How Stripe Uses Friction Logs to Improve their Products
A guide to friction logging, a practice that can be used by engineering teams building products to track and improve upon issues that users experience while using a product.
#product: 51 posts tagged
The Feature Request Trap: When to Build a Capability
A teammate asked for one highlight on a map. I built something else - and skipped the nine-year detour Apple took with Do Not Disturb. Here's how to spot the capability hiding in a feature request.
The MVP Event Horizon: When Your Prototype Goes Critical
Every MVP has an event horizon: the point where people start depending on it. You won't feel yourself cross it - you'll find out when you try to back out.
The Operator Problem: What Startups Face After the MVP
Every tutorial teaches you to get started. Almost none teach you what to do once your startup depends on what you built - like the day a hidden Twilio limit silently cut off our busiest support rep.
The Strangler Fig Pattern: Rebuild Everything, without losing your mind
When your prototype becomes the product your business depends on, you can't just start over. Here's how the Strangler Fig pattern let us rebuild safely.
You are not your user. Except when you are.
"You are not your user" is fundamentally good advice. It's also occasionally wrong, but in a very useful way.
Lessons I Learned the Hard Way
Your brain rewires itself based on what you practice. If you stop practicing hard things, you slowly lose the ability to do them.
Learn to Love the Rebuild
Refactoring isn't a necessary evil -- it is the job. Why the best product teams rebuild constantly, at every scale.
Just Enough Is an Ongoing Practice
Stable products still need maintenance. Defaults and shiny features quietly tax systems over time, and efficiency is a sign of craftsmanship, not penny-pinching.
The Zeroth Loop: They Don't Quit, They Forget
Most habits don't fall apart because people quit. They fall apart because they aren't sticky.
The Science of Spotting Hidden Product Ideas
The best product ideas hide in plain sight, in your habits and everyone else's. Watch what people actually do, not what they say they want. Build for that.
The Psychology Hack Hiding in Great Products
Every message is a moment of influence. Make the nudge helpful and you'll create power users and build loyalty.
AI and the New Language of Human-Centered Design
Software has always required people to think like a computer. AI flips it on its head: people expect computers to work the way they think.
Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Design
Good design is good design, no matter what you're building.
Beyond Click Counts: Finding the Right Signals for Good Design
Click counts are noise. Real design success is measured in signals that show whether people actually achieved what they came to do.
Stop Counting Clicks
Too many clicks isn't the problem. It's a signal that your design isn't successful.
Founder Math: When to Stop Searching and Start Choosing with the 37% Rule
How do you know when to stop searching and just choose? A classic bit of math offers a simple rule.
You Built It. They Didn’t Come.
My first launch failed. Years later, we sold the product - but it didn’t have to be that hard. Here’s what I’d do differently today.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About Vibe Coding
Vibe coding tools like Cursor, Copilot, and Claude aren’t just about speed—they’re an opportunity to code smarter and learn faster. Here’s how I use them to sharpen my skills as an engineer.
The Quiet Room Problem
The same psychological forces that keep people silent in moments of crisis also show up in product development - when no one questions a flawed idea, chases hard truths in the data, or speaks up for the little guy.
Eraser or the Wrecking Ball? Planning is everything
The product development process is a virtuous cycle, and has a direct impact on how well your work gets done. It will also help your teammates to understand the work ahead, and to build better products harmoniously.
Freedom is a Feature: why competition is a good thing
Why freedom and openness in software matter more than ever. How MCP, OpenAI, and Apple’s AI fumble show that trust is built on interoperability.
Steal these ideas to build new products
Pouring through an extensive list of publicly accessible APIs to find new ideas for your next product.
Your MVP is too damn big
Your first product version needs to be smaller than you think. Much smaller. Probably embarrassingly small.
Themes Beat Resolutions Every Time
Reflection fuels growth. The coming year is your chance to make meaningful changes to your work, life, and relationships.
Nobody Wants a Big Reveal: Why Keeping Secrets Hurts Your Work
Avoid the temptation of the dramatic reveal. Here's why openness and transparency are your real competitive advantages in product development.
How you do one thing is how you do everything
How you do one thing is how you do everything. This is a phrase that has been around for a long time, but what does it really mean? In this article, we will explore the meaning of this phrase and how it can be applied to your life.
Statistically, nobody has used your app
People spend most of their time on sites and apps other than yours. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Shrimps is Bugs: Red Lobster ate itself to death
Red Lobster's bankruptcy and the importance of understanding your product's pricing and business model, especially for founders and indiehackers building Saas products.
The Endowment Effect: why useful trials make for sticky products
The endowment effect is a psychological phenomenon where people value things more highly simply because they own them. How can you use this to make your product stickier?
Beyond the walled garden: what Spotify and Substack get wrong
It's natural for big companies to make mistakes - but when they do, it's a great opportunity for smaller companies to build something better.
Designing for hospitality
"Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara outlines how to making customers feel exceptionally special. Let's bring these hospitality principles to tech, by creating memorable experiences, and using hospitality to elevate customer satisfaction in product design, engaging with the people using our products.
Build, measure, listen, rebuild
Building better products involves skills you won't learn in computer science school, or at a boot camp. Find success through testing, learning from real-world feedback, and adapting.
The product design spectrum: crowdsourcing, user research, and the myopic approach
In product design, there's a critical difference between crowdsourcing ideas and feedback, and user research.
3 Ways to use Annual Pricing to your advantage
Annual pricing is a great way to increase your revenue and decrease your churn. Here are 3 ways to use annual pricing to your advantage.
The Decoy Effect: More options for an easier choice
The Decoy Effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to have a strong preference between two options, when presented with a third option that is inferior to one of the original options.
There's no right way to do it
Building products comes with a sisyphean paradox: The blessing is that there are so many ways to do it. The curse is that there are so many ways to do it.
Chase your interests to build something useful
Explore the power of hyperfixation on the internet, from tech enthusiasts diving deep into topics to engineers creating innovative solutions. Discover how curiosity can lead to expertise and groundbreaking tools.
Do this with Your Product Waitlist: A Guide for Indiehackers and Startup Founders
Learn strategies to leverage your product waitlist for sustainable growth. Ideal for indiehackers and startup founders, this guide offers actionable tips to convert initial interest into paying customers.
Breaking the cycle: Data-driven product descisions
Learn how to escape common product development pitfalls using data-driven decisions. Read how Craftwork used analytics to optimize their user experience.
Continuous self improvement and the morning ritual
Reflecting on my morning ritual, journaling for clarity, and podcasts for your morning walk
My startup got into Y Combinator
Well, our startup did - Craftwork is a tech-connected home painting company that is making it easier for homeowners to get their homes painted.
Two truths and a lie: what Meta got right with the Threads launch
Meta's new app, Threads, is a Twitter clone that launched last week. It's not perfect, but it's a great example of a product launch that went extremely well.
Maximize user retention: the cognitive science approach...
Understand how multitasking affects your customers' memory, and improve your product design and engagement with cognitive psychology and the Zeigarnik effect.
We hurled a people into space by building a pool: the case for simplification
Everyone has their moonshot: something that seems impossibly difficult. We can learn a lot from the people who have landed their own moonshots.
Why Liquid Death's branding is murderously effective
Discover the science behind naming and branding, and how the Bouba/Kiki effect can help you create a brand identity that resonates with your audience.
Perception and unexpected tricks of the mind
Explore the fascinating world of perception and cognition in the Tiny Improvements newsletter. Uncover the unexpected tricks of our minds and learn how to make tiny improvements in our cognitive abilities.
These are the books that shaped my career
A sampling of books that have had a fundamental impact on my career as a designer, developer and startup founder.
The case for continued learning, and getting side projects out the door
The end of 2022 brought about a ton of change for me, and a major shift in my career. I'm excited to talk a little about what's next, and to show off a side project I'm readying for release soon.
Customer experience, quality, and the hype cycle
The Gartner Hype Cycle, and its relationship with customer experience for new products and companies.
How do you choose the right CRM for your product?
You're building relationships with all of your customers, whether you know it or not. Setting up the right CRM for your product can help make those relationships stronger.