You might have used products that just get the job done. (Think Excel.) They compete with similar products on features, cost, and other mechanics. The problem is, these products become commodities and can lose their users to competition in a heartbeat.
Meanwhile, there are standout products that are heralded as works of art. They inspire people and change lives, and consumers stick with these brands for a long time thanks to a glue called love. Most of us want to make amazing products and are looking for that je ne sais quoi to take it to the next level:
Why do Apple and Nike stores continue to make money during retail recessions?
What do the Jony Ive’s and Tom Gruber’s of the world know that we don’t?
And when we hear that our products need to “delight” the user, what does “delight” really mean?
Today on FemgineerTV we’re going to talk about the balance of science and art that goes into amazing design and discuss the building process behind products that delight users every single time.
To help us out I’ve invited Pauly Ting, a user experience designer who has helped brands like Bloomingdale’s, Lexus, and American Express to reveal their purpose, express their personality, and deliver a complete and authentic user experience.
Whether you’re building a product for a startup or a larger corporation, you’ll want to watch this episode to learn:
- Why it’s hard to differentiate your product if you fixate on features and the science behind them
- Why most companies fail to make a meaningful connection with users
- A simple 4-step framework that helps you clarify your design and speeds up development time
After you’ve listened to the episode join the conversation here: http://femgineer.com/2015/08/the-art-vs-science-of-user-experience-design/
We all have ideas for features, products, and companies. But we cannot bring them to life alone. Partners and teams help us get out of our echo chambers, see possibilities we’ve never imagined, and put one foot in front of the other when the going gets rough.
The best teams are composed of individuals with complementary skill sets, and as we learned back in Episode 4, empathy for one another.
But you might be wondering: How does a team form over time? And how do you pick an initial partner or co-founder if you’re starting from scratch?
In today’s episode of FemgineerTV we’re going to talk about how to pick partners, assemble a founding team to get your idea off the ground, and reveal the key ingredient to a lasting partnership.
To help us out I’ve invited the co-founders of Pop Up Archive, Anne Wootton and Bailey Smith. Pop Up Archive is a startup based in Oakland, CA that makes sound searchable by using cutting edge speech-to-text technology. Anne Wootton is the CEO and Bailey Smith is the CTO. We’ll learn about how, as co-founders, they split their responsibilities, support each other, and resolve conflicts.
Listen to the episode and learn:
- The traits you should look for in a potential co-founder that are different from a teammate or an employee
- How to communicate setbacks to your co-founder
- How to critique each other constructively
If you’re actively looking for a co-founder or if you already have one and want to improve your partnership, you’ll want to watch this episode!
After you’ve listened to the episode join the conversation here: http://femgineer.com/?p=7246
If you’re a technical person, such as an engineer or designer, then your todo list is probably filled with product launches, bug fixes, interviewing candidates, attending meetings, answering emails, and fighting fires.
The daily grind can leave you wondering if the work that you do is actually worthwhile and makes a big impact.
While it’s easy for people to tell us to work smarter, not harder, the bulk of the work still falls on our shoulders, and it often feels like the only way to get it all done is to put in more hours!
In today’s episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to tackle your todo list. We’ll talk about how you can identify activities that will make a big impact for your organization, your team, and yourself, and how to feel good about deprioritizing those that don’t!
For expert guidance, I’ve invited Edmond Lau, who is the author of the new book The Effective Engineer. Edmond has worked as an engineer at big companies like Google and growth-stage startups like Ooyala, Quora, and, most recently, Quip. While he onboarded and mentored many new engineers at work, he discovered which habits, techniques, and mindsets set them up for success early on (read: huge impact in less time).
Edmond will help us identify common myths about productivity in software development that hold us back from making a big impact. We’ll also share our favorite framework for evaluating how much impact our activities and tasks actually have, using the concept of leverage.
Watch the episode and learn:
1. Why it’s important to focus on more than just technical skills
2. Why you shouldn’t drop everything to satisfy a request
3. Why you should dedicate time to activities like automation as well as mentoring and onboarding new employees
If you find yourself drowning in tasks and feel like you’re not making the kind of impact you want to make, then you’ll want to watch this episode!
Check out Edmond's latest book here: http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/book
After you’ve listened to the episode join the conversation here: http://femgineer.com/?p=7197
There’s one skill that every wildly successful product manager, UX designer, businessperson, and leader has in common. It helps them unite teams and ship products that customers love time and time again.
What could possibly unite all these technologists?
It’s conscious and deliberate empathy.
Most people believe empathy is just about being compassionate, like lending your friend a shoulder to cry on when they’re going through a breakup. Others dismiss it altogether as a distraction, because they believe it’s more important to be efficient, focus, and get stuff done!
Well, it just so happens that when a company is plagued by lack of motivation, missed deadlines, and high employee turnover, often it’s because employees feel that their teammates, bosses, and management don’t “get them.” They might feel like coworkers jump to conclusions or assume their intentions and motivations. In other words, they don’t feel that anyone has empathy for them as an individual.
Lack of empathy is terrible for team-building, but it also impacts another crucial part of your business…
It actually seeps into how products are created, so customers feel like your company doesn’t “get” them either! Why would a customer who feels misunderstood stay loyal to you or recommend you to your friends?
Empathy isn’t just about being compassionate. There are actually several different types of empathy. And there’s one that’s most helpful for success in business and technology.
We’ll tell you how to start using it right away in today’s episode of FemgineerTV. For expert guidance, I’ve invited Indi Young, a founder of Adaptive Path, user experience consultant, and author of two books: Mental Models and, most recently, Practical Empathy.
Indi will help us clarify several misconceptions and avoid some misuses of empathy...and of course to learn how to actually practice it in the right way.
Watch the episode and learn:
1. Why Tom Gruber, the designer and co-founder of Siri, believes empathy is crucial to getting things done in tech companies.
2. Why empathy isn’t limited to just building products but extends to processes and building teams.
3. Why we’ve fallen in love with quantitative data, but it isn’t enough to develop a deep understanding of our teammates and customers—we need qualitative data too.
4. Why empathy is a skill that can be learned and practiced.
5. How to translate our learnings from practicing empathy into actionable insights for our business.
If you’re struggling to understand your customers and find alignment with your teammates then you’ll want to watch this episode!
After you’ve listened to the episode join the conversation here: http://femgineer.com/?p=7110
We all want customers to crave the products we build. Next, we want them to spread the word, because WOM (word-of-mouth) marketing is THE strongest and most authentic for your product.
WOM is a testimonial delivered from one customer to another. The customer spreading the word cares about helping the other person out and is willing to vouch for the product based on benefits they’ve personally experienced.
These days, most customer-to-customer testimonials live on the internet through social media, forums, forwarded emails, and other online communities.
They also live on Product Hunt, TechCrunch’s Best New Startup of 2014.
Product Hunt is an online community where members submit and vote up the best new tech products. A simple upvote arrow is the site’s distilled version of word of mouth, and highly recommended products float to the top of the site and get an influx of visitors. According to TechCrunch, Product Hunt is “taking the industry by storm as founders, investors, early adopters and other tech enthusiasts now check the site on a daily basis.”
Recommendation-driven user acquisitions aren’t the only benefit for products that succeed on Product Hunt; they might also nab press coverage, investor interest, or high-quality feedback from the tech enthusiasts.
When Product Hunt was just getting started, it faced a classic chicken-and-egg problem that typically burdens community-based products. You need users on your home turf to attract other users, but how do you go from an initial 0 users to 10 or 100?
Product Hunt did a phenomenal job building up a following. The founder, Ryan Hoover, started with a simple email list that grew into a strong community of evangelists eager to use the product every day.
In this episode of FemgineerTV, we’ll cover how he did it. Any new startup—even if it’s not social or community-based—can use these strategies to drive word-of-mouth recommendations for their product.
I’ve invited Ryan Hoover and his founding team member Erik Torenberg to candidly share how they used evangelists to accelerate Product Hunt’s growth in the early days. They’ll also explain how they continue to build fervor for the product through an engaged and growing community.
Watch the episode and learn:
1. What they did to create a positive first impression of their company on prospective users and influencers.
2. How they attracted early adopters even before ProductHunt was built.
3. How they mobilized their early adopters to evangelize the product and bring in more users.
4. Strategies that did and didn’t work to increase community engagement.
5. How they keep users hooked and coming back.
If you’re struggling to get traction for your software product, watch the episode. You’ll definitely walk away with some valuable insights to apply to your business right away!
After you've listened to the episode join the conversation in the comments here: http://femgineer.com/?p=7086
As technologists we want to build software that is friendly, fast, beautiful, reliable, secure, and scalable. And we expect ourselves to deliver it on time and under budget, because our ultimate goal is to have lots of happy customers who can do what they want: cue Daft Punk’s Technologic!
But time and energy are finite, and we simply cannot deliver it all at once. We need to choose our priorities, and this choice is one we should make consciously.
Evaluating our software development priorities while dealing with constraints is known as the tradeoff space.
How can you make wise tradeoffs for your product?
The choice is based on a balance between your technology stack and business model type.
“Move fast and break things!”
While this has become a popular motto, it doesn’t apply to every company.
For example, enterprise software companies that are building system-level software prioritize reliability because customers need to use them. Each change needs to be rigorously tested, and often approved before it can be released.
Meanwhile, consumer internet companies spend time and money on making their UX delightful so that people want to use them. Reliability is something they’re willing to sacrifice. Since many are web-based applications, they can iterate quickly and release changes frequently.
So yes, they can move fast and break things.
The tradeoff space may seem insurmountable, but you too can become confident about your decisions by learning from a true pro!
In the second episode of Femgineer TV, I’ve invited Jocelyn Goldfein, the Former Director of Engineering at Facebook, to talk about:
- What the tradeoff space is
- How to not get overwhelmed by the tradeoff space
- How to make decisions that will help you ship product that your customers will love and help you meet business goals
Jocelyn has led engineering teams at early to growth-stage startups like VMWare and enterprise companies like Trilogy, so she’s definitely had her fair share of dealing with constraints and having to make tradeoffs to ship product and meet business goals.
We also dig into the cost of a mistake, how to take risks, the BIGGEST mistake Jocelyn sees technical folks making over and over again, and how to avoid making it!
Watch the episode to learn how you can make smart tradeoffs when developing software products.
Read Jocelyn's blog: http://www.jocelyngoldfein.com
Follow Jocelyn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jgoldfein
Join the conversation after listening to the episode at: http://femgineer.com/?p=7004
While a lot of people talk about the financial benefits of a remote team, that’s actually NOT the reason why Ben Congleton and his team decided to build a remote team. You’ve probably also heard over and over again the importance of company culture, but Ben actually breaks down what him and his team at Olark do to build a strong company culture!
During the show we covered the following 3 misconceptions people have about remote working:
1. Employees won’t be as productive and progress will stagnate
2. Communication between employees and teams will break down
3. A remote team will be devoid of culture
In the pilot episode of FemgineerTV Ben and I tackled each of these misconceptions. And Ben shares how he and his co-founders have built an amazing remote team of 30-people, which spans San Francisco to Europe.