New blog!
I launched a new blog here. Hope you like it :)
POKE HERE
sheepfilms
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

@theartofmadeline
ojovivo

shark vs the universe
AnasAbdin
Cosmic Funnies
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
taylor price

Product Placement

#extradirty

⁂
Jules of Nature
KIROKAZE

oozey mess
cherry valley forever
tumblr dot com
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz

pixel skylines
seen from Germany

seen from Russia

seen from Malaysia

seen from United Kingdom
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seen from Sweden
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@codesandmaze
New blog!
I launched a new blog here. Hope you like it :)
POKE HERE
What did I do when I decided to created the 10001st news app
There are so many news apps out there, how to create the 10001st app when there’re already 10000 apps cramping in app store?
This road so far
Search “best news apps”, “top news apps” everywhere
Read articles from websites like gizmodo, business insider, techradar, CNN… See what they featured and why. It gave me the first impression of the market and set some great benchmarks.
Sync daily with the team
The first meeting focused on the objective, scope and resources we can get.
The following daily meetings are more technical oriented, it’s useful for me (PM+designer) to know what we can do right away, what needs time to implement and what are beyond our reach.
Another thing on the agenda is to check the progress (I present my findings and outcomes at this point) and make sure we’re on the same page, and of course, let the ideas evolve with more and more discussions.
Download every news app from app store
Thanks to my 128G iPad, I downloaded more than 150 news apps and after deleting some unusable/extremely crappy ones, I finally keep about 70 of them on my device.
After 70+ apps occupy my iPad screens?
Play with them.
Categorize them.
Get a list of the best apps (including apps with very good content, layout, interaction, apps have some special/creative features, and apps address a pain point very well…)
Share the list with the team.
Observe people on subway
Observing is a great method, even the most introvert people can master the technique. To make use of my commute time, I study all the people around me.
Many of people use their earplugs and look sleepy in the morning. Many hold kindles and book. A few play dumb games on their phones. The rest just stare off into space. Maybe it’s just what happens in NY because the poor signal reception. But soon the second-hand interview results confirmed that people do prefer listening to reading in the morning.
Download reports of people’s reading behavior
The personal news cycle report is a nice place to start. It’s published in 2014, not the most recent report but still provides much info and insights. In the 34-page long digest, I learned:
Where do they get news?
What news topics do they read?
When do they read news?
Their trust issues
What news topics do they follow?
Do age, gender, education level influence the result?
…
Find out what do we want to know the most
After brainstorm, we had some wild ideas. Some features are difficult to coexist in one app, so we need some answers from the target users and see if they have a strong preference.
The questions we asked included:
Which do you prefer? Check all that apply.
An app with mostly text & picture news
An app with mostly radio/audio news
An app with mostly video news
Not sure
Which do you prefer? Check all that apply.
An app that delivers long and in-depth articles, probably with multimedia
An app that delivers bite-size news, with links to the source where you can see the full articles
Not sure
Which do you prefer? Check all that apply.
An app that delivers limited number of hand-picked news everyday
An app that delivers an endless feed of stories from many content providers
Not sure
Bug all my friends
Time to bother your friends for greater good… I mean, my friends. I sent a few questions (including the questions mentioned above) to them via SNS and direct message and ask for their answers.
Only friends may have the risk of being biased, so I also ask people around the company building, in supermarket and grocery store, and the best place is a food court.
Send out a survey in a dining pavilion
I doubt if any one will stop and fill out a questionnaire for me on the street, in the winter of New York. I chose a food court in Newport mall.
People were waiting for food, waiting for people, and having nothing to do. My strategy was a great success. Not only they circled their answers on the survey paper, but also I got to talk to them and dig more.
Connect to college students
Because of the partnership with some NYU programs, I connected to students through AOL’s HR department.
Read second-hand interviews
I came across Melody Kramer’s blog http://melodykramer.github.io/notes/ and the “People Who Aren’t In the News Commenting On The News” series helped a lot.
Identify pain points
After collecting all the info, we have a pretty good idea what people want, what people hate and what people do not care at all (if we target those area, the features won’t move the needle).
Some of the pain points are:
My schedule is too irregular. I have to catch up when I can.
Twitter for headlines. Facebook for stupid fun things.
Bias.
Comments sections, too much to consume.
Dramatization.
I no longer feel like anywhere will give me the whole story.
They lose me when the repeat the same things over and over.
Sensationalism.
It feels transient. Something happens, I get an update, and then it’s gone.
…
This way forward
Provide ways to solve the pain points
Create a list of requirements
Create mockups, wireframes, personas and use cases
Evaluate different designs
Test with potential users
Iterate
Email share redesign - Process
Check out the UI designs here.
Add some magic to product design/development.
Too lazy to translate to English... _(:з」∠)_
按流程是这样:
1. sketch(ui设计,线框图用这个有点overkill的感觉)
2. invision(无代码,最简单的方法实现交互,大部分非花哨动效的交互都能实现)
3. marvel(无代码,最简单的方法实现交互,体量轻,免费版有无限量的只读版project)
4. hype(时间线界面,无代码做动画,可倒出代码)
5 principle(比hype更容易上手一些,时间线界面,无代码做动画,不可倒出代码)
6. zeplin(倒入sketch文件,自动标注颜色尺寸)
7. slack(通讯软件,主要是能发gif很好玩233)
8. 彩蛋!
但是sketch和invision和slack大家都见过了,就不讲了……2333。好吧我们开始~
3. marvel
https://marvelapp.com/
我其实特别喜欢这个,绘画风格有点dropbox团队的影子,一直私心希望被dropbox买了。可用性也不错,尤其是在invision越来越复杂,各种sticky bar啊,图层overlay啊,响应速度越来越慢的时候。尤其推荐个人设计师,免费的!免费的!无限project,只要你不发给别人标注评论,多少个项目都是免费的!
3.5 adobe新出了一个叫comet的,说是新出,其实只是个预告,明年才能用,大家还是洗洗睡吧……
4. hype
http://tumult.com/hype/
这个我也用过,虽然做动画难免要有个时间线,但是还是比较易懂的。内置了一些函数,比如ease in out之类的。
就是定位有点不太明确,作为pm,用hype和keynote演示动画没有太大差别……专业的动效设计师的话,这个又稍微生硬了一点。我表示我只是做着玩的…… 能导出代码是个优势。
不算很贵,比按月订购的软件还是便宜得多。
5. principle
http://principleformac.com/
这个我只看了视频,没亲自用过,感觉为一些常见,流行的动画做了优化,会更简单一些。这种软件,到最后和hype比的应该是用户数量了,哪一方的粉丝愿意给软件写模版,写插件,哪边就赢了。现在还不好说,不过这个比hype贵一倍。
5.5 果然invision也要加入混战,他们出了一个新feature叫motion,也是做动效,不过是交互动效,不是gif图那种。具体戳:Prototype interactions & animations in InVision
6. zeplin
https://zeplin.io/
设计师用sketch的时候,不用标注任何东西了,直接源文件甩给dev,dev用zeplin看就好了。
8. 彩蛋!
今天的彩蛋时giphy for gmail哈哈哈。我给比较熟的同事发邮件会用这个。
现在只要安装这个插件,你也可以拥有~
以上!祝大家愉快!
Top web design 2015 - Interaction & Animation
http://mystaticself.com/
http://www.mikiyakobayashi.com/
http://studiokraftwerk.com/
http://blossomtype.com/
http://vaalentin.github.io/2015/
http://sonorans-valley.com/
http://www.alectia.com/en/
http://makeyourmoneymatter.org/
http://katsuhikokuwamoto.com/
http://revelator.com/welcome
Managing Software Development.
Notes from Managing Software Development.
Specify the software using user stories
Role - Who
Feature - What
Benefit - Why
Example: As an admin, I want to update prices, so I can charge the right price to customers.
3 C’s with developers
Cards (3*5 or 4*6 cards)
Conversation (Talk to developers)
Confirmation (Acceptance criteria)
Managing the development process
Start with the biggest risks
Managing the backlog (focus on what’s next)
Keeping track of development (working code, GitHub commits)
Approaches to managing dev teams
Scrum
Scrum
Sprints
Sprint planning meetings (meet with leadership team)
Sprint demo’s (show what they’ve done)
Stand ups meetings
Retrospectives (review at the end of sprint/month/quarter)
Backlog
Lean/Kanban
Visualize the workflow (what steps are between the requirement and delivery)
Limit work in progress (don’t work on too many things at the same time)
Manage flow
Make process policies explicit
Implement feedback loops
Improve collaboratively
Problem and solutions
1. Competing stakeholders (changing priorities, never-ending urgency)
Product owner
Inviolable sprints
Sustainable pace
Regular delivery cadence
2. Deadlines keep stretching (keep running into technical issues, can’t “just launch with what we have”, going to production raises new issues, code isn’t acceptable)
Timeboxed deliverables
Variable scope
Continually working software
Integrate early
Clear definition of done
Organizing mobile web experience.
Notes from Organizing Mobile Web Experience by LukeW.
Four reasons people use mobile:
Look up - Google map
Explore - Google reader
Check in - Read email
Edit - Write email
Four navigation elements:
Nested doll
Hub & spoke
Bento box
Filter view
Email share redesign - UI
Pastport UI design.
From PMhandbook.
Get the PDF here.
The most valuable skills that you can learn in an internship?
What goes into developing a product outside of coming up with an idea and building it? Hint - there are lots of answers.
Learn how to structure your thinking. Many creative people are able to explode forth with creative ideas. Coming up with a meaningful and communicable structure for those ideas is at least as important as coming up with them in the first place.
How to pitch an idea, and how to tell a good idea from a bad one. What makes an idea stick? What makes a project succeed or fail aside from the capabilities of the individuals that are involved?
What could an intern or newly hired Product Manager do to add value as quickly as possible?
Domain: within first few weeks, try to find a project with measurable impact you want to deliver on over the course of your internship. Then make sure that you execute on it.
Skills: each product management opportunity is different, but functionally, they’re typically design (information architecture, UX, or graphic design), development/spec’ing (detail-orientation, learning to work with engineering, etc), or project management (ticketing, prioritization, etc). Make sure that you leave the internship having built some of these skills.
For valuable skills, I would say:
Prioritization: This is hard as a PM. With limited resources and a backlog of projects, you need to make sure you identify the highest-impact projects to work on. Your choice of prioritization impacts everything: what gets built, how the rest of the product is affected, the morale of the teams working on the feature. You should be using data, user research, product vision, and an understanding of engineering costs to help prioritize features.
Vision: Anyone can come in and suggest we move a pixel here and a pixel there. Where do you see the product going in three to five years? What about the product today is being missed by our users? How do we turn a moderately successful app into a sensation?
Analytics: PMs today need to be data-informed. You should be looking at how people use your product and generating ideas there (in addition to more green-field brainstorming). You want to empower the engineering team. 15 You should be measuring the performance of features rigorously and only releasing what does well and killing what doesn’t.
What are some mental models you use to view the quality of a product? In other words, what are the criteria you use for judging how successful a product is?
At a high level, I ask myself: “What is the user’s goal?” and “How hard does this product make it to accomplish that goal?” It shouldn’t be that hard to get done what you need to get done as a user. If it’s Airbnb, it should be easy to book a good place to stay. If you’re Uber, it should be easy to get a black car fast. If you’re Google Search, it should be easy to find the right information.
From a metrics standpoint, you can also measure a product by the following: 1. Retention: But also understanding the nuances within retention (e.g. one day vs. seven days vs. six months). 2. Engagement: Level of interaction and the durations that people are on Yammer. 3. Virality: How many new users are our current users inviting and converting.
What are the metrics you use in measuring your own success? Which ones are the highest priority, and why?
Quality of relationships with peers.
Regularity of high-quality product releases.
General organization on a day to day basis.
What are some of your responsibilities as a Product Manager at Twitter?
I mentioned earlier that organization, communication, and thought leadership are great skills to develop. These are some of the cornerstone responsibilities of a PM at Twitter.
Diligence is another responsibility of every PM. The product you build is a reflection of you and the effort you put into it. That means being honest (and sometimes critical) with yourself, The buck stops with you. PAUL ROSANIA 42 your team and your work. A good PM wants to do what’s right, even when it hurts. That means doing homework and proving to yourself and others that your product is as good as you think it is, and your vision is ‘correct’.
For me, this level of diligence was unnatural at first. There’s so much stuff that happens each day that your memory gets overloaded easily. I quickly realized I had to stop trying to keep everything in my head. I had a couple instances where I forgot to do something I’d been asked to do, or where I stepped into a meeting and realized I hadn’t planned out what I was going to say as much as I thought.
Nowadays I write everything down immediately, even if I plan to do it right away. For simple tasks, I use Things.app on my Mac. When I meet with someone, I jot down notes in Evernote as we talk. As a result, I never forget to do things, and I never forget conversations with team members. When I have product ideas I jot them into a running Google Doc for the project. This system frees my mind from remembering things, and lets me concentrate on organizing and planning without wasted cycles trying to remember things.
I also find that writing helps me keep myself honest: sometimes an idea that seems crisp in your head is hard to explain in prose. That’s a sign your thinking isn’t yet complete.
One last thing I want to say is that as a PM, you don’t have a ton of control or flexibility over your own time. You’re often at the beck-and-call of meetings, email and questions from other people. It’s tempting to fight back, but these obstacles are actually a part of the job. Be honest about whether each meeting is important, but also realize that by having distraction-filled days, you’re clearing distractions from your team. (And sometimes these meetings help you collect information that keeps you alters your roadmap and keeps you focused on the right goals, which saves time in the long run.)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to block off time to do long-term thinking. I put one-to-two hour blocks on my calendar a few days a week when I’m busy, to make sure I have time to think. You need time to synthesize your thoughts, and if you don’t reserve that time other people will take it from you.
From your experience at Bridgespan, what were some of the most valuable things you learned about succeeding as a Product Manager?
Avoid “nice-to-haves”: As a PM, part of your job to make sure that the team is and feels like they are using their limited time efficiently. This means avoiding workstreams that are “nice-to-have’s” that won’t necessarily change the the “answer” or the direction of the product. Understanding what is a “nice-to-have” requires going through the hypotheticals. If a proposed piece of work could lead to “X” or “Y” results, but we also know that regardless of “X” or “Y” result, we’d still do “Z”, then that research might not be worth the time. It doesn’t change the answer. But you have to weigh the pros and cons and balance efficiency with efficacy. Sometimes a workstream might not immediately impact a product in the short run, but could build knowledge that will be useful down-the-line, or it could be a way to satisfy the team’s intellectual curiosity. So its not always cut and dry. There are tradeoffs.
Influence without authority: This is a key part of being a Product Manager, and is admittedly a very difficult thing to learn how to do well. As a PM you are coordinating a team of peers. You are working with other cross-functionals in the organization who might not LAYLA AMJADI A PM works with a team to decide what a puzzle will assemble to look like when it’s completed. 48 even have a time allocation for your product. You’re not the boss. But, you are responsible for executing the vision. So how do you navigate this? When I was working on the Give Smart video project, this happened very naturally (it’s important to be genuine) but I built very strong, one-on-one relationships with each of my teammates on the project and throughout the organization. I came to understand how important the project was for the person given all the other work they have going on. You have to remember, just because you are working 100% on something, doesn’t mean everyone else is. So you have to understand the full set of projects someone has on their plate so you can help them prioritize. I came to understand their likes, dislikes, what motivates them, what frustrates them. Having a really comprehensive understanding of the “John the whole person / professional” not just “John the PR expert I need something from” is the only way to be successful in “Influencing Without Authority.” You can’t just think about what’s in it for you all the time. What’s in it for them? What do they need? What do they want to learn? Having this mindset is key to being successful in a working relationship where the person you need something from doesn’t have to do it.
Overinvest in communication: Whenever I join a new team, I overinvest in communication at the beginning. This isn’t because I’m trying to micromanage the situation. It’s because I’m trying to sync up our brains. I want to understand my team member’s thought processes, biases, values, and expertise. I want to get to a point where I can anticipate what each team member’s stance would be on a particular decision or what area of the decision they would definitely want to weigh in on. I get to this point by constantly asking “Why?” This way, I can understand their points-of-view and if they happen to not be in the room at some decision-point, I can still represent their thoughts and advocate for them. This does two things -- it builds trust between me and my teammates, and at the same time it increases efficiency on the backend. Trust amongst teammates, I believe, leads to faster, better results. To illustrate, if John is going into a meeting with Jen about X decision, and I know John knows how I think and the calls I’d make, I don’t need to be in the meeting, and I can repurpose my time in a way that would better benefit the team’s needs.
In your opinion, what does it mean for a PM to be analytically skilled?
Given a problem, can they (a) understand the problem? Can they (b) ask questions that have simple data answers that lead you down the path of being able to solve that problem? (That includes asking for simple metrics, quick metrics.) And finally, can they (c) generate a clear hypothesis beforehand?
Data Visualization 2.1.2
Quantitative
Position
Length
Angle
Slope
Area
Volume
Density
Saturation
Hue
Ordinal
Position
Density
Saturation
Hue
Texture
Connection
Containment
Length
Angle
Slope
Area
Volume
Nominal
Position
Hue
Texture
Connection
Containment
Density
Saturation
Shape
Length
Angle
Slope
Area
Volume
Data Visualization 2.1.1
Layers of Data Visualization
Data Layer
Locating and obtaining data
Importing data in proper format
Relating data for proper correspondence
Data analysis and aggregation
Mapping Layer
Associating appropriate geometry with corresponding data channels
Data analysis and algorithms (e.g. contouring)
Graphics Layer
Conversion of geometry into displayable image
Decorations
Managing interaction
Data Types
Four categories
Discrete
Continuous
Ordered
Unordered
Examples
Discrete X Ordered: Ordinal, quantitive
Discrete X Unordered: Nominal, categories
Continuous X Ordered: Fields
Continuous X Unordered: Cyclic values
Quotes.
How A Computer Can Anticipate Users' Needs (Without Driving Them Crazy)
Push notifications are great for time sensitive information when the service sending it knows with a very high degree of confidence that the user wants this information.
Currently over 60% of users are opting out of push notifications, which indicates that users are not satisfied with the current system.
For push, the cost of being wrong quickly outweighs the benefit of being right.
Don’t Count Taps, Count Stresses
I’d like to posit that “fewer taps” is a poorly stated goal. Our goals for user experience can’t be limited to reducing one specific pain-point. If we do, we run the risk of increasing another pain-point, just to reduce the one we’ve honed in on.
Every second a view or page takes to load is a stress
Every tap is a stress
Every second spent looking for a hidden navigation item or CTA is a single stress (so 2 seconds are two stresses, and so on)
Every time you have to pull out your phone in the first place is at least one stress (Hello Apple Watch!)
David Cole's answer to What questions should I ask when interviewing for a product design position at a startup?
How is the design role defined? What areas do designers own? What are they held accountable for?
What are the boundaries between the design role and other roles in the company?
What standing meetings exist and who attends them?
How do you resolve disagreements between designers and other roles?
What is the overall company strategy? How do you acquire more users/customers? How do you (or will you) make money?
How are product changes prioritized? What are you currently working on and why?
When people don't fit in culturally, what are the reasons?
Google Ventures On How To Design A Killer Website
To build the best consumer website, go shopping, says GV's Michael Margolis.
Purchase funnels, customer journeys, and decision trees aren’t new ideas. But at Google Ventures we apply them to things that people don’t usually think of as "shopping" (such as finding a physician or choosing an API). Any kind of shopping is really about a series of choices. And I’ve found that most shopping funnels are very simple, often no more than five steps.
Discover: Gather options and establish criteria
Select: Make a short list
Dig in: Drill into each product
Validate: What are people saying?
Try: What’s it really like?
A list of my ideas.
2008 - SwipeGRE
Review GRE vocabulary fast with gestures. It’s on App Store now with 4+ rating.
2012 - Code.it
Code your image into a colorful circle, and swipe to decode. I wrote a blog post about it.
2013 - DragDraw
Digital white board and post-it.
2013 - CheckChat
Select a conversation and put it on you to-do list.
2013 - FashionWeather
I don’t care about weather, so just show me what to wear. Here’s the app proposal.
2014 - OutOfSubway
Last mile to your destiny.
2014 - LifLin
LifLin makes your night walk safer.
2014 - FindTimeFor.Us
Find a time that works for everyone in a second. I built a mockup here with HTML and CSS.
2014 - GR homeless shelter
Make money by making homeless shelter a billboard. It won the first place of CMU Impact-a-thon.
2014 - MedRec
A medicine reminder with creative pill recognition tech.
Medicine Compliance for Gen X research report.
ReCap live transcribing tool for hard of hearing students.
ATC search.