When I started my career as a management consultant, I was surprised at how versatile PowerPoint was. We used it for everything from seating charts to market-entry strategies for Fortune 500 clients. At Astrid, I found a new use for PowerPoint: building prototypes. These clickable mockups are great for rapidly testing with users and applying what you learn right away....

At the Google Ventures Design Studio, we have a five-day process for taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. We call it a product design sprint. This is the fourth in a series of seven posts on running your own design sprint. In the first two days of the sprint, we’ve learned about the problem, shared...

At the Google Ventures Design Studio, we have a five-day process for taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. We call it a product design sprint. This is the third in a series of seven posts on running your own design sprint. Now that you know when to get your team together for a sprint and...

At the Google Ventures Design Studio, we have a five-day process for taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. We call it a product design sprint. This is the second in a series of seven posts on running your own design sprint. Now that you know what design sprints are good for, you’ll need a few...

At Google Ventures, we do product design work with startups all the time. Since we want to move fast and they want to move fast, we’ve optimized a process that gets us predictably good results in five days or less. We call it a product design sprint, and it’s great for getting unstuck or accelerating projects that are already in...

I want to share an effective quick-and-dirty research approach I stumbled upon recently. Not long ago, I got an urgent request for data about people’s habits and needs related to watching online video. (I’ve changed the real topic to protect the innocent.) How, when, and where do people watch online video? What do they watch? How are people using Product...

Video is seductive. When done well, it is emotional, evocative, and revealing. It is one of the best ways to show the human side of a story. But it is almost never the right way for early-stage startups to communicate what their product does. Despite their strengths, product overview videos are expensive to produce, difficult to change, and present a...

Research provides the inspiration, guidance, and validation we need to design great products. From the personal (like interviewing users) to the analytical (like metrics) there’s a continuum of research skills that are essential for design teams. The most effective companies integrate this discipline into their culture and make research a habit. This is our guide to design research, featuring Design...

Earlier this year, Valve released its handbook for new employees (PDF) to the world. The document provides a unique chance to understand Valve, where there are no bosses, no defined teams, and no top-down product prioritization. What’s it like to be a designer in this environment? How does Valve approach product design? We asked Christen Coomer, a designer at Valve,...

We’ve made user research a priority at our startup, but recruiting participants remains a time-consuming part of the process. To speed things up, I’ve been hiring TaskRabbits as research participants. It’s not perfect, but it’s a fast, cheap, and reliable way to find people who can participate in user studies. Michael Margolis explained research recruiting in detail, so I’ll share...

Change is good. When a product becomes more fun or makes us more efficient, we embrace change. Technology startups often lead the way, rapidly iterating in an ongoing effort to create better experiences for their users. But dealing with change can be difficult. We’ve all experienced it. For example, moving to a new city or changing jobs might be positive...

Screencasts are a quick and easy way to bring your designs to life, as Braden Kowitz explained in his introduction to story-centered design. To create a screencast, you record a video of your design in action, with you as the user. You talk through the design and click where the user would click as you move through the story. Here’s...