Building Products
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What I’m Working On – Jan 2024
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6 min read
This is half journal entry half blog post. It’s hard to believe we are ten days into January already. It doesn’t feel like a lot, but I’m in a race against the clock right now. In just over 10 weeks, I’m going to be a dad. There are a few things I want to try…
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How to build a better dating platform
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7 min read
I used to be uncomfortable when people asked me, “how did you meet your girlfriend?” Online dating was still a burgeoning industry when I had met someone online. And on a site you might least expect: Tumblr. The internet flattened the world, shrinking geographic distance and connecting you with anyone around the world. You can…
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Building Digital Experiences with Humans in Mind
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6 min read
Originally written and posted on the Versett blog. “Something must be wrong with the experience.” One of our clients was concerned about a peculiar behaviour pattern we noticed in their ecommerce experience: some customers would visit the page and open chat with a question within seconds. It was as if they didn’t even bother trying…
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Product mindlessness
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3 min read
Let’s start with some product trivia. Without looking at your phone, how many items do you typically see in a bottom bar in a mobile app? How many icons do you usually see in a top navigation bar? When is the large title treatment used on iOS? If you’re like me, these are hard to…
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The power of decomposition in design
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7 min read
I get excited when I come across a book that attempts to apply rigour to an existing field, especially in an area I work. I recently indulged in Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander, and that’s what it was for me, an indulgence. Alexander applies a more scientific approach to design to…
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Corporate Survival Strategy: Winning with Mediocrity
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11 min read
“I’m not here to be number one in the market. I’m here to make money.” It used to bother me working with clients who were unwilling to commit to winning. They thought they wanted to be the best in their class, but not really. They were unwilling to make the hard choices and sacrifices required…
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What is a product?
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9 min read
We ended the last essay with ‘The next time someone asks you what you do, or what digital products are, tell them you build digital tools to help make people’s lives better. Because if a product isn’t offering value and making someone’s life better, is it even a product?’ Let’s dig into this a bit…
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What is it you do exactly?
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6 min read
Working in the digital product space, especially in an agency setting, requires you to concoct several descriptions of your job & industry to keep on-hand for conversations with family and friends. Depending on their technical sophistication, how you describe your work will vary greatly. I’ve noticed that anything computer-related get labelled as “IT” by most…
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Writing An MVP Product Sentence
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3 min read
When starting a new project, Robert Caro distills the essence of his new book into as little as a single paragraph. “I can’t start writing a book until I’ve thought it through and can see it whole in my mind…I boil the book down to three paragraphs, or two, or one.” This paragraph acts as…
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Building Stumble
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7 min read
For the past few months I have been working on building a couple photo-based apps. Each came about differently and I thought it would be helpful, mostly for myself, to try to articulate my own intention behind each of them. These apps were built specifically for my own needs, and polished up as a way…