May 2014 Summaries

The internet, as we know it today, is approximately 20 years old. It's still in its early stages of development, similar to previous communication and media technologies like the Gutenberg press and film. We're currently experiencing a period of rapid change with three concurrent cycles of computing: mobile technology, wearable technology, and sensors and internet connections in everyday objects. As everything becomes increasingly connected, designing systems rather than individual products or destinations is becoming crucial. This means thinking about how components are connected, how they can be separated and re-aggregated, and how they relate to each other. Designing systems allows for the creation of atomic units that can be easily disseminated across the internet, enabling designers to create amazing experiences that maximize consumption. Examples of this approach include Facebook's system of connected components, Twitter cards, Google Now, and Nike+. The future of design will increasingly involve designing systems rather than websites, apps, or destinations, making it a critical part of designers' jobs.

Designing and shipping a good product is comparable to telling a successful joke. To create a great joke, you need to come up with many bad ones, refine your idea, and recognize what works and what doesn't. A product also requires refinement through iteration to achieve success. Delivery is crucial as different people can respond differently to the same joke or product presentation. Timing is also important, whether it's telling a punchline or launching a new product. Knowing your target audience and being aware of their needs and preferences is vital for a product's success. Additionally, reputation matters, but relying solely on branding is not enough; delivering quality and consistency is key. Finally, context plays a significant role in making something appealing, whether it's a joke or a product presentation.

The traditional model of enterprise software sales relied on a sales rep's negotiation skills, leveraging three power cards: product demonstrations and information, customer references, and pricing. However, with the shift to web-based delivery and the rise of personal devices like iPhones, this approach has become outdated. The modern sales paradigm requires sales reps to provide deep knowledge of the product, understand how it helps customers succeed, help buyers justify the cost, project manage the sale, and adopt a more consultative approach. This new strategy prioritizes human-to-human communication, best practices, and business cases over traditional cold-calling tactics, ultimately leading to a more collaborative and effective sales process.

Ember.js has been successfully integrated into Intercom, allowing for rapid improvements in product capability and development speed. The company began an experiment to re-implement a core section of their application using Ember, which included features such as filtering, searching, sorting, selection, messaging, tagging, and infinite scrolling. The new implementation proved to be much quicker and simpler than the original Rails version, with the loaded page context being reused throughout the life of the application. This has resulted in improved application speed, reduced server complexity, and increased developer productivity. The use of Ember conventions has also simplified the codebase, allowing for a clear separation of responsibilities between routes, models, controllers, templates, views, and components. With three teams now working with Ember.js, Intercom will be releasing a series of improvements over the coming weeks, further raising the bar on what's possible with the platform.

A product roadmap is built on making hard decisions about what to fix and what to finish, as bugs in one area can conflict with features in another. Focusing solely on new features or repairs can lead to a product that is either too shallow or too shallow, respectively. To improve a product, it's essential to focus on areas that are both important and disappointing to customers. Anthony Ullwick's opportunity algorithm provides a practical way to plan a roadmap by taking importance and satisfaction into account, which highlights opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed. Regularly, the biggest opportunities lie in areas considered complete or bug-free. The 80/20 school of thought can lead product managers astray, as giving customers a B-grade experience on important tasks may not be the best approach. Addressing product shortcomings is crucial to staying competitive.

Google+ failed to build a successful social networking platform due to several key reasons. It built around people's problems, not company problems, and failed to solve the fundamental issues of how people want to share experiences with others. The product required too much effort and manual work, which outweighed its perceived value. Google+ tried to be everything at once, lacked focus, and applied a fast follow product strategy that didn't account for network effects. It suffered from shiny object syndrome by trying to incorporate features from other successful social media platforms without adding significant value. The concept of the platform was not aligned with real-life experiences, making it difficult for users to understand and use. Finally, distribution often trumped product quality, allowing Google+ to achieve initial success despite its flaws. To move forward, Google+ needs to go back to absolute fundamentals, focus on a tiny number of key problems, simplify its product offering by killing features, and build upon established real-world social norms and conceptual models.