Key Questions
- Should we outsource engineering or product design? What are the tradeoffs?
- What are the different sub-roles within engineering and product design?
- How many engineers and designers do I need at each stage of the product?
- What is a good process for product design at a startup?
- How scalable does our engineering need to be for the MVP?
- What are common mistakes people make in product design?
- How can I ensure the product keeps getting better through multiple iterations?
- What metrics should we track to see if we’re on the right path?
- How should we manage our product roadmap and product backlog?
Start Here
Garry Tan: Design for Startups
(1 hour video.) The video focuses on the importance of understanding user needs and prioritizing features in product design for startups. Garry emphasizes the need to define user personas and their specific needs, creating a clear product requirement document (PRD) that outlines the core problem being solved. He introduces a P0-P3 system to prioritize features, where P0 represents the most critical functionality. Tan highlights the importance of bug databases and customer support to understand user issues and inform improvements. He advocates for using design patterns to streamline development and emphasizes visual design principles like contrast and grids. Garry concludes by reiterating the iterative nature of product design, emphasizing the importance of user testing and continuous customer feedback.
Julie Zhuo: Design for People, Use People Language
(4 min read.) This article, written by Julie, emphasizes the importance of using people-focused language when discussing product development. She argues that using industry jargon and technical language can lead to misunderstandings and a loss of focus on the user’s needs. Instead, Julie advocates for framing questions and discussions around the end user’s perspective, ensuring that product teams are truly addressing the user’s needs and creating valuable products.
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Kaari Sarrinen: What Startups Should Look for When Hiring a Designer
(4 min video.) Saarinen addresses hiring the right designer for a startup, emphasizing the need to look for product design experience. He highlights the different types of designers—graphic, UX, brand—and cautions against being overly impressed by big company names like Facebook or Google, as their design processes differ significantly from startups. Saarinen suggests using friends, investors, and industry contacts to find suitable candidates. He recommends a thorough interview process, including background checks, portfolio reviews, and, if possible, work trials or practical assignments. He stresses the importance of setting clear expectations for immediate contribution, as startups require quick action and adaptability.
Aditya Agarwal: Bootstrapping Engineering Operations
(8 min read.) In this article Agarwal discusses the establishment of Engineering Operations (Eng Ops) to scale engineering teams efficiently. At Dropbox, the team expanded from under 100 to over 1000 engineers from 2013 to 2018. Eng Ops was created to address challenges like onboarding inefficiencies and knowledge gaps as the organization grew. The function focuses on creating scalable systems and programs for communication, collaboration, and learning. Key initiatives include detailed onboarding processes, ownership mapping tools, and mentorship programs. Eng Ops enhances productivity, efficiency, and engineer satisfaction, ensuring that the engineering team can operate effectively as it scales.
Alfred Lin: What is Design Thinking?
(2 min read.) Through this article, Alfred discusses the perspective shared by Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb who advocates for design thinking, a problem-solving approach that starts with the solution rather than the problem. He outlines five key steps: Essence, Altitude, Assembly, Interconnection, and Stories. These steps involve understanding user interaction, scaling the solution, assembling its components, connecting it to the user’s world, and narrating the solution’s story. Brian applies this framework to various challenges, including creative and product development, as well as cross-functional areas like recruiting, marketing, and operations. This approach emphasizes finding innovative solutions by working both backward from the solution and forward from the problem, encouraging different perspectives to find effective solutions.
Julie Zhuo: Why Hire More Designers
(6 min read.) Julie argues that hiring more designers is a valuable investment for companies. She highlights that designers possess unique skills that go beyond aesthetics, including visualizing future visions, thinking holistically about user experiences, and fostering a culture of innovation. Designers can translate abstract concepts into tangible visuals, helping teams communicate long-term goals effectively. They also contribute to a seamless user experience across all features and platforms, ensuring a cohesive interaction. Furthermore, their focus on user-centered design and a culture of experimentation leads to higher-quality products. While acknowledging that designer-developer ratios can provide a general guideline, Julie emphasizes the importance of considering specific team needs and context. She also stresses the value of having multiple designers collaborate, as it fosters constructive feedback and drives higher-quality designs.
Bob Moesta: Swiftly Move Through Any Design Process With These Design Tools
(5 min read.) In this article, Bob shares his strategies for effective design processes. He advocates for setting constraints, like time walls and dollar walls, to force prioritization and manage tradeoffs. Time walls establish deadlines, urging designers to focus on the most critical elements, while dollar walls limit budgets, encouraging cost-consciousness. Additionally, he emphasizes visualizing the entire project by considering different scenarios and their implications. This comprehensive perspective allows designers to understand priorities, trade offs, and the project’s evolution. Bob believes successful innovators embrace tradeoffs as tools for managing progress, rather than compromises. By adopting constraints and a broad view, designers can avoid getting bogged down and make informed decisions, leading to effective solutions.
Bob Moesta: Designing a Truly Great Product Requires Asking Yourself This Critical Question
(5 min read.) This article emphasizes the importance of understanding customer tradeoffs when designing a product. Bob argues that customers prioritize time, cost, and quality, and are willing to compromise to get what they value most. Businesses must identify these tradeoffs by understanding customer values and how they’ll use the product. A key strategy is to help customers visualize the tradeoffs they’re making, for example, by presenting different options and time constraints. This approach helps customers make informed decisions and leads to products that truly meet their needs.
Bob Moesta: Design and Innovate Solutions That Achieve the Desired Performance by Prototyping to Learn
(8 min read.) Bob recounts experiences with problem-solving and innovation through a systematic approach called “prototyping to learn.” Initially, he describes helping a chip manufacturer who struggled with improving product quality due to a narrow focus on individual problems rather than considering the entire system. By employing orthogonal arrays to test multiple factors simultaneously, Bob and the team identified and optimized critical parameters quickly. The same method was applied to improve dish soap formulation, where understanding the system’s control and noise factors led to significant insights and successful product optimization. This approach emphasizes understanding and balancing trade-offs, fostering innovation based on empirical data rather than preconceived notions of an ideal solution.