December 2012 Summaries

The future of email products is looking promising with several innovative features and ideas being explored. To improve efficiency, new email clients are focusing on speed and performance, aiming to beat Gmail's UI in terms of both aesthetic and functionality. Some products are also incorporating smarter understanding of regular emails, allowing users to view notifications from various platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn without setting up rules or memorizing substrings. Better workflow integration is another key area, with some products merging work and mail features to provide a more streamlined experience. Attachment handling has also seen significant improvements, with previews, tagging, and starred files making it easier to manage attachments. Social integration is becoming increasingly important, with some clients offering more than just basic social media notifications. Prioritization and analytics are also being addressed, with some products providing in-depth analysis of email data. Finally, beyond traditional email, companies are exploring new communication tools that can integrate work and personal life seamlessly. With the rise of modern flat organizations, a global company communication product is an exciting idea that could revolutionize the way we communicate.

The text discusses the importance of understanding the job a product feature does for customers and their success criteria before making deliberate improvements. The author shares an example of how they improved Intercom's daily email, which was receiving positive feedback from customers. Through customer research, they identified key issues such as poor mobile design, lack of next steps, non-scalability, and incompleteness. By addressing these issues, the team made targeted improvements that better met the needs of their customers, resulting in a more effective feature. The author emphasizes the value of deliberate improvements over speculative or exploratory work, highlighting the need for a deep understanding of how a feature is used before making changes.

Bad channels and the wrong customers are a major problem for many product launches. Many people sign up but don't use the product, often because they have no need for it or were attracted through ineffective marketing channels. This can be compared to trying to sell wedding dresses to single guys as being futile. To fix this issue, one must filter out bad channels that cost money and eliminate them from data analysis in order to prevent misleading results. This approach allows for more effective use of resources and focuses on converting good traffic rather than stressing about A/B testing or dealing with dead traffic.

The key to designing sequences not stills is to understand the chain of events that led a user to a particular screen, and to map out this flow to identify areas where tool time can be eliminated or goal time enhanced. This involves distinguishing between `tool time`, which includes valueless or administrative tasks, and `goal time`, which is time spent working directly towards a desired outcome. By understanding the distinction between these two types of time, designers can create experiences that are more efficient and effective, with fewer frustrating moments caused by excessive tool time.

The concept of customer inertia refers to the reluctance of consumers to switch from their current product or service to a new one, even if the new option is logically better. Advertising plays a crucial role in overcoming this inertia by increasing familiarity, reminding consumers about your product, and spreading product news. It also helps defeat customer inertia by showcasing how bad the existing product really is, promoting how well your product solves their problems, assuring consumers that switching is quick and easy, and removing irrational attachment to the status quo. The "9X Effect" highlights the mismatch between what customers value in their current solution (3 times more) and what companies overestimate about their innovations (also 3 times more). To win customers over, it's essential to consider all four forces when designing adverts and understand that products with only marginal improvements don't break through until a 10X product arrives.