Perspectives

This Week in Product – May 17, 2019

Published May 17, 2019

No Panic! at the (Silent) Disco

We’re still in recovery mode from last week’s inaugural ProductCraft Conference in San Francisco, where 550 of you gathered to bring the ProductCraft community to life with lessons, lounges, and labs. It was an awesome day of learning, inspiration, and networking, and we’re already thinking about next year! If you missed it, we highly recommend this recap for some top lessons from the conference. Stay tuned as we keep sharing pieces that highlight some of the sessions we had last week.

Multidimensional Problem Solving

Solving problems is every product person’s bread and butter. Seems obvious, right? But how do you know what problem you’re even solving? Does known get in the way of unknown? This little nugget of wisdom is a reminder to all of us to look at problems holistically and remember that there are things we don’t know.

Take the L

If you live in New York City, you’ve probably been embroiled in the shutdown of the L train in one way or another. What’s the drama? Well, the transit authority is trying to modernize an old train while keeping it running. If they shut it down, people get angry. If they keep it running poorly? People get angry. Sounds like your worst product nightmare? It is. Tom Comerford is a product leader at Jet.Com and he writes thoughtfully about how to go about product overhauls when you already have a lot of users in the mix. Should you tear it down or build on the fly?

Friendly Reminder

It’s Friday. Shut it down.

Humanity in Action

One of our favorites at the ProductCraft conference (not that we pick favorites) was Benjamin Earl Evans, inclusive design lead at AirBNB. He gave us a glimpse into the innovative work that’s being done there and how the company is thinking about the future of creating more equitable, accessible digital products. So when this job popped up, we just had to feature it. I mean, if nothing else, you should apply because of the title.