Test-n-Tell - tiny apps, Big ideas

  That's the first question you should ask when joining a new team or having a new team member.

  Product management is a high-stress, high-pressure kind of job. To succeed you have to juggle like a circus pro, negotiate like a seasoned diplomat and communicate like a best-selling author. And even if you're acing that all - the success is not guaranteed.

  Thinking is something most of us do. One way or another. Thinking comes in different kinds and flavours, in particular, there is thinking in iterations and thinking in results.

  Earlier I wrote a post about how your job title doesn't matter for doing good product work. However, your job title does matter in different contexts - influence and responsibility.

  Some of the best product ideas I had as a novice PM were born while playing FIFA with my boss. Yes, you heard it right, collaboration might take very different forms and still lead to significant outcomes.

  The current AI efforts are to offer us more of what we want. But there comes a point when we're too bored with what we want. So the next AI leap should be to surprise us.

I am gonna tell you a secret. I don't like to do customer interviews. Yes, I know. After some many articles when I say it's the most important part of PMs job - I personally don't like to do them. Until I am actually doing them.

Are we aware of the impact our work has on our community, on our society? Do we assume any responsibility or just focused on our business goals?

Biases. Biases are everywhere . I have many biases. So as you and your customers. How could you limit cognitive biases' influence on your user research?

Throughout the human history, information was the critical tool. Knowledge was equal to respect and influence. Access to information was pivotal to success. Knowledge was hard to obtain and therefore was regarded as the highest value. Then came the Internet.

Do you think all your achievements are the result of your conscious efforts? If your answer is a confident yes - I congratulate you, you're godlike. For those of us who allow a reasonable doubt...

- Don't tell me how to do my job! You had this thought reading professional books and blogs. Maybe even that one. Certainly that one! That's OK. Nobody likes to get told how to do their job.

Last week I visited a conference. It wasn't planned and on short notice, so I didn't know what to expect. The conference has been sponsored by a large and successful product company. One of the sessions was dedicated to their new product release. I was curious as this is something PMs do - pitch new releases.

Here's the most straightforward innovation recipe: Outline a process people currently follow to get things done - Remove some steps = Profit. The more steps you remove - the happier people are. Easy, right? Why then is the real innovation still so difficult?

Simplicity was the mantra most UX designers followed in the last 10 years. " Don't make me think ," the iconic book by Steve Krug, popularized the concept of simplicity in digital product design. This concept helped a lot. To make computer interfaces actually usable for the broad audience. It's so easy today to order a cab, buy tickets online, find an answer to any question, connect with people around the globe, spend money... Is there a limit to simplicity or we should carry on simplifying any product?

Remember Kathy Sierra's concept of a "badass users" ? A user doesn't care about your product, user cares about his context. He doesn't want to be better at using your product. He wants to be better at what he's doing. A user of a digital camera doesn't want to be the best at using this particular camera. He wants to make stunning pictures.

What is it? Why is it so important? And what are the examples of a winning user onboarding?

Lately, I've had the privilege to hear Nathalie Nahai speaking about 5 psychological  principals of persuasive product design . 5 psychological principles of persuasive design from Nathalie Nahai

The Hero's Journey is a pattern of narrative that used in most books, movies, and stories. It is also known as "monomyth". Joseph Campbell, an American scholar, analyzed most of the ancient texts, legends, and tales. He found out that most of them follow quite a similar pattern. They tell a story of a "hero", who through the "journey" achieves great things and transform himself on the way. 

The Web Psychologist Nathalie Nahai is a Web Psychologist and best-selling author of ‘ Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion ‘ (Pearson).