We’re back with part 19 of Overheard in Product—a series where we round up all of the tantalizing conversations from product folks that you may have missed on the web last week.
This week, we overheard why you should become friends with your customers, how to add value outside of an original idea, how to quantify success in design, how confident is confident enough to ship something, and the importance of doing nothing.
Let’s get to it.
Friendship it
Jack Altman, CEO at Lattice, championed building real relationships with your customers.
Food for thought: How many customers could you call and invite to coffee or dinner?
Value add
Startup investor Brianne Kimmel responded to Hiten Shah’s question about if there are any original ideas anymore.
Food for thought: What projects are you blocked on right now because you think you need an original idea? How could you find a way around it?
How do you spell sUXess?
Maxim Leyzerovich, UX/Design Manager at Capital One, asked the crowd what quantifiable measures of success they use for design.
Daniel Burka, Director of Design at Resolve to Save Lives, responded with, “Design: happier customers. Product prioritizes business decisions. Tech prioritizes performance. Design prioritizes users' needs. And, in a capable organisation, customer happiness is measured over time.”
Maxim ends up answering his own question with, “values and decisions” after cautioning against letting metrics get used against designers.
When to ship, when to polish
Richard Banfield, CEO at Fresh Tilled Soil, warned against perfection when deciding when to ship.
Food for thought: Are you currently designing your tests for perfection? Or for maximum speed once you get just enough data?
Bonus: Try nothing
This New York Times article introduced the term “niksen”—or doing nothing—to us.
From the article, “... the idea of niksen is to take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless. The less-enlightened might call such activities ‘lazy’ or ‘wasteful.’”
But in fact, letting your brain do nothing—or wander freely—is very beneficial for creativity and productivity.
So, if you’re feeling over-teched, try doing nothing for a change.
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