When building new products, the best way to ensure that your product will be adopted is to solve existing problems. If that doesn’t sound glamorous, consider these companies: Netflix solved three existing problems: the pain of return fees, lack of video selection, and the chore of driving to the video store. The iPhone solved the […]

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In case you’ve never read it, here is the origin of the term “product/market fit”. It comes from VC Marc Andreessen, who in a series of blog posts in the summer of 2007 called PMarca’s Guide to Startups established many of the concepts that have become standard operating procedure in today’s startup world. In the […]

Continue Reading: The origin of Product-Market Fit?

An interesting way to look at the success of your product is whether people are talking to each other about it. I remember going to a conference in San Francisco when Netflix was in what you might call their “word of mouth” phase. Everyone was talking about Netflix, how amazing the service was, and what […]

Continue Reading: Can you design for word of mouth?

One way you can be sure people are investing in a problem is to look for artifacts of use. Artifacts are real world objects that people use to get a job done. Think post-it notes surrounding a computer screen, a journal of meeting notes, a binder full of documents. Artifacts are objects that people create […]

Continue Reading: Model features on real artifacts

An interesting set of steps by Stephen Wunker: Six Steps to Put Christensen’s Jobs-to-be-Done Theory into Practice. I’ve rewritten them slightly below. Understand the basic jobs to be done Understand who the true competitors are Understand the additional value that all competitors offer Understand what the choice criteria are for your product Understand switching blockers […]

Continue Reading: The steps of JTBD

Dear Josh, I have some exciting news to share with you. Our startup, one you’ve never heard of, recently acquired your email and now want to let you know that we’ve released something that isn’t relevant to your life. But, and here is where you come in, you have the opportunity of a lifetime to […]

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Dropbox founder Drew Houston, in his presentation Dropbox: Startup lessons learned, says the number one risk of startups is to build something that no one wants. It’s such an easy statement, right? Who in their right mind wouldn’t build something that people want? It seems so obvious. Well, there are many reasons why it doesn’t […]

Continue Reading: Usefulness is job #1

This quote by author Neil Gaiman can be applied to product design as a whole: “When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” This insight by Gaiman […]

Continue Reading: The designer’s job

From the Steve Jobs lost video comes his thoughts on product design: You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these […]

Continue Reading: Steve Jobs on product design

There is your product and then there is the experience someone has using your product. It’s easy to see the difference from afar, but to the person using your product they are one in the same. This cannot be understated. Every interaction with your product/service/company matters and becomes part of the product experience. The original […]

Continue Reading: The experience is the product