Writing product copy can be a challenge for many designers. It is that is not traditionally taught but we do it all the time in our roles when designing screens.
This is my process to writing better product copy.
1. Write down what you have in mind to say
Get the words out of your head onto the screen (or paper).
Burnout is real and it’s not always obvious.
I am lucky that in my career I have worked in places where people are excited about their work and try to look out for each other. I have read good articles warning against burnout like this one about going slow to go fast by Alicia Liu and this one against burnout by Karolina Szczur. Despite all of this, I still burnout.
I moved up levels quickly as a developer because of constantly taking on new challenges and responsibility. When I got to a senior level, I decided to switch my career…
The product I work on helps customers deal with taking orders, managing inventory, processing sales, and analysing that information so that they can focus on what they are good at — serving good food with great hospitality.
Recently I read a book called “Setting the table” by Danny Myers which describes his experiences in building his restaurant businesses and what struck me was the similarity between his philosophy translates well to digital product design.
These are some notes I made and how it resonated with me.
You may think, as I once did, that I’m primarily in the business of…
You can’t apply one process to different kinds of problems.
With all of the different kinds of processes out there, how do you pick the right process for your design team?
When I was working in an agency/consultancy model, the process was clear. The project usually has been vetted so that the problem fits the process you are trying to help the client with.
When working in-house, the variety of the design problems you may encounter vary from quick fixes to defining a new line of business for the company.
Not every design task needs the same amount of user…
Recently I finished watching Mindhunter on Netflix. It’s a crime drama based on FBI agents who attempt to understand and catch serial killers. While watching the show, beneath the dark themes and talk of murders, I felt that the show was advocating for good user research.
Note: There are no show spoilers here but I am using moments in the show to relate back to user research processes.
How do we get ahead of crazy if we don’t know how crazy thinks?
When the existing data is not enough
When working on a new problem, I always like to understand what do we know now? This can…
The clashing of product and project mindsets over work definition
A question I don’t ask enough of clients is, “Are you working on a project or product?” This question matters because without understanding where people are coming from you will clash. The clash happens because of one side sees the work with an end and the other sees the work just as the beginning.
This post is an elaboration of an earlier tweet of mine:
For this post, we will introduce Amy who is the product minded person and we can say Bruce is the project minded person.
Thinking about features
“Are you building the thing right vs are you building the…
Define, focus and scale goals in an organisation using OKRs
I did a talk at Agile Australia 2017 (video)on this topic and discussed how objectives and key results (OKRs) can be used to fill that alignment gap between the company vision and the teams doing the work.
How many times have you been gathered in a room with someone from the executive team saying we have a new goal for the company? These lofty goals get the company excited for moment and only upon returning to your desk you think to yourself, “how is the work I am doing contributing to that goal?”
At that moment all that energy…
This is the text transcript of my 5 minute lighting talk at Product Mavens Meetup in Sydney.
Lots of people talk about making their teams work lean but what does it mean?
Does this mean doing the same work with less people or does this mean ditching suits for skinny jeans for that look of working lean!
To me Lean is a set of principles giving teams the power to be focused and deliver what matters quickly.
But LSD or Lean software development can sound scary to some people.
I have heard some people think that lean is something that…
On May 16th I gave a talk at the Tech Talk Meetup hosted by Pivotal Labs in Sydney on “Prototyping with Framer”. (Slides here).
I will also be running a workshop for those wanting to learn how to use Framer in Sydney on July 12, 2017, please sign up here.
I come from a world of making lots of flow prototyping with tools like Invision/Marvel where you connect different screens together through hotspots. I figured if I could master “hotspot” prototyping with Framer then I could start using it more frequently.
Approach 1: Layer manipulation
Thinking like “hotspots” and moving different screens in view after a click, I used the bringToFront() method in this prototype. It gets the job done. Rudimentary and basic.
Approach 2: PageComponent
There is a component called PageComponent in Framer to allow you to put together different “pages” or views together in a container. The beauty of this is that you can scroll…
Michael Le
Product designer, speaker, father, design mentor #ux. Based in Sydney. Creator of Navibaby
