How designers can think like PMs to embrace iteration and fast-forward user feedback.
Businesses can better improve their product and compete within their marketplace when they make small, incremental steps to build toward a vision. This is because by starting small, they’re able to quicker weed out good ideas from bad ones with real user feedback that minimizes effort wasted. One way to think about this approach is to compare it to baking a cake:
The classic way people think about baking has them focussing on the individual ingredients, each of no value to the end user. You can deliver the base first, then the filling, and finally the icing. …
Twice a month our design team meets to talk about our work and share links that we found interesting or enjoyable in some way. Here’s what we looked at this week:
1. I purchased a dog DNA test from Embark and found their setup, testing, and results to be delightful. Here’s the packaging and a link to the video results. Want to guess what he is first? Play this game.
2. Who isn’t a fan of Japanese food? Google created Umami Land (think Candy Land with a Japanese flair) as a rich and fun search tool to learn all about…
Writers: Keep your readers in the loop by letting them subscribe to email updates. You own your subscriber list.
This past year, Medium has given readers and writers more control over the stories they see by emphasizing follows over algorithms. Now, writers, you can take your follower list one step further. Let your fans know when you’ve published something new from their email inbox, in addition to when they come to Medium, by adding the option to subscribe to story updates. You control which stories get sent and your subscriber list is portable.
We made the tool simple, here’s how to use it.
First, go to your Settings page and find a new Followers section. You’ll see the option…
Writing
If you’ve started a newsletter and are searching for ways to improve it, consider these tips as food for thought
We checked in with Abby Aker, lead designer of Newsletters, on what’s useful to know to grow your newsletter.
1. Check sign-up copy
- When a reader signs up for your newsletter, it’s a sign of trust and connection. Think about who your ideal audience is. How do they communicate? What type of language do they use? The answers to these questions should inform the newsletter’s name and description and be designed to speak directly to your ideal subscriber.
- Minimize uncertainty for someone who might be interested, but is still on the fence by setting expectations around topic area, send times, and frequency.
- Your publication…
Writing newsletters just got easier.
Since launching Medium Newsletters in June, we’ve been happy to see many publications on Medium use them. Our last post noted improvements to come and we’re excited to share our latest progress.
If you use Newsletters, you may have recently noticed a change to the editing tool. Originally, emails could be composed on a page that included stats and lists of draft and sent emails, which caused the space to feel a bit unfocused. It also only supported basic features in comparison to Medium’s story editor. …
Abby Aker
Inky pen, big watch, lots of water. Design @Medium.
