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
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] Discounted enrollment closes TODAY
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
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
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
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
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] The three pillars of value-based design
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] How value-based design came to be
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] How value-based design came to be
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
[VBD] On risk – and why people buy design
<style type="text/css"> p,div,ul,li{max-width:600px;line-height:1.4em;font-size:16px}hr{border:0;border-bottom:1px #808080 dotted;max-width:600px;margin-...
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...
How the three pillars of Value-Based Design might save our industry
Design is in crisis. Designers are being laid off en masse in a broader power grab amidst a major economic downturn. The former aforelinked shows over...
What was machine learning?
New developments in machine learning are quite funny to me, because they do not address the thinking, only the comp. They are comp generators. By their...
Notes on the practice
Thanks to everyone for their warm reception to our newly opened slot. I am mildly terrified about it! I am more-than-mildly dreading it! I am out of practice...
Opening a new consulting slot
A few of you have waited for this for a long time. I’m excited and more than a little nervous to announce that for the first time in two years, we’re opening...
The balance between tactics & spaceholding, experimentation reporting, “mixed methods”
I’m in the middle of a new project, and it’s been interesting balancing what to focus on. On the one hand, people want tools & techniques to improve their...
Design, execution, QA
These letters are always a reflection of where my head is at with respect to the business. Abundance comes & goes. Ideas evolve. A couple of years ago, I...
Profitable qualitative insight, post-taste, mentorship in UX
We’ve slightly reworked Draft’s home page. We’re also in the process of removing all quantitative information from our resource library, beyond our case...
“Too much” research, filter order, design density
Why do designers care so much about research? Because research is design. You cannot design without researching. If you do, you’re just drawing pictures....
Speaking design, discounting, onboarding
I’ve found a thing that is extremely, genuinely funny about psychospiritual impoverishment that is currently afflicting contemporary direct-to-consumer...
Workshop questions, systems, returning orders
When I put together the latest edition of our workshop, I asked participants what they were hoping to learn, and almost everybody said they wanted to learn...
Analytical alternatives, the sound of software, behavior design
One of the nice consequences of ecommerce’s current state is that I’m getting back into software a bit. As of this writing, I’ve kicked off with two studio...
Color, metric strategies, minimum sample size
Go read this essential post on No Best Practices now. I think it’s insightful, it taught me a lot, and I have thoughts. Ok, did you read it? Great. I love...
LAUNCH: Draft Teardown × Lianna Patch
Y’all, I’m so excited for today’s launch. I’ve been planning it for a little while with a dear friend of mine, and now it’s time for us to do a thing. You...
Resistance, care & feeding, buyable design
So, the links are pretty grim this week. Sometimes they’re useful, sometimes they’re grim, sometimes they’re both. This week you get grim. I’m almost sorry;...