Product Teardown Tuesdays

Julie Zhuo, a former VP of Design at Facebook, wrote an insightful piece on Product Thinking. First, what is product thinking?

The simplest way to define product thinking is that it is the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people.

Products, features, and services are all around us. Technology and software products are a fairly new and large discipline and so the onus is on us to build useful and responsible products.

Being a Product Manager myself, product thinking is critical to my role. And for me to improve as a Product Manager, I’ll need to become a better product thinker. Especially since I plan on building my own products too.

Product thinking is a skill and like any skill it can be improved. How can we improve our product thinking? Julie gives two suggestions:

1. Every week, try at least one new product, feature, or service.
2. Every week, have at least one conversation or reflection about how a specific product decision impacts its intended audience.

Every Tuesday, I’ll write a short teardown and reflection about a feature, product, or service. Some weeks, I’ll write about products I enjoy, other weeks, I’ll write about product I didn’t. This is an exercise in product thinking and a way to satisfy my curiosity on what makes products useful and well loved.