The Product Playbook by Reveall

When you start working on a new product or service, the barrier is low when it comes to including useful features in your mock-ups and designs. Sharing it with the people that will implement the design gives you a reality check on what is feasible in the short-term. Coming up with dozens of useful and impactful product features that have all been validated with customers isn't what makes you a great product or UX professional, that is the easy part. Isolating the single company-defining and value adding feature, while keeping track of the dozens of other features that still need to be implemented is what makes you invaluable.

Always involve cross functional experts from data science, design, sales.. teams to validate ideas and add more meat to product features. Involve them early on so you get most context and multiple points of view to your product ideas, even if the ideas feel too immature to discuss.

Manage yours Stakeholders. As a PM, it is extremely important to know how to deal with different profiles, always manage to communicate efficiently and ensure that all people are always on the same page about a certain aspect of the product. Being able to involve the different roles that exist in multidisciplinary teams of products such as Design, Engineering, Data, and Business from beginning to end of the life cycle of product development will help you to engage the right people at the right times and bring much more value and avoid unnecessary effort and rework

One thing I've learned in design school is that there's a fundamental difference between design and art. Design has a function, art doesn't. How I relate to this in the UX and product world is to always remember that every micro decision we make should purposefully contribute towards solving a customer problem. The art of design is to be able to solve it in the simplest possible way. What this means is to remember it's our job to be obsessed with listening to customers' problems, identifying the root cause of their problems, and breaking it down into smaller more manageable pieces. Don't listen to customers on solutions, that's our job. We design and iterate on solutions, and we get to build great products once we are able to understand customers' problems better than everyone else.

The major mistake most beginners make is not getting constant feedback and documenting the process. I recommend every junior designer to take feedback from professionals because they view it differently as compared to beginners. Ask yourself "Why you made specific design decisions" at every stage of the process. "Key to the great case study is asking for feedback and iterating based on that feedback"

Communicate your research results vividly to your stakeholders! I've had the best experience conducting a "User Research Cinema." It goes like this: invite your stakeholders who are influenced by the user feedback, show highlight reels from interviews or Think Aloud sessions on relevant topics, and then develop and discuss ideas. I usually use this as part of a results workshop for larger projects, i.e. I invite people to a 2-3 hour workshop, with 45 minutes of User Research Cinema, 1 hour of discussion, and 1 hour of ideation. But I've also heard of companies using User Feedback Cinema on a more regular basis (e.g., 45 minutes every first Wednesday of the month). Pro-tip: It also works in a remote setup with a Miro board (or something similar) and screen/audio sharing, but don't forget to send popcorn! ;)

Don't put all your focus on learning how to use Figma or generating certain artifacts. That's very important, but in the meantime, work on your soft skills as well. Find opportunities to learn how to better communicate your ideas, present your work to get feedback, and plan your tasks with due dates. All of these things will further your career. The earlier, the better!

Always implement a codesign part in your project with your client, in order to show them the results of your output, whether that is research or a new concept, reflect on these results and together build towards a new iteration and improved product or service. In this way, the final outcome will really stick and your client feels like he/she is part of the solution, which will make the implementation so much easier. You gained some ambassadors along the way!

In the lifecycle of any product, there are multiple forces that dictate the direction its development takes. One of these forces is the market. The numbers your product is envisioned to achieve over the next year, or two and the competitive edge it has, and while that is a crucial aspect of a product, balancing user needs with business needs is at the core of a smooth lifecycle, this is where testing and stakeholder interviews come into play. Test often, and use the results to sway stakeholders towards user centricity.

Something that really helps me out when I’m stuck in a creative process is to gather feedback. I’ll show elements to my girlfriend, teammates, friends, neighbors – anyone who could have an interesting view on that specific topic. It can be overwhelming to process so many differing views but in the end it is up to you how to operationalize these perspectives. Bundle them, prioritize them, see if you can spot quick wins. Asking feedback is a trusty tool always gets your creative process flowing again.

It’s important to design relationships with our stakeholders. We should never underestimate the power of collaboration, sharing our design decisions and challenge those: this is an opportunity to see different perspectives or discover problems that we, as designers, haven’t considered.While craft is what defines our job titles the most, I believe design it’s more than those hard skills. Design it’s not only about knowing our users: it’s important to know our team as well and value everyone’s opinion to move forward and to provide the best exeprience to the users.

Always emphasize, not only with users but as well with team members and anyone who is involved in your project. Try to find out their motivations and needs and see how those align. That will help steer the ship more smoothly as you know all crew. Find the personal approach to build relationships with them, not just working side by side.

How might we reduce bias when conducting our design research? If your last session was recorded on video, then try to rewatch it. Ohoh. But this time, observe yourself as a researcher. Are you good at being (even awkwardly) silent? How do you mirror questions coming from the participant? How much do you influence the participant's actions? I know, haha, it might sound painful to observe yourself like that. Buuut, it could help you define some tactics for being a more unbiased team member. Something to experiment with in upcoming sessions. Why not?

Computer games are a great source of inspiration, even for B2B products. Typically games have to onboard users and make them see value in record time, and have to display very complex data in small amounts of space while still being user friendly!(Backup tip:Build strong relationships with support, sales and customer success. These people talk with more customers than you ever could and will help you identify patterns around the problems your customers are facing. )

Have conversations with your customers every week—preferably every day. It can be tough and time consuming, but it pays off manyfold. As a Product Manager my most important job is to become an expert on both the product and the customers using it. The latter can *only* be achieved (and maintained) through repeated, face-to-face (or online) conversations with your customers.

Working alongside talented engineers was the best thing that happened to me in my digital career. I think it's critical in this industry to understand how things work to come up with a solution that makes sense. But above all, the best thing you can do is to iterate quickly and try your solution with real people as fast as possible. I think it's the fastest way to learn.

Having spent several years in research, I have been drilled into making decisions based on data. I like to take a similar approach when it comes to product management. As Peter Drucker said, you can't improve what you don't measure. Therefore, we aim to measure as much (high-quality) data as possible. For example, we have created a central repository where we collect feedback from customers from different channels at Stardekk (sales, customer care, product, etc.). This feedback is then categorized, structured, and prioritized according to various metrics. With such an approach, we aim to understand our customer's most urgent and frequent problems and resolve them in a fast and efficient way.

Do not limit UX to digital solutions, in my case i applied to very specific physical products (medical instruments design) what I learned from digital solutions. Do not hesitate to use them although there is not much popular content. Create and adapt the different methods for your needs. Methods are not that fixed as you may think.

Realize that becoming good takes time, and becoming great takes decades. By being innately curious and persistent, great things will happen when you give it enough time and effort. Make sure you love the process; that's where you'll find the most value in your life.

Define a purpose!!! do go beyond the generic answers of “marketing” or “to improve ROI” or "our C-levels said so". try to focus on attainable goals that are specific and measurable. you'll want your website redesign or app revamp to stay relevant for a long time, so focus on a *timeless purpose* to bring value to the table.

Asking the right questions during user interviews is hard. But never ask your user if they would like something, if they would use something, because they will probably say yes even if it's not true. Ask about real experiences. Ask about what happened the last time they had to complete a specific task or how was their experience with a product, how they felt when something specific happened.

There's a new kind of "magic" in B2B marketing. The magic used to come from alignment between Sales and Marketing. The new magic is more like a holy trinity – alignment between Sales, Marketing AND Product. Marketers need to employ more user and preference testing with new value propositions and positioning statements, similar to how product would scope the use case of features. When marketing starts testing before sending, you gain valuable feedback that doesn't just generate more leads, but makes sales conversations easier, and the product roadmap more informed.

What do we want? Job stories.When do we want them? NowI can't believe I made it through my first years as a landing-page CRO without using job stories. 'As a ___, when I'm ___, I want to ___ so I can ___'. Very simple, but it's really useful for keeping everyone aligned on who you're building for and why, which helps you focus on debating stuff that actually matters.

Talking to customers is easier than you may think. It sounds scary, but once you manage to set a meeting, it just gets better. Your users are most likely willing to share their thoughts and suggestions – they want you to solve their problems better! Start the conversation with a question about their role in the organization, and follow up with a one about their workflow with your product. You have no idea how many different ways of using it they can have! Now it's up to you to make a lot of notes.

Be comfortable being uncomfortable. The more comfortable and open we are with our levels of knowledge surrounding a customer problem, the better we can manage our investments - seeking insight, driving a confident product strategy or simply consciously following a hunch!

UX Research is experiential learning. An insight is an observation experienced first-hand that inspires and triggers ownership over creating a solution.If you want UX Research at your company to be impactful, put your focus on facilitating this experiential learning.

Make getting research done easy.We all know how valuable user insights are for your product teams. Make sure it’s easy for them to interact with your researchers and flag even small topics for research. I’ve seen so many great ideas being thrown away because we didn’t have time to go through all the briefing documents and find budget and do all the recruitment and scheduling just to test this one assumption. Instead of making a big project out of every research topic, keep speaking to your users frequently and continuously and adapt your questions to your product teams’ needs every week.

To me, one of the biggest tips I could give to other UX Professionals is to learn the art of empathy. To me, research is getting a deep understanding of what emotional and functional needs customers have, and not for us to validate that we are right (or wrong). We should try to truly understand the elements of empathy as you approach customers with your product. See the world through their eyes, understand where they are coming from and how they feel, don’t judge them, and communicate throughout your product based on a solid understanding of your customers' needs and wants.