Finest-5 Product reads #47
Why Everything Looks the Same, design navigation, product managers role, etc
Hi! Happy Sunday,
In personal space, I have joined GrowthX today with an intention of expanding my horizon on knowledge and developing some interesting proof of work. Do check it out if growth interests you as a topic. It is going to be immersive for the next 2 months, but I will get the newsletter out without fail.
On the news side, my feed was covered with all the drama happening around twitter, with Elon being the new boss, and bankruptcy at FTX has caused a significant loss for crypto players.
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Why Everything Looks the Same
If you have stayed back and looked around, you will notice so many things look the same today from cars to websites to doors.. everything is looking more similar day by day
Key Takeaways:
- Chasing the same valuable millennial demo, many direct-to-consumer brands followed a turnkey pattern
- Algorithms haven’t just reshaped the way we consume content. They’ve insidiously restrained us to want the same things and flattening taste
- With few measurable criteria upon which to judge a startup, VCs instead look for familiar patterns from the market or their own experiences as indicators of potential success.
Google & Apple — A Tale of Two Product Cultures
Google and Apple are two of the most successful and admired technology companies, yet their approach to product development differs in some fundamental aspects. Google’s is based heavily on data and Apple’s relies more on vision and intuition.
Key Takeaways:
- Google might be the tech company that has launched and killed the highest number of products. Part of Google’s approach is to launch quickly and kill quickly (presumably, based on usage data)
- Google can’t possibly “design” the search results for every search query, but it can design a machine learning algorithm that gets better with every user interaction
- Like Google, Apple also uses an iterative, evolutionary approach to product development. The evolution is internal, through a process of demo sessions with leadership, which provides both feedback and the vision for where the product should eventually end up.
Designing The Perfect Mobile Navigation UX
Designing navigations reflects how your content is divided on the website. Designing navigations for a complex product that does not confuse users is rare.
Key Takeaways:
- Rather than overloading the navigation bar with separators and separate actions, we can help users move forward confidently and comfortably and prevent mistakes altogether.
- Not every navigation item is equally important. Some items are more frequently used, and they might deserve a little more spotlight in your navigation.
- Nested accordions can work with enough contrast between each level. However, if you have more than three levels of navigation, it will become quite difficult.
When Do We Need Product Managers?
Role of a product manager changes based on organisation size and stage. Though basic product management is about problem solving, but org stage tells you which problem.
Key Takeaways:
- The key challenge for a product manager in an early stage startup is to achieve product/market fit before the cash runs out.
- The major obstacle for a product manager in an emerging company is to continuously and aggressively contribute to the growth of the company, while not losing the big picture of the company’s overall direction.
- The main challenge for a product manager in an enterprise company is to continue disruptive innovation while convincing stakeholders to trust them when doing new and big changes.
Keep an eye 👀 on Heap
Heap’s rise to a $960M valuation, 8k customers, and becoming the James Webb Space Telescope of digital insights
Key Takeaways:
- Heap gives you two weeks to fall in love–and they wine and dine you through it too.
- Heap has always prioritised their self-serve PLG strategy, and it’s worked well for customer success so far!
- Heap’s excellent content strategy has them ranking for over 12K top organic keywords and in the 1st position for over 300 branded and non-branded keywords.
Product of the week: arcade
Create interactive product demos in minutes and turn all users into power users.
