How radical time management allows people to be their authentic selves and stay motivated and driven in the workplace.

Before I get started — everything I wrote here isn’t something everyone can afford to do and it’s important to acknowledge that. Different industries, workplaces, and professions have varying needs and perceptions regarding managing work hours, in-person attendance, and work ethic.

I’m in tech, specifically at a great workplace (hey Autodesk Tel Aviv) where my awesome managers trust me to do what’s right and manage my time independently. We work in a fully office-optional work model these days.

Managing our work time independently is a privilege — but if you’ve got it, awesome. Don’t be afraid to manage your day as radically as you see fit.

Where we’re at right now

COVID-19 has changed the workplace for the foreseeable future, in many ways. Jobs were lost, many were put on long furloughs, and essential workers had to go on with huge changes to their workload and the way they work with new safety procedures. For most office workers work remained pretty similar, but from home instead of the office.
This change led to a total shift in how we go about our work day.

For some this has been the toughest time of their career, and has led to exhaustion, stress, and erosion in motivation. For others, especially those with a comfortable home office and no parental obligations it has been a blessing.

We have more control of our time

Whether for better or worse, we can all agree that the workplace has changed forever. The pandemic has proven the remote working is possible, and many places have shifted to hybrid or even fully remote working models as a result. We’re all still learning how to cope with this new working model.

Personally speaking some of my days are very busy and fully booked, but some are pretty flexible, and I can choose what I want to get out of them. Usually I spend my un-scheduled time working on the next important project I have lined up, but every now and then I prefer to take a nap, or just wrap up my day early and go to the beach. Honestly? It took me some time to feel free to talk about it openly, as it always felt to me like something I should hide. Today I feel totally fine talking about it.

Confession time — I’m not working 100% of the time I should be

Like most people, when I was a kid I would sometimes skip classes or just not go to school for the day. Missing school every now and then never prevented me from being a good student. I believe that the same goes for work, and this is an important message right here — It’s OK not to work a 100% of the time you should be working. It’s fine to get coffee with a friend in the middle of the day, go to the gym, practice the guitar a bit, or anything that you want to do when you actually should be working. I feel comfortable with this message for two main reasons.

Getting work done, not time done

A smart employer pays for work done, not for hours spent in front of the computer. When you measure time spent at work you’re incentivizing the wrong things. It creates a feeling of micro-management, lack of trust, and doesn’t leave room to focus on the actually important part — the work that was done. To be in a place where you measure work done instead of time spent it is critical to have shared goals, expectations about what should be done, how it should be done, and when it should be completed.

When there’s coordination around deliverable expectations, there can be many reasons why you could have free time during your day. Maybe you’ve wrapped things up quicker, had a meeting that got cancelled, or just planning to get things done later on in the evening.

Sometimes you’d want to spend that free work time pushing harder on the pedal — proactively moving things forward, and driving projects ahead. You don’t always have to though. It completely depends on your current mental state, personal needs, and other plans unrelated to work.

Constructive rebellion

It’s fine if you’ve got a side that needs to rebel a bit — wants to take a nap in the middle of the day, finish the day early, or just plain old pull a Ferris Bueller day.

Throughout our career we are often expected to conform to the “right way” of doing things and a “correct” way to be a model employee. These templates are antiquated. We’ve got different personalities, different needs, and different ways to contribute at work while staying true to our authentic selves. The price of not allowing people to be themselves — decreased engagement, productivity, and innovation.

For some of us, being our true selves sometimes means wanting to break the rules every now and then. Allowing people to be their true selves means allowing them to express multiple sides of their personality, including the sides that needs to rebel a bit, and work “against the system”.

Accepting and even encouraging rebellious behavior might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s just good business. When you allow people room to be their true selves, it’s more likely that they will be happier and give you their best work in return. Of course, rules and norms need to be marked at some point — accepting flexibility doesn’t mean anarchy, and managers need to stay in check.

How should we address this as managers?

As a manager the first things I care about are my employees well being, professional growth, and setting them up for success in their work. I see allowing them to have as much freedom as I can give as a part of that.

I trust that with proper guidance and a small nudge in the right direction when needed, most people will make the right decision about how to manage their time. As long as they are feeling happy and balanced, grow in their profession, and hit their goals — that’s what matters.

My key advices to get there are -

1. Normalize idle time
   Trust and even encourage your employees to take it easy some every now and then, especially in times when they are experiencing high work load, personal stress, or anything else that might lead them to needing to slow down a bit.
2. Cultivate trust
   Trust your employees to manage their time as privately as they see fit. Don’t expect to know what they’re up to at any given time, and make sure that your conversations with them focus around the quality of their work and not the amount of time they spend doing it.
3. Set an example
   Feel free to slack off sometimes! Show your employees that slacking off can go hand in hand with being efficient. Your main motivation should always be getting good work done. If spending a part of your work week doing stuff that isn’t related to work helps you refresh, recharge, and focus better when you actually get work done — that’s just perfect.

To summarize

The biggest takeaway I can offer here is to remember that we’re all just human beings looking for meaning, connection, and assurance in a world that’s pretty much gone crazy over since 2020.

In order to maintain high work efficiency, be happy at our job, and keep great relations with the people we work with we need a new work paradigm. In my opinion — self empathy to our needs, and radical time management that includes a little bit of slacking off every now and then are essential in going on to do the best work we can.

It’s a problem we all know too well — too much work, too little time; A project is in your inbox, and it has a brutal deadline.

The solution? Bend space and time. No, really.

Bending space

This is all about how you can reshape the project in a way that enables you to deliver results which would be up to your (and your colleagues’) standards.

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Prioritize
   Some parts of your project are more important than others. Other parts are of the utmost importance but can be deployed a week after the deadline. And yes, every project has parts which can be mothballed.
2. Repeat
   In any interactive project — be it a website, an application or a web-app — some aspects can be replicated. For example, multiple website pages can use the same format and layout without degrading the experience. In fact, replication can even add consistency to the project and improve it. It can also cut your design time significantly, as you won’t be designing 20 completely different pages, but 5 layouts that can be populated a few times.
3. Use readymade bought assets
   While some aspects of a project have to be planned, prepared, tested and iterated to be successful, others (photos, icons, and illustrations for example) can be bought. It is tempting to prepare everything from scratch in-house, but under tight deadlines, it’s important to focus the efforts on the areas that have to be custom-made. With a well-defined idea of the personality that the project should project, it’s possible to find visual assets that will fit well. This will save time — which can be used to fine-tune the parts of the project that can’t be bought.
   Another advantage of purchasing visual assets is that they can be easy to replace later on. Replacing a project’s entire layout or flow, for example, is harder.

Bending time

1. Working in parallel with development
   In order for people to use whatever you design, someone first needs to build it. Probably a front-end dev from your team or an external contractor. Whoever it is, it’s best to plan the project so that design and development can be done in parallel. You should have your developers in the room from the very first design meeting. Make sure that they know what’s coming and when, and that their work plan is aligned with yours. Ideally, the project is planned in a way that enables everyone to be busy at the same time.
2. Work small
   Break down every page, flow, and task into tiny parts. This might be the most important part, as without breaking down the tasks, it will be impossible to properly estimate the time it’ll take you to design them. Be realistic when you estimate the time it’ll take you to complete these smaller sub-tasks. Try to anticipate which parts will be required by other people on the project. For example — If you’re working on a website, you might want to work iteratively and in an expanding way.
   Start from a high-level view of the project, break it down into pages, and break each page into all of the components it’s going to have. Then start you can start working on different layouts for each page, based on the smallest components you could get to.
3. Find contractors
   The best way to beat a tight deadline is to have more time. That means — more people! Don’t have enough team members? Contractors can help. Do remember that your contractors’ deadlines will always be tighter than yours, so only work with those who will be able to complete their tasks in time, and do them well. Remember that managing contractors will always take some time and investment from you, so don’t forget to estimate if that’s something that you’ll be able to do.

If you’ll bend space and time just enough, no deadline can stand in your way.

Bending space and time was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I think ‘roadmap’ is probably my favorite product management term, as building a product is always like a journey and a successful journey requires a good map to get to where you going.

While it is important, a good roadmap isn’t a guarantee for a successful journey. Here are some ideas for things to consider that can help you in your product travels:

1. Follow the steps of people who’ve previously made this journey
   Also, keep looking for alternatives. There might be better ways to get there. Conventions, advice, and best practices are awesome. Sometimes there’s no reason to reinvent stuff, but make sure you don’t avoid thinking outside the box.
2. When you start, make sure your first step is in the right direction
   But don’t hasitate too long to take it and start walking. Take a couple of steps in each direction and figure out what lies ahead around you. It’s important to be decisive and move quick and it’s equally important that you move quickly in the right direction.
3. Check your roadmap every once in a while
   Realign with your plans regularly, but don’t forget to also trust your intuition and sense of direction. Flexibility is important and trusting your instincts will save you more than once from making mistakes.
4. Look to the horizon and spot problems ahead
   But also look to the ground you’re treading on for unexpected obstacles. It’s so easy to ‘think big’ and focus on strategy that you completely miss stuff that’s right under your nose. Keep your focus moving from what’s far to what’s near.
5. Don’t be afraid to tackle obstacles head-on when they show up
   And remember, sometimes the best way to cross an obstacle is to go around it. You need to choose which challanges you take on and which to avoid.
6. Ask for directions, the locals know how to get there better than you
   Your users should be your main source of direction, talk to them frequently. Make sure you communicate with them clearly so they give you the right directions. You are never the biggest domain expert and it’s important to ask for feedback and advice.
7. Remember why it’s important you get to your destination
   Have a shared passion for the goal with your traveling companions. They are there for you, just as you are there for them. Driven, enthusiastic companions are the best that you can hope for.

The road ahead maybe long, or short. It may be tough or a breeze. But those things don’t really matter. The important thing is to have the right attitude towards the journey, to never give up, and to remember that in the end where you’re going is important, but the end should never justify the means.

It was 2004, and I wanted to study design, to be someone that builds things that solve people’s everyday problems. Back then, it was a time when none of us had small addictive rectangles of technology that contain dozens of products crammed inside them.

Digital products weren’t the direction I went for, but physical products were. I started studying industrial design. After I graduated I worked as an industrial designer for 3 years before I switched over to building digital products and after that, became a product manager.

I feared that everything I’ve learned might not be relevant anymore and I'll need to start all over again, but even after a few years in the field, I still find some of the skills and best practices I’ve learned as an industrial designer to be very useful in my everyday work.

Here are some of the things that still serve me as a product manager -

1. You are not the user

Don’t get stuck on your own usecase and persona.

A good product is the result of a lot of ideas, and there are many sources where they can come from. An important part of the process is to talk to people who are the target audience for the product you’re building, observe them, and understand their needs. That’s the difference between being a creator who builds products for other people’s needs and a maker who builds stuff for their own personal needs. Your products can serve you as well, but you are never the target audience of your product.

2. Iterate

Build. Learn. Iterate. Improve.

When I was on an exchange program at RISD during my undergrad studies, I took this class where we worked on a project that took us a few weeks to complete. Once we were done and the projects were presented, our professor told us that we all did a great job, and that for the rest of the semester, we’ll do the exact same thing, all over again, in half the time, and he expects us to produce MUCH better results!

Of course, after the initial shock of having to do it all over again subsided, and we started cracking again, we understood the value of iteration and repetition. The first iteration is never perfect. The second one is always better.

3. Get feedback

Get feedback from users, coworkers, and executives as often as you can.

In my industrial design program, we’d never work alone for a long period of time. Every week we had to present our progress in front of all of our classmates and get feedback from them. It’s kinda like a weekly team meeting. Those weekly class meeting were how I learned two important lessons — 1. Feedback is priceless and 2. Sometimes you might think you’re right, but you’ve got to shut up and admit that you’re probably wrong and change the direction you were heading in.

Of course, that can be harder to achieve in a work environment, where your coworkers might be shy, or wouldn’t want to cross someone. Make sure you nourish and contribute to an environment where everyone feels like their opinion matters.

4. Prototype and test

Sketch at least a few ideas, filter out the good ones, model and test them.

My absolute favorite place in design school was the model workshop. That’s where we had spent a good portion of our time — sketching, building models, and drinking lots of coffee (black, of course). Since at the time 3D printers were pretty much non-existent, we needed to build out our models with our hands, even the final ‘high-fidelity’ polished ones. But the models that really mattered were the ‘low-fidelity’ ones. The ones that allowed us to test legibility, usability, and ergonomics of whatever we were designing. Ever since, I’ve been a fan of building models to test out ideas. It’s just that nowadays, instead of a hacksaw and glue I use Sketch and Invision.

It might seem counterintuitive or a waste of time to sketch out a lot of ideas, but that’s how you get to non-trivial ideas and starting points that can later be discussed with your team.

5. A good design is insufficient

Make sure that your product doesn’t have just a good design, but the right design.

As an industrial designer, I’ve had the pleasure to design products that I still see in store 10 years after they were launched, and the disappointment of seeing some of my best designs being locked away and never seeing the light of day.

So, why is good or even great design, sometimes not enough?
And when I talk about good design — I do mean a product that answers customer needs, looks amazing, feels comfortable and is easy to use.
The reason that a great design isn’t enough sometimes is that as a designer you are in charge of taking product requirements and turning them into a great product.

But what if the demands aren’t right? For example — A product that answers a non-existent problem, targets the wrong market, or gets priced too high.
That’s where a product manager’s work comes in. If you won’t provide your designers with the right demands, they won’t be able to create products that thrive.

Wait, that sounds a lot like…

Yes, I guess that for some of you these might sound a lot like UX skills.
For a good reason too — there are a lot of similarities between industrial and UX design. A lot of UX design best practices were actually developed by industrial designers (design thinking that started at IDEO for example).

Of course, there also some big differences between physical and digital products. But looking back — coming into the digital world when I already know how to plan products for people in the “‘real world” gave me skills that I still use to this very day as a product manager.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me what do I think about the field of smart home products — smart ACs, smart lighting, smart security systems… It seems like they’re all around us and will they be too smart for our own good at some point.

My response was that I don’t even think about most IoT devices as even smart at this point. We’re surrounded by a lot of connected devices, but there really aren’t a lot of smart products out there. There are even less user aware products. So, I thought I should write something about it, that will explain how I see the domain of AI these days.

Let’s start by answering some basic questions.

What are connected products and which category does my Siri fit to?

Let’s start with automated products — These can be a water heater or a vacuuming robot that can be programed to operate at a specific time.

Then, you’ve got connected products. Devices that you can control remotely — a lightbulb at home that you can turn off from the office for example.

Things get more interesting with smart devices — products that detect user activity, such as an AC that detects that a user has arrived home and starts cooling.

The ultimate phase in product IQ though is being user aware. Understanding who the product’s users are and reacting to each of them personally.

Oh, and regarding Siri? is a connected product. If it was a smart product, it would have known to automatically lock your house with Homekit when you leave home. If it was a user aware product, it would have known when you’re driving to work in your car and when you’re commuting on the bus and wouldn’t send notifications while you’re not driving.

The Road to AI Enlightenment

Now that we’ve established what user aware products are and we know we want all products to be aware of us — how do we get there?

Well, in order to be user aware a product needs to know two things –
1. Who its users are — their persona, habits, connections, and frequently visited places.
2. What the users are doing — Have they just arrived to work or home? Have they just started running in the park? Are they at the gym?

Combining who the users are and what the users are doing enables user aware products to communicate with users and address their needs like never before.

Think about a smart home that knows that a user is on the way home from a run and a bit of extra cooling is needed right now. Or, a car audio system that knows its driver is alone in the car, on the way to the office and that in these specific conditions she likes listening to her favorite podcast.

And, it’s not just IoT devices. It can be a coupon app that knows that Sheila is an avid runner and will show her discounts for running gear when she arrives at the mall, or a medication adherence app that reminds each user to take their meds personally and specifically when they’re about to go to sleep.

These scenarios aren’t a vision for the future of AI, using the add-on SDK that we’ve developed at Neura, any company can make them a part of their product, instantly, in under 2 hours. Welcome to the next phase of AI.

Originally posted on Neura’s blog, where you’ll find lots of articles on AI

There were a few reasons for this rebranding

Rebranding is a big deal, especially for a strong brand such as the Premier League. It means moving away from a logo that even if it wasn’t perfect, people got used to it. You need to have good reasons to rebrand. In this case, rebranding was done mostly due to a combination of business and audience re-targeting reasons.

It’s a business

The Premier league has always been a profitable enterprise. In fact, the main reason it broke away from the structure of rest of the English Football Association in 92′ was due to broadcasting rights.

Today, 24 years later, one of the reasons the league rebranded itself was a decision to change the sponsorship structure of the league. The sponsorship contract with Barclays bank has ended after 15 years, and the league expects that dropping a title sponsor would allow more secondary, international sponsors to step in.

Breaking away from a lead sponsor creates a ‘brand vacuum’, which requires that the Premier League would strengthen it’s brand identity, in order to stand on it’s own.

The new brand does achieve independence, as it gives the logo and other visual assets of the Premier league a new, unmistakeable identity. That can be seen in the choice to use strong, vivid colors, sharp shapes and bold typography. There’s no doubt that the new visual identity has a strong feel to it.

Global audience

The Premier League is no longer just the top English football division. It’s the most watched professional sports league in the world. It broadcasts in over 200 countries, with over 5 billion viewers. Most of it’s players aren’t even English. About 66% of players in the Premier league are foreign, more than any other Football league in the world.

The former branding of the Premier league has been very English in it’s design, with the regal lion in the traditional red, white and blue and the revised branding changed that. By moving to a color palette that isn’t recognized with any nationality, the Premier League is adapting a more international image.

Changing values

In an interview about the rebrand, Richard Masters, managing director of the Premier League said that “Our current visual identity is very corporate, very blue and white like lots of other sports brands are. In terms of the communication message it’s all about numbers — the amount of money we spent, the amount of pitches we built, rather than the people that play on them, the lives changed, the work that goes on off the pitch.”

One purpose this rebranding process had, was to show the more humane side of the League, and the new brand definitely feels friendlier than the old one. Both it’s tone of voice and visual appearance have a sympathetic feel. Examples of that can be seen in a lot of photos of people in articles in the new website, and in the titles that talk about inclusiveness and unity.

Overall — the new brand feels refreshed, visually. The minimalized lion symbol is well crafted and the bright colors that go with it are be eye-catching, easy to recognize and totally different from the branding of any other sports league I’ve ever seen. I believe that most of the objectives that the league had set out to achieve have been reached with this re-design.

Negative aspects of the redesign

Despite the positive accomplishments of the redesign, there are some negative aspects to this design as well. Sometimes a change is needed, but the solution creates new problems instead of the old ones. Completely breaking away from the previous visual identity of the league might change the way people see the Premier League, but not necessarily in a good way. Here are some of the implications this redesign might have.

Losing it’s grandeur and heritage

Say what you will about the previous brand (it did have it’s flaws) but it had a certain royalty and power to it. It was recognizable and had meaning. In an interview about the redesign, Design Studio’s Executive Creative Director Stuart Watson spoke about the new brand colors — “We want [the Premier League] to be known as very vibrant and bold and colourful, and we really wanted to get away from red, white and blue.”

The new, simplified design breaks away so much from the previous design, that while improving it visually, it also loses all of the positive values that people associated with the previous logo. The new brand feels a bit generic. While it attempts to stand on it’s own, it could have been a design for a tech startup, a micro-brewery or an insurance company. There’s nothing that says or relates to football or sports about it, and that is a mistake by the designers who went in a very trendy direction without a lot of substance to back it up.

Being on trend at the expense of staying relevant

Trendy design is a bit like a hammer. When you have it, every project seems like a nail, and it’s really tempting to apply currently popular styling to it. Design Studio have reached a very strong, striking identity for the premier league. The problem is, that it kind of looks like previous jobs they’ve done recently.

When I reviewed some of Design Studio’s previous successful projects, I noticed a similarity between the graphic choices they’ve made in recent jobs. The application of very vivid colors, minimized icons and bold sans-serif typefaces can be seen in the rebranding of both AirBNB and Logitech (as two examples that stand out in particular).

Being relevant with current design trends has the benefit of looking contemporary, but would the new Premier League logo still look relevant in 5 years?

Losing it’s pride

The previous brand had it’s flaws, but still it had tradition, pride and strength. It represented years of competition, sweat, tears and joy. Players were proud to wear the patch with the logo on their sleeve, next to their club’s crest.

In a way, the shoulder patch with the brand’s logo is the most important implementation of the brand image, and it is the most failed implementation of the new branding. The new patch looks a bit empty, the Lion’s head is gloomy and the curving typography doesn’t look thought out enough.

It’s not a surprising failure, as in an interview about the rebranding, Design Studio said that “the real driver behind [the new look is] this kind of digital, broadcast-first approach — make it work as an app icon, and worry about everything else after.”

This statement goes to show a strong misunderstanding of the importance of the symbol in the real world. Design Studio should have gone for a Crest first approach. Make the logo look good on the players, on the pitch.

Losing the English club supporters

If the most important aspect, from the game’s perspective are the players and the way the brand is represented when they wear it, then the most important aspect from the brand’s target audience are the core fans, the ones that buy seasonal tickets. The ones that visit Goodison Park, The Hawthorns, St Mary’s and all other local supporters — The people in the stadiums.

It seems like that’s one thing that this process has neglected. Design Studio say that the new brand’s audience is everyone. But a brand should have a target audience. You simply can’t try to please everyone. If you do, you just end up with a cartoonish lion that the fans are mocking.

If they had been in touch with real supporters, they wouldn’t have focused on global appeal, but on the people who are walking out of stadiums in protest of rising ticket prices. They would have made the league about the fans and players. Not about broadcasting rights and a logo that looks great as an app icon.

So how should they have approached it instead?

Another interesting branding story that took place this year was the redesign of the Manchester City Football Club’s image. In the case of Manchester city, the purpose of the redesign was to update the brand in order to refresh the club’s image and align it with two other clubs that are under the same ownership (New York City F.C. and Melbourne City F.C). This process was conducted by thousands of interview and ideas from fans.

The result was based on this feedback, and even though some were reluctant to accept the new logo, it was generally well received by supporters. This is a great example of how you can take your true target audience and instead of making them someone you need to convince, you turn them into supporters of your process.

How will the redesign affect the league?

All in all, the effect of the rebranding might not be huge for the Premier League. Since most fans are concerned with their clubs and the way that they are represented on the field, the image of the organization isn’t their main concern.

The league has always been perceived by fans as a money making machine, not a body that they can identify with. This redesign process might not change the way they see it, but maybe it’ll lead to the realization that without the clubs, fans and heritage, the league will have no soul or identity.

And another redesign is always an option.

Originally published at textaligned.com on July 29, 2016.

To the class of 2014

This one goes out to those of you who have graduated from design school a couple of months ago (May-July). You young designers, are now making your first steps in the world of professional design. I wish you good luck.
If you’ve started constructing your design portfolio, chock-full of every beautiful project you’ve completed during your studies, I have only one suggestion to you — throw your portfolio away and start from scratch.

The Portfolio is a Lie

In my professional career as a designer, I’ve had the chance to encounter the process of showing my portfolio to 3 prospective employers so far, each time improving on my presentation. Every time I submitted a portfolio of my works, I’ve learned something along the way, and ultimately this has led me to the conclusion that portfolios are absolutely useless.

The Portfolio Template

The first time I’ve created a portfolio of my works was during my days as an Industrial Design undergrad student. I’ve started looking for a job in the field, and felt pretty confident about my academic projects. This portfolio was pretty straightforward, and contained about 10 of my design projects. Some of my classmates had 20 projects in their portfolio, and I remember feeling that I’ve included too few projects in mine. That somehow quantity counts and shows diverse capabilities.

I’ve sent this portfolio out to potential employers. The Israeli Industrial Design scene is pretty small and quite difficult to find employment in, but after a few months of searching I was able to find a job in a design studio.

I’ve worked there for two years, and during my time there my boss has continued to receive portfolios from other designers, and he would sometimes ask me what I thought about them. At that time, I was surprised to discover that all of the portfolios we’ve received were exactly the same: all of these portfolios had the same amount of projects, 10–15 each time, they had the same kind of school works — a few gadgets, a few pieces of furniture and some car sketches. It was essentially the same template, replicated.

The Refined Portfolio

During my time working as an Industrial Designer, I’ve developed an interest in Interaction Design. I felt that there are many similarities between the fields, including the attention to functionality, thinking about the user flow of the product, etc. I’ve decided that my next professional phase was going to be in the field of Interaction Design.
I didn’t know much about the field, so I’ve started studying it, both online and by experimenting on various conceptual projects, and by doing pro-bono work. It seemed to me that if I want to get some experience designing interfaces, I might as well do it for free and for a good cause at that stage.
After a few months, I had 3 projects that I felt pretty comfortable showing. These projects were a mobile app, a music website and a UX website redesign concept for the non-profit organization I was volunteering at.
All of the projects I included in my portfolio were well thought out. I had a folder full of hand sketches and a few versions of digital drawings for each one. I’ve started talking with design studios, and found that talking about my sketches, my process and my ideas led to a more meaningful conversation. It was far better than my previous 10 slides portfolio presentation, and it helped me get a great job as an interaction designer.

The No Portfolio

In 2011 I’ve started working as a full time interaction designer at an exciting studio. During my work there, I had the privilege to design for front-line startups, and learned a lot along the way.
After almost two years of working with startups, I’ve caught the startup bug myself. I felt this inner need to start something myself, and after thinking about it for some time, I decided to quit my job, and try to find my place in the startup world. I handed in my resignation, and shortly after, a friend of mine introduced me to Omer and Ran, the CEO, CTO and co-founders of Sensibo. They had recently started the company, and were looking for a designer who will act as the company’s creative director.
During our initial email talks, they asked me to send over a portfolio.
This time I already knew better. I decided not to send a portfolio at all.
I explained that I’ll be happy to show some of my works, but that I’d rather do it over a face to face conversation. They’ve agreed to it, and when we’ve met, We went over my designs, and was able to show why and how I designed each part of the interfaces I’ve shown. I believe being able to convey my thoughts, methods and practices are what got me the design leadership position I currently hold.

3 Conclusions

I believe there’s not right and wrong way to build a portfolio, and there are a lot of ways to convey talent and ideas. But I think that each great portfolio should consider these 3 key points:

1. Targeting: A good portfolio isn’t a generic file you can just whip out and show everyone how talented you are. It should be targeted, and designed specifically for the job you seek. For example, if you wish to be an interaction designer — your portfolio must be online. You simply cannot send a pdf file that shows how well you design websites.
2. Focusing: 10 projects is way too many. A well designed project takes time to explain, and good design is about depth. 5 projects is the maximum amount I would ever consider discussing. Actually, even that seems like way too much. Just remember to focus, and be thorough. If you want to show quantity, do it in the most minimal way possible. Name the companies you’ve worked with, or just include a link that shows the final work.
3. Telling a story: It’s all about the process. Showing the end result is a must, obviously. You need to show well refined, thought out products in your portfolio. But more importantly, tell the story about how they were designed. It’s like the iceberg thing: only 10% are seen above water. Let whoever you’re talking to see the other 90%. That’s who you really are, and how you think. I believe that in the end, that’s what would determine if you get the job or not.

and getting away with it.

Freemium is your friend

Freemium is a pretty cool concept when you think about it.
A startup comes up with a cool app, wants it to spread, and hands it out for free. When the users want an edge in the game they’ve downloaded, or a few more features in the app they’ve installed they pay a small amount or subscribe.

Everyone wins in theory, and that’s what made this model for apps and games so popular in the past few years.

The thing is, that when done the wrong way the freemium model can be the worst thing that happened to your company since stale wonderbread.

DO’s and DON’Ts

Lets say that you’ve created the next amazing productivity app, and you wish to give it away for free to gain popularity and build your user base. ‘Free’ is a great, important marketing tool. So now everyone can use the awesome free version of your app, spread the word out, and some users will be willing to pay for extra features that will be available in the premium version only, that will generate profit. Sounds legit so far.

The tricky part is in how you pull the startegy off. Which features do you charge for? What’s the payment plan? How you transition your users to the premium model? and so on. Here are a couple of tips to help make these decisions when facing them.

1.Give basic features for free

Don’t
Lets take Evernote as an example. Evernote is one of the leading note taking apps available today, working with a freemium business model.
Think about what a pain it would be if syncing your notes between devices a paid feature. This is almost a must-have for most users. Making this feature a paid one would probably send a lot of users running away to find a competitor that offers the same feature for free.
Do
Instead, Evernote made the free version great in its own right, and made the premium version targeted for business users, with better collaboration, bigger storage and higher security features.
Do the same, and think about your pro market segments and the their needs. Good premium features might include:support, customization, pro tools, awesome nice to haves or features that might benefit a business.
Do your homework and give the people what they need.

2. Let the user know what’s free and what’s premium

Don’t
Make sure the user knows which features are premium and which are free. One of the most annoying things a user can come across while using a product is a premium feature in disguise. Lets say that you have a search feature in your app, that is a premium feature, but is designed to look exactly like the rest of the page. The free user would want to use it, she’ll type in the desired search, click the search button, and instead of getting to the results page, she’ll get a ‘this is a premium feature’ message. Most frustrating. She’s wasted time and can’t get the results she wanted. A frustrated user isn't a paying one.
Do
Make sure the premium features appearance is differentiated by color, type, or behavior from the rest of the app. This way the user will be aware of them, but wouldn't try to use them and get frustrated.

3. Don’t shove the premium features in the users’ face

Don’t
Got cool premium features in your app? Awesome!
Want your users to know about them? Great!
It’s well understood that you need some users to go premium. The regular conversion rate of free to premium is around 2%, and it’s well worth trying to push for 4%.
But by making the call to action of going pro too prominent and nagging, you will harm the experience of the free product. That will push away some of the free users. Though free users don’t contribute to your revenue, some of them will eventually go pro, and some will spread the word around about your product.
Do
Go subtle. Let them users know about your premium feature in a suave, nonchalant manner. You don’t need to have a huge banner or popup notifying your users that they can go premium every time they log into the app.
If they to use the free version, that’s cool. Don’t let the premium option get in the way of the flow. Once you've made sure the users have seen the premium option of your app, and are aware of its benefits, let them hide the notification of it completely, and even hide the premium features themselves. Bring it up once in a while, or let the users know of new premium features, but don’t let that get in the way of them enjoying the free experience of the cool app you've given them.

4. Don’t take free features and make them Premium

Don’t
Many Freemium products start out as free ones, and later on, once the user base has been built the premium features are added. No matter what — NEVER take free features away from EXISTING users and make them premium.
Do
Create new exciting features. And don’t just add premium features. Think of it this way — for each premium feature you add, create an additional free feature. This way your free users will feel rewarded for sticking around, and the premium users will get both the free and premium features with each upgrade.
If you’ve made a huge mistake and need to make a free feature premium, do it for new users. It sucks a little, but can be understood under certain circumstances.

5. Give multiple premium payment options

Don’t
Most Freemium products offer two paths: Free and paid apps.
The free app is, well… free. And the paid app is usually either paid for in advance, or subscribed to for a small monthly fee. This creates a situation where many free users don’t take the premium option as it’s not tailored to their needs.
Do
Create a few payment options. Think of how many payment options users get for Kickstarter projects — options that range from a sticker or a T-shirt for a small contribution to a personal foot massage from the project’s founder for a big one.
Give your users the gift of choosing how invested they want to be in your product. Give them the option to buy certain features, join a subscription, or just pay a single time payment just to get rid of the ads.Be generous. This day and age, a paying user is a privilege. Make sure you surprise and delight them constantly. Be open to feedback. Promote requested features. If you’re taking money in order to push forward features, make sure you’re pushing forward the right ones.

Be Generous

All in all, the Freemium model is one of the best possible solutions to get paid for hard earned work invested in apps. When done properly, the premium option feels like a luxurious boost the user can choose to use all the time, or just if needed. It can motivate, create traction and build trust with your user base.
The key element in doing so, is generosity. Make sure you care about your users, both free and premium. Keep them surprised and delighted both a free and premium users. Invest in the product, invest in developing features both free and premium users will enjoy.

Generosity creates loyalty, empathy and connection.
That’s the most important thing you could ask for.