The difference between design and product management

Yesterday I was asked how a designer differs from a product manager. I found the answer surprisingly hard to give. Everyone designs, but not everyone is a “designer,” which encompasses both a skill set and a mindset. I look for designers…

How do you design a UX to find the right industry out of 20,000?

Abstract: We’ve used a list of ~200 classifications to identify companies on Axial. This isn’t enough, so we’re increasing it to ~20,000. Here’s the story of why, and also how we’re working to ensure the UX for this…

A Piece of Advice for Junior Product Managers

I was in a discussion with a group of experienced product managers and someone asked, “What’s the best piece of advice you could give a junior PM?”

Escaping the Communication Black Hole

Communicating effectively with other teams at your company can be really hard. It not only…

Yes, tech startups do need liberal arts grads

I didn’t think I had a chance of landing a job at any cool tech company unless I started boning up on my coding skills, fast. Only now do I know how wrong that assumption was.

Making Time for Qualitative Research

Finding time for customer discovery can be tricky in the best of contexts. It gets even harder in B2B with extremely busy, highly-targeted customers, as we have here at Axial. But it is definitely not impossible.

Advice to junior product managers, part 2

One of the most important things a product manager has to do is avoid giving surprises, in a context where surprises are coming at you all the time.

What do I mean? Never let someone who cares about a particular product change be…

Read These Product Design Links

Here’s what’s inspiring us this week:

Thomas: I enjoyed reading @kristoforts’ post about user testing. Most of our testing at Axial is done remotely with our customers…