» With appropriate context, those closest to the problem should make the product decisions
» Be outcome-focused and evidence-based regardless of what kind of product or service you work on
» Be careful not to automatically balance out a conflicting behaviour in others (such as a founder’s bias)
» “The obstacle is the way” – every setback is an opportunity to improve our condition
» Semantic ablation is when language outliers and quirks are averaged away by genAI
» GenAI exposes the thresholds and grey areas in your service’s decision-making
» Being able to build fast necessitates more human selectivity, not less
» Desire paths spring up as users’ needs and goals change
» The effort paradox: the effort of forming a new path versus the desire to take the path of least resistance
» In digital products we use analytical tools to help us observe desire paths
» When a new desire path emerges, question your old assumptions — user behaviour is changing
“Hi Jock, You talk about doing user research directly with users – does it matter that the Operations and Process tracks are telling me what their users want instead?”
» What you write online is there to serve the users’ needs
» Writing for the web = using short sentences
» People read differently on the web than they do on paper
» Tools exist to help make your writing easier to understand
I was recently asked this question:
How do you keep user needs at the centre of your product management process?
Read on for my answer.
How much of a problem is it if something similar to your shiny new product idea already exists on the market?
I was recently asked this question:
Can you make suggestions of how best to distil users’ wish lists of requirements/outcomes to a core handful that will encompass most people’s problems?
Here’s my answer:
“I’m about to launch a website selling scotch whisky. Can you offer any advice?”
One of the challenges of being a product manager is that it’s sometimes difficult to read between the lines of what your (potential) customers want in order to determine what they actually need. This article explains how to identify and differentiate between needs, features and benefits.
