🤐 Some secrets of beautiful products like Linear or June / PM Snacks #58

Learn why creating opinionated products build cult-like following, 9 ways to build virality in your product and more

🚨 I just opened up the first product designer position @uku.wtf. This job involves a lot of creativity and discovery, while offering the opportunity to join a true product-centric company #ui #ux #userresearch.
Don’t be shy, apply!

1️⃣  Positional Software: How today’s best business software goes viral
Jul 2020 • 12 min read • #strategy #growth
This article is one of the clearest articulation of why some softwares are able to build a cult-like following. Most of the examples mentioned are SaaS products like Notion, Slack or SuperHuman. Since this had been written, the phenomenon has accelerated further w/ new products like Linear, Cron, June.so, Incident.io, lemlist or Pitch. To do the same:

1/ Find specific users’ behavior and highly optimise for it, targeting power users and letting them evangelise the others (this strategy is suited for products that are multiplayer)
2/ Don’t hesitate to make it exclusive (= invite-only is a key strategy & amplify social signal)
3/ Embrace constraint, build it differently. Gmail had no folders, Superhuman had almost no buttons in favor of keyboard shortcuts, Typeform has only one question per screen…

I can bet that opinionated products are about to eat the world in all categories, even in social, like the latest French app - bere.al - is showing us (= everyone receive a notification once a day at a random time, then you have 2 min to share a picture & see what your friends are doing, creating more genuine moments). If you consider launching a new product, I’d take a stand to be the master of one.

2️⃣  9 Ways to Build Virality into your Product
Nov 2018 • 12 min read • #growth

Following the previous article, to add some virality mechanisms in your product, start with this list. There are some examples on how to foster word-of-mouth (= someone tells you about Netflix at the coffee machine), invitations (= someone invite you in Slack to collaborate) & experiential exposition (= you receive an email w/ sent with superhuman or a loom).

3️⃣  Building Fluid Interfaces
Aug 2018 • 10 min read •  #design

This article is rather technical but also a great way to learn about, and understand Fluid interfaces. They are quite common on mobile where interactions have to be fast & feel “right”. Interestingly, they are also being used in more and more SaaS products, especially the positional ones mentioned in the article 1️⃣

⏳  OUTCOME BASED ROADMAPS
Sept 2019 • 10 min read • #strategy #execution #1yearago
Shared one year ago in PM Snacks 34.
This is a very good piece connecting the content shared in the last few weeks around product strategy. It starts with the company's objectives, down to the "outcome" roadmap, giving specific advice & prompts to start. Bonus: a good piece on the differences between a feature & an outcome roadmap by Gibson Biddle & a recommended deep dive in how Malt & Jobteaser do it by Le Ticket (FR)

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Thank you for reading me.
Have a great week!

Olivier Courtois 
10y+ in product, co-founder of 🥕 uku.wtf, coach & advisor

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