another 12 things you can do to succeed

9 January 2014, 19:08

Part two of the mini‐series I am running at the moment on the usual social channels—twitter, g+, linkedin and xing—called positive action ships successful products. There, for every wishful thought that persists in the (mobile) software industry, I supply a complementary positive action.

Below I list the second dozen pairs of these for your reference. If you are a product maker, or manage a product‐shipping organisation, then you can initiate at least one of these today:

Identify the different nature/vibe of your product modules and flows; design them accordingly.
cf. ‘A list is a list is a list. Why do these two parts of our app need such a different design?’
Hire a (lead) designer whose career is longer than that of your most senior developer (and the CTO).
cf. ‘Sure, it needs to be designed. Let’s get a [student, intern] for that.’
Tackle usability from the core outwards: how your product works; stop tinkering on the fringes.
cf. ‘Our usability sucks. To fix that, maybe we can take some guidelines and apply them religiously.’
Erect a chinese wall between your product and the customer wishes you are forced/paid to build.
cf. ‘The features our most‐valued customers ask for are implemented asap, future plans be damned.’
Start your development cycle by structuring it with your designer(s); serious work starts then.
cf. ‘The development is almost finished, now we need some design on top to jazz it up.’
Celebrate that your organisation is an exclusive group of insiders; real users are out there.
cf. ‘We are the typical users.’
Plan with a single, integral solution from your designer(s), which gets continuously refined.
cf. ‘Let’s get the designer(s) to deliver 3 proposals, then we pick—and mix—what we like.’
Refuse to get your data separated from the value your product delivers.
cf. ‘For that you can export the data to excel.’
Hire user researchers to map out how your core users tick and what their needs are.
cf. ‘We did do user research; we asked them what they liked and not, and what was missing.’
Fight rust; regularly identify product areas that were stable for years and redesigned them.
cf. ‘We have been doing it like this for many years.’
Stamp out the tinkering; get it designed, completely—no holes; documented nimbly, ‘on paper.’
cf. ‘We design in code.’
Hog effort, your organisation deals with it; your users get to do their thing, effortlessly.
cf. ‘Really, users could also put some effort into using our software.’

ask not what this blog can do for you…

Now, what else can you do? First of all, you can spread the word; share this blog post. Second, the series continues, so I invite you to connect via twitter, g+, linkedin, or xing, and get a fresh jolt of positive action every workday.

And third, if you able and willing to take some positive action, then email or call us. We will happy to help you ship successful products.

ps: you can check out part one if you missed it.

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If you like to ask Peter one burning question and talk about it for ten minutes, then check out his available officehours.

portrait of Peter  Peter Sikking is an experienced
interaction architect. He unabashedly puts shipping great products at the centre of his design practice. He is known for his work for Google, Nokia, the Metapolator & GIMP open source projects, and startups.

Peter teaches, mentors, lectures and publishes. He enjoys working with small teams in an international setting, but also the fact that his work can be found on half a billion mobiles and creates billion‐dollar revenues.

What is Peter up to? See his /now page.

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