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15 / Test Assumptions to Achieve Product-Market Fit

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Dan Olsen
Olsen Solutions

Software product development is hard enough. It’s harder still when our investment of resources is based on a set of untested assumptions. The probability that we perfectly address each of the hundreds or thousands (millions?) of assumptions, hypotheses, and decisions is super low. Once we get comfortable with the idea that many of our assumptions …

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Headshot of Dan Olsen
Dan Olsen
Olsen Solutions

ITX Product Momentum Podcast – Episode 14: Taking Product Design Beyond Today’s Conventions

The common understanding is that to be successful in today’s digital environment designers need to solve problems while building products that people want and need to use. While that may be the core of it, it’s only the core. There’s so much more to it. When we talk about interaction design, designing software products, and today’s rapidly emerging next-gen experiences, designers now need to think about what it means to learn, to adapt, and to change.
In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Tim Wood. Tim wears a couple hats these days, one as Professor of Industrial Design and Interactive Design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the other as Design and User Experience Innovation Lead at Corning Inc. Playing in both sandboxes gives Tim the opportunity to engage in the private sector while peering beyond the horizon through the lens of higher education.

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14 / Taking Design Beyond Today’s Conventions

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Tim-Wood
Tim Wood
Corning Inc.; RIT School of Design

The common understanding is that to be successful in today’s digital environment designers need to solve problems while building products that people want and need to use. While that may be the core of it, it’s only the core. There’s so much more to it these days, Tim Wood explains. When we talk about interaction …

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Tim-Wood
Tim Wood
Corning Inc.; RIT School of Design

Product Conference Ignites Momentum in Software Product Community

As markets shift with end user needs and preferences, product people respond. The pace at which problems are solved is exceeded only by the next round of challenges that rush in to replace them. This unrelenting cycle generates two kinds of momentum: first, at the micro level, product teams generate momentum by aligning around a Vision and Roadmap that are brought to life by Motivated teams who have the Capability to solve complex technology problems.

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Beyond the features ITX logo

7 Tips for Driving Clarity Through Better E-mail Communication

According to a recent McKinsey study, highly skilled workers spend an average of 28 percent of their work week reading and responding to e-mails, but give very little time to thinking about how to make their e-mail communications more effective.
This is a waste.
Why? Clear e-mail communication saves time and energy that could be better used elsewhere. Instead of wasting time drafting and decoding confusing, lackluster e-mails, colleagues can focus on serving their organization’s mission.

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ITX Product Momentum Podcast – Episode 13: Product Design Driving Positive Behaviors

Product people possess the creative and ethical wherewithal to persuade users to behave in ways that materially improve their lives – using our powers for good. The secret is to understand that, if we want to connect our product’s use to a repetitive consumer habit, we must identify the internal trigger that drives consumer behavior. Understanding this crucial piece can explain how software products become so habit forming.
In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Nir Eyal, keynote speaker at ITX’s Product Momentum: Beyond the Features product conference (June 19-21), whose work on Behavioral Design has brought him and us to the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The goal of his work is to help product people design the products and services that consumers want to use and that drive positive, habit-forming behaviors. Nir combines a gift for observation with an uncanny awareness to convert life experiences into problem statements that ultimately lead to research, learning, and discovery.

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Setting , Pursuing, and Reaching Goals: Implementing OKRs with Christina Wodtke

Success is the most highly valued commodity in the business world, though it can mean different things to different people depending on circumstance. Regardless of how you define it, where does success come from without goals? Working hard toward an unclear target is like fishing in a puddle – trying to make a catch where there’s nothing to be caught. A business without well-articulated goals won’t be a business for long.

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13 / Product Design Driving Positive Behaviors

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Nir-Eyal
Nir Eyal
Author, Consultant, Educator

Product people possess the creative and ethical wherewithal to persuade users to behave in ways that materially improve their lives – using our powers for good. The secret is to understand that, if we want to connect our product’s use to a repetitive consumer habit, we must identify the internal trigger that drives consumer behavior. …

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Nir-Eyal
Nir Eyal
Author, Consultant, Educator

Blazing the Path to Product-Market Fit: Dan Olsen

Full disclosure. Technically speaking, I don’t claim to know anything. Okay, that may not be entirely true. There’s a lot of knowledge I’ve gained through experience. But not much else of what I truly know is (what I would call) organic; most of what I know I’ve learned from others.

For example, I’m not a technologist by training or trade. In the same way my knowledge of automobiles is limited to their operation (but not to their repair), my knowledge of how software product people work their magic is, shall we say, “well contained.” But that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed how they effortlessly convert user insight and market data into a product vision to make our world a better place. I stand in awe of the designers and developers who translate that vision into problem-solving software products. My brain isn’t wired to work that way, but thank goodness our world is populated with a community of technology artists whose brains are.

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12 / Treating Your Product Community Like a Product

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Headshot of Mike Belsito
Mike Belsito
Product Collective

When you’re building software products, do you think only about adding features? Or do you think in terms of hiring your software products to solve a problem you have? Context is critical. Product managers should consider new products – and their features – in the same way they would new employees, Mike Belsito says. What …

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Headshot of Mike Belsito
Mike Belsito
Product Collective

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