Insights
Ideas on product strategy, human-centered design, building businesses, and using new technology to solve old problems.
Stop Waiting for the Super-App — Your Business Needs to Become One
The super-app isn't arriving as a single product from Silicon Valley. It's being assembled by every business willing to ask: where is the friction?
How to Determine the Right KPIs to Track the Success of your Digital Product
Learn which KPIs matter for UX success & how to use them to get key stakeholders on board with investing in your product design improvement plans.
Neuroscience Proves Great Digital Design is Non-Negotiable
When two products have similar capabilities, customers usually choose the better looking one. Learn what the brain can tell us about great digital products.
How to Get Stakeholder Buy-In on User Research
Is your company sitting on valuable user research? Use these tips to overcome internal resistance and get stakeholder buy-in for product improvements.
Why Corporate Innovation Labs Fail
Corporate innovation labs have been popular for decades. But do they really get results? Here's a different strategy.
How to Validate Your Roadmap for App Development
Need to validate your app product roadmap? Instead of just adding new features, analyze your customer usage and sentiments to get usable insights.
The Perpetual Validation Loop
You’re going to loop back and forth between prototyping and testing, so what happens when it feels like you’re not getting any traction?
The Power of a Customer Advisory Council
In B2B software, this might be your biggest customers. Or maybe they’re customers in a certain market where you want to grow.
Don't Build a MVP!
An MVP is the simplest version of your product that’s capable of demonstrating the value you have to offer the customer.
The Importance of a Great Design Process
Ever notice a recurring theme in your life? I’ve had several conversations about process with people over the last few weeks.
Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution
A few years ago, a bright-eyed entrepreneur came to me with an idea for a new app to help people accomplish their goals by saving more money.
Features vs Benefits: What's the Difference?
It’s important to think about both features and benefits when you’re creating a product or service. What’s the difference?
How Your Customer's Brain Decides What to Pay For
The interplay between the three factors of your customer’s needs, wants, and fears affects the perceived value of your product.
Building Products in The New Economy
This access to the “long tail” of products and services has shifted the landscape and created a buyer-driven economy.
The Importance of Process
If all your ideas have the same value (e.g. zero), how do you decide which ones to work on and which ones to let fade into distant memory?
Innovation Isn't Always Awesome
Companies of all sizes are pushing their teams to be “innovative”. It’s the modern buzzword, and it’s in heavy rotation in boardrooms across the globe.
Tech is Creating a Reality Distortion Field
Almost anyone with a WiFi connection can tell you technology has changed the way people behave and interact with each other, both online and IRL.
The New Economy & Scaling Fast
People were only aware of what was at their local market, so they had limited choices.
Who Decides Whether to Buy Your Product?
When you do customer interviews, you have to understand which of the two buyers you’re talking to so you can formulate the value proposition correctly.
Avoiding Analysis Paralysis
When our brains are forced to make too many tiny decisions, it can shut us down. This is analysis paralysis and it happens all the time.
Using Hypotheses to Make Better Decisions at Scale
Assumptions and hypotheses come up a lot when developing product strategy and making decisions on what to build.
Using Exchange Theory to Guide Pricing Decisions
How do you decide whether something is valuable to you? What’s the right price for your product or service? How much is too much? Or too little?
Human-centered Design isn't just for digital businesses
Executives in legacy businesses, often ask me how human-centered design can help them when they aren’t shipping digital products.
When Business Goals are not User Goals
Twelve years ago at a SXSW afterparty Jeremy Keith,a fellow designer,first told me about Twitter. It was just a fledgling text message service at the time.
The Business Value of Design
Look at the last 5 years. The colored lines are companies who use human-centered design and design thinking as a core product strategy.
From Idea to Revenue as Fast as Possible
A few ideas turn out to be good, a few of those turn into products, and even fewer turn into viable businesses.
Empathy Maps: The Business of Putting Users First
Empathy maps are essential, because UX design can't save a business that wasn't designed with customers in mind.
Don't Leave Behavioral Economics Behind
Economics 101 and Psychology aren’t just for college freshman. Use Behavioral Economics to drive a better UX on your website.
Value-First Communication
A simple but powerful framework for building content that prioritizes your customer and drives them to take the action you want: value-first communication.
Obsess Over Your Customers, Not Your Competition
Businesses often make the mistake of focusing on competition instead of customers. Build for the customer experience; the results will speak for themselves
Framing Your Design Challenges
Understanding and framing the design challenge you're facing is critical to your success on any project. Here are 5 steps to get you started.
You Can't Buy Authenticity
Nothing too out of the ordinary for social media, but this video got lucky and went viral. Payne’s video is now the most watched Facebook Live stream of all time.
Product Roadmaps That Lead to Success
Ahhh, product roadmaps, we've all been there. Instead of building roadmaps around features, smart designers should be building around themes.
Make Cheap Mistakes
What most people don’t realize is while they have a very clear vision of how things will work and what the product or service they want to build will look like, they are working from a very limited perspective.