in your mind.Peak performance requires just the right level of stress. Peak performance occurs when you have (...)
#science #productivity #marketing #neuroscience #product-design
]]>How to become a great Product Manager
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-successful-product-manager-5f3cb3aacb51?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3--
What are the qualities of a great Product Leader? What is it that makes a Product Manager standout?Building great products is a difficult and complex job; but also fascinating. To become a successful Product Manager, you need to be both visionary and pragmatic. Great ‘product guys’ are passionate about their initiatives; they are ready to spend all their energy in forming and driving great #ideas to market; they are strategic thinkers and have the ability to see product opportunities when others are lost in noise and ambiguity.In fact, I prefer using ‘leadership’ over ‘management’ in the title: Product Leaders don’t just manage a product; they envision great products out of the blue; they spot those critical differences between a great product and an average one; they know how to build a (...)
#product-management #product-manager #product-design #great-product-manager
]]>The Worst #apple Product in 25 Years - The 2016 #macbook Pro
▻https://hackernoon.com/worst-apple-product-2016-macbook-pro-5f1ad0036a75?source=rss----3a8144ea
The Worst Apple Product in 25 Years — The 2016 MacBook ProI started buying Macintoshes in the late 1980ies, and I have bought dozens of them over time. I still remember my first Macintosh: a double-floppy Mac SE with a 70 MB internal Rodime disk.In January 2017, I started working on a new project, and given that my 2013 MacBook Air was showing signs of aging I decided to go for the then-new Apple MacBook Pro. I don’t recall what made me skip the most important Apple rule — never buy the first generation of a new product — , but it happened.Sixteen months later, I do regret the decision to waste almost $ 3,000 on the worst Apple product in 25 years.The Worst Apple Product in 25 Years — The 2016 MacBook ProMy top ten of the most frustrating learnings are:1. The useless touch bar — now I have to click (...)
]]>How To Build Habits In A Multi-Device World
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-habits-in-a-multi-device-world-15aa3ae4be8f?source=rss----3
Nir’s Note: Michal Levin asked me to write this essay for her new book, Designing Multi-Device Experiences.Allow me to take liberties with a philosophical question reworked for our digital age. If an app fails in the App Store and no one is around to use it, does it make a difference? Unlike the age-old thought experiment involving trees in forests, the answer to this riddle is easy. No!Without engagement, your product might as well not exist. No matter how tastefully designed or ingeniously viral, without users coming back, your app is toast.How, then, do you design for engagement? And as if that were not challenging enough, how should products that touch users across multiple devices, like smartphones, tablets, and laptops, keep them coming back?The answer is habits. For the past (...)
]]>Is it a Prototype or an MVP? Well, it’s a Proof of Concept :)
▻https://hackernoon.com/is-it-a-prototype-or-an-mvp-well-its-a-proof-of-concept-f8df5bb8940a?sou
Are you using technology terms properly? A practical guide, defining a ‘prototype’, versus a ‘proof of concept’ and a ‘minimum viable product’. Read on to avoid costly misunderstandings.When building software products or solutions, it is of critical importance to define early enough the target output — in terms of both functionality and ‘production readiness’.Using the right terminology for your software project is critical, since it sets the expectations with your stakeholders- all those with direct or indirect interest to your project, including customers, sponsors, decision makers, vendors or partners.The following provide quick definitions and practical guidelines — it will help you select the right term for your project — or reconsider its scope of work :)Proof of concept POCA Proof of concept (...)
#product-design #product-management #ideas #innovation #tech
]]>How to pick the right metric to grow for your #product
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-to-pick-the-right-metric-to-grow-for-your-product-e3379fdb872b?sourc
Picking the right metric to move for your product is hard. Well chosen metrics can motivate and align your team around a goal. Poorly chosen metrics can lead to bad trade-offs that hurt your product, company and customers.Here are three questions to ask when picking a metric for your product:1. Is growing the metric good not just for your product but also for your company and customers?It’s worth repeating what I wrote before:Being metrics obsessed is not the same as being customer obsessed.A common pitfall is when the goals of your product and your company are not aligned. For example, a feed team for a video site could set interactions (comments, likes, etc) as a metric to grow. This might lead to product decisions like always showing expanded comments in feed. But that could easily (...)
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