A Call to Elegance
In our modern world, it’s easy to junk things up. Simple is hard. We’re quick to add more questions to research surveys, more buttons to a digital interface, more burdens to people.
I came across this article by human-centered design advocate Kate Clayton in “Behavioral Scientist.” This piece is mostly about healthcare technology, perhaps not the most obvious choice for a product management rabbit hole. Or is it? This deep dive is a good reminder that thinking like an ethnographer is an important skill for every PM — before you add features, buttons, or burdens, ask yourself, “Can I say no to this?”
A Designer’s Touch
This is why I think product management is key to a designer’s skillset. Being able to drive the big design vision down to the detail level, and produce a roadmap, can reassure stakeholders on both strategy & execution sides, and give them confidence in the value of design. 6/9
— Pavel A. Samsonov (@PavelASamsonov) March 8, 2019
There are a total of nine great tweets in this awesome thread from this Bloomberg UXer, but this one is particularly important to shout out. We often argue that PMs need to have design sensibilities and the ability to work well with designers, but Pavel reminds us that the opposite is equally true. If you think not just about what’s in front of you, but of all the adjacent implications of what you design, congrats — you’re a PM!
Prepare to Launch
Is it a release or a launch? This question is important not just for product teams, but for everyone who supports them. Product marketing folks, in particular, but also marketing and sales who run with whatever is built. Depending on your release cadence, you may find yourself out of breath and confusing the two concepts, but this short piece from Jon Gatrell of Pragmatic Marketing actually helps remind you that differentiation is your friend.