Making Great Products: A Series
Interesting aspects of product development.
How Two Spies Closes Cities
A little story about iterative experimentation.
Recently my team has been putting together some case studies. You know, telling the story of things we’ve built in a more timeless way than a 6-year-old blog post exclaiming “this is launching today, check it out!” with a link that has since become a 404. When it came time...
What Doesn't Need to Be Done
Finishing things requires simplification.
Project management is, roughly, the art of ensuring a team gets what needs to be done, done. Given that, a lot of the focus ends up being on those needs. Checklists, breakdowns, schedules, updates – all focused on the things that need to be done. While that’s all very important,...
The Persistent Gravity of Cross Platform
Coordinating a large product org is hard.
Agilebits recently caused a stir with their announcement that they’ve rewritten 1Password 8 as a cross-platform Electron app, replacing their well-loved native Mac app. The takes came hot and fast. Like many developers, I love and appreciate a well-crafted native UI, and I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the consistent trend...
How to Not Build a Social Network
I attempt stop you from making a mistake.
I hear that you’d like to build a new social network. Seems like a good idea, right? Today’s social media is a tire fire, the companies that dominate it rake in billions monthly, and you have a novel concept for a social app that might make people feel less blue,...
Navigation Should Be Boring
Apps should be interesting, but not like that.
When launching a product, especially a consumer-oriented one, you want it to be interesting. A novel, bold, or distinctive UI can make an app stand out from the crowd, be memorable, and inspire curiosity. Plus, it’s cool. Luckily, there are a lot of ways you can make an interface interesting....
Maximum Viable Products
We try to make the best products we can.
“Minimum Viable Product. It’s an interesting term, and I don’t… I’ve never… really thought about it before. We don’t really do Minimum Viable Products, I guess we do Maximum Viable Products.” – Cabel Sasser A Maximum Viable Product is a product that is as good as the market will bear....
Providing joy at 60 fps
We make an app feel fast.
At Steam Clock we go to a lot of effort to make sure we ship apps with a high level of polish. Making your app solve the user’s problems well is the first 90% of building a great app. Polishing the hell out of that experience so it’s a joy...