Product Design

One of the most important responsibilities of a product manager is planning the order of features that the dev team should work on. This need to prioritise comes from a very basic constraint – a lack of resource. In a fast-moving business environment – and especially in a start-up – product changes should deliver the most Read more »

There are few relationships as deep and passionate as that between a start-up founder and their product. Your product will dominate your thoughts all day and even through the night from time to time. You’ll ask yourself questions like how can I improve my product, how can I make people buy it, is it the Read more »

Getting to product/market fit is “the only thing that matters” to start-ups, according to Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. The principle is that a product should “fit” the needs of a market for the company to scale and be successful. But how can this be achieved if some signs point towards your firm Read more »

As a product manager I’m sure you will have found that prototypes can be hugely useful for visualising requirements and revealing hidden risks. Lengthy, 50-page requirements are not reliable ways of conveying all the subtleties of a digital product. In my experience, readers quickly get bored and even worse, misinterpret what is written. But prototypes expand Read more »

There’s tight focus on finding and addressing customer pain points in product development. I believe there needs to be similar focus on their passion points. By passion points, I mean moments of profound or unexpected emotion: the joy that ensues results not simply from having a problem solved, but from a visceral, passionate reaction to Read more »

We often think of pricing as something to do right before launching a new product. Maybe it gets a little thought during development, but it isn’t urgent. Now that we’re approaching launch though, we need a price. Or, sometimes we schedule a pricing meeting to decide whether to change our existing price or, albeit rarely, Read more »

Sign up for our product! Tell us about yourself. Fill out your profile. Tell us where you’re going so we can bring you a driver. Let us see your bank transaction data so we can give you financial recommendations. Every time you ask your users for information, they’re going to ask why they should trust Read more »

At ProductTank London, Tracy Abraham asked whether Finance will be the “final frontier” when it comes to disruption of our digital lives, given how heavily regulated and intense private our financial lives tend to be. Specifically, she explored the ways in which fintech startups are taking on the establishment, putting customers and tech ahead of bureaucracy and Read more »

Not that long ago new technologies were magical, and we were so happy when they just worked. But today we expect more, and assume, demand even, that digital experiences don’t just work really well but are simple, intuitive and fun to use too. This means companies need to stop thinking purely about technology, and think Read more »

When you’re looking for new ideas, look beyond yourself. Collaboration and teamwork is a great way to generate new ideas. A popular way to do this is to brainstorm ideas, then aggregate them. Write a thought, whatever comes into your head, put it on a Post-It note. Now, stop. Let’s put them all together on Read more »