Product Current: Vol. 4
A collection of inspiration, articles, and trends in the world of digital products from the Innovatemap team.
Product circular
The introduction to this site is a little bit lacking but as you dive into the content you’ll be inspired by the concept of bringing systems thinking into product development and design. As Tim Brown mentions in the intro, systems thinking can be overwhelming when trying to figure out where to start. Thankfully, IDEO has helped create a nice set of methods and resources to get you started on Circular Design.
Product prototyping
In this interview, Caitlin Kalinowski shares her thoughts from her vast experience of creating prototypes for Oculus, Apple, and Facebook. The biggest takeaway is her advice to declare which are your product must-haves, or non-negotiables, so everyone on the product team shares the same vision for what the product must do.
Product conversation
Intercom published a great article laying out principles to guide product design in the growing age of conversational interfaces.
https://blog.intercom.com/why-real-conversations-should-inform-messaging-design/
Product market fit
Tren Griffin gives us an in-depth look at product fit and what it really means in twelve key points. This will be out of the comfort zone for a lot of product people which means I highly suggest reading it :).
Point #9 was eye-opening for me as I think many companies often scale some part of the team or product too soon. Technology allows scaling much more easily than ever before but it can still be a tremendous waste of capital and time if the market fit hasn’t been established.
https://25iq.com/2017/02/17/a-dozen-lessons-about-productmarket-fit/
Product platform site inspiration
I’ve used Clearbit’s gmail plugin for months but I somehow never came across their site until now. This site is a thing of beauty and a source of inspiration for those that work on platform products.
With platform products, the challenge is conveying value outside of UI screens and connecting it to value you may otherwise not see as a prospect. One great example of this is on their enrichment page where you can type in an email and they can instantly preview what data Clearbit can give you:
Innovatemap is a product design and marketing agency based in Indianapolis, Indiana. We help startups and scale-ups bring marketable, valuable, and usable products to market.
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