How do you address the Big Problem?
There is always a Big Problem. Sometimes the Big Problem is stated; sometimes you must figure it out yourself. Your goal as a value-based designer is to...
Good software is as little software as possible
Our monthly office hours for paid members is today! Join us at 1p Central Time to chat about all things value-based design. Happy to answer any questions or...
Money sent, thanks
There’s a meme in my consulting circles: $500 client: “I just feel as though with this investment I am about to make in you, that we should understand how...
On rest, again
I got interviewed for 10-Minute Ecom Success, because I’m the kind of person who can sum up a total design worldview in precisely 10 minutes. I think this...
How do you create a voice & tone guide?
First, our monthly office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, February 18 to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an...
Not everything is measurable
New case study: We redesigned Buttondown, which is both the best way to start a newsletter and the reason why you’re reading this. We’re proud of the work...
How do you manage phantom changes to your design?
Value-based design is grounded deeply in delegation process, where it’s clear who gets to change the design and when, and it’s clear what happens if someone...
Four more answers, roughly
Let’s answer four more of Scott Berkun’s questions today. We already did three. That was fun, right? Four more. If I know PMs and VPs often know little about...
What are the primary concerns after design ships?
Shipping does not conclude design, because only the death of business is able to conclude design. That notwithstanding, there remain deep questions about...
Notes on spaceholding
Our monthly office hours for paid members is today! Join us at 1p Central Time to chat about all things value-based design. Happy to answer any questions or...
How do you work with tap targets?
Imagine an invisible grid of boxes superimposed on your site. Tapping each one does something. The rules aren’t immediately clear – you need to create an...
What is the present moment for value-based design?
What does the present moment look like for value-based design? There are numerous opportunities for profit generation. Points of leverage always exist for...
Why is consultative positioning essential for the ongoing practice of design?
First, our monthly office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, January 21 to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an impact...
A brief literature review on the structural remediation of design
Intermission is over. I emerged from deep rest, deleted all of my unread email, and now here we are. I hope you had a good few weeks. First, I wrote some...
How do you define, create, and maintain sources of truth?
When a team size increases past 1, it’s necessary to create a source of truth for coordination, delegation, and ongoing reference. That includes: What needs...
11 questions, three answers
I got interviewed on Step by Step Business. Parmesan is also depicted on the aforelinked. Scott Berkun is smarter than me. He wrote the book I wish I had...
How do you gather power once you start on a new team?
Continuing from last week’s lesson, we’d like to go deep on what happens when you start on a new team: what power you have, how you can change behavior, and...
The gradient
Things are, broadly, bad. They are bad in the tech industry and bad in the world. They are bad for many reasons, and one of those reasons is that we keep...
What’s the relationship between power & expertise?
First, our monthly office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, December 17 to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an...
Objections: auditing, addressing
When people are in the market for something, they come to your site, browse around, and have opinions. Since the fundamental question of the web is “why...
An eternal Black Friday of the soul
I’ve really enjoyed how thirsty stores are this Black Friday season. It’s a whole season now! I always track the first time when I see the first mention of...
[VBD] One last question
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[VBD] Discounted enrollment closes TODAY
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Intermission: migrating our paid community
After two months of work, we’re finally ready to finish migrating all of our membership benefits over to this list. In this letter, we’ll talk about what...
Notes from intermission: what happened, what’s coming
Intermission is essentially over. Us Here are some bullet points: We’ve folded our paid community into our letters going forward. Email gets read. Our...
[VBD] Why VBD now?
Hi! Just a heads-up that our self-paced workshop is available for 40% off for only a little while longer. Our limited sale ends this Friday, November 22nd,...
[VBD] Some wins with value-based design – and a discount for enrollment in our workshop
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Intermission: wrapping up, spaceholding, taking care
We’re near the end of intermission. A few things to keep in mind: We’re still in the (long, slow) process of integrating our existing mailing list with the...
[VBD] Some frequently asked questions about value-based design
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[VBD] The three pillars of value-based design
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[VBD] How value-based design came to be
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[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
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[VBD] How value-based design came to be
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[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
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[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
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Join us, get your seat at the table, and profit
We’re going to take a brief intermission from intermission to chat a little about value-based design, and provide something we almost never do at Draft: a...
Notes from intermission: airplanes, mini-courses, beastmodin’
On week 4 of intermission and we’ve got the following left: write some new text bits plot the launch of our new course on value-based design, then do it...
Notes from intermission: cleanup, introduction, workshop
We’re through the clean-up-everything phase of intermission, and now it’s on to the create-new-things phrase. This is tripartite, involving: writing some new...
Notes from intermission: positioning, curation, structure
One of the wild things about intermission is how many people have been interested in my shutting up for a while. “Inspirational.” “Awesome.” “This is the...
Notes from intermission: content, directions
I’m writing this two days into intermission and I’m already questioning large parts of the business, which is precisely what one wants to happen. Most of the...
Intermission
Sometimes you simply write over 500,000 words on the practice of profitable, value-based design and then you look back and have no idea what to do with all...
Profitable qualitative research, customer archetypes, search query types
What is the role of value-based design now that we have reached the functional conclusion of quantitative research? We answer this at length in our new...
LAUNCH: The self-paced Value-Based Design Workshop
Today is our final major launch of the year. If you’ve been reading these for the past year, you know that we ran a successful value-based design workshop...
More on Value Retainer – and another big launch coming next week
Thanks for your interest in Value Retainer last week. We’ve answered a lot of fun questions about it, and watched a few people join us, which rules. One of...
LAUNCH: Value Retainer
I’m tremendously excited to launch Value Retainer today. Over the past few months, we’ve talked, on and off, about the trust that our clients put in us to...
Inventing the future, working with developers, what we share
What happens when your industry is done inventing the future, at least for now? That can be okay, right? Everybody has a tiny computer in their pockets that...
Building expertise & creating the future
I ran into my friend (and one-time collaborator!) Nick (no relation) the other week, and we sat and chatted about design. I talked a little bit about a...
How to run an experiment
I’m going to be writing a lot more about design’s role in leveraged power dynamics over the next few months. What questions do you have that you’d like me to...
Designers will measure
Remember back when there was this huge roiling debate about whether designers would code, and then all of the designers who refused to code got laid off and...
The elements of profitable research
In last week’s letter, we discussed the three pillars of value-based design: research, measurement, and experimentation. Over the next few letters, we’ll go...