The Productologist

I went to visit a customer a few weeks ago as part of a commitment to myself (and my products) to get out into the field more often. My goal with them and with all of my planned visits to the field was to talk about how they use my product, what business challenges they face and what they see for the future in terms of their own growth and what they would want and need from my product. I got what I was looking for…and a whole lot more.

It’s been a little over a month since I started using this new note-taking method and I wanted to provide some details on how it’s going for me. To be honest, it hasn’t been as easy to switch to this note-taking style as I thought it would be. I have struggled on a few fronts–

Paper

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

I have been meaning to read this seminal text on application development and usability for some time (read: years), but somehow it always ended up on my reading list just below something else. After seeing some others reference the book and discuss conference talks where the author expanded on his theorems, I decided to bump The Inmates are Running the Asylum to the top of the list. After finishing it up, I was surprised, to say the least.

I’ve been listening to career-related podcasts on my commute to and from work lately and one of my favorites is Manager Tools. They are basically two management consultants (Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenne) who talk about tips and tricks to being a good manager, which if you have supervised others at work, you know is not as easy as it seems.

The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman

I spotted this book at my local library while perusing the business book section and was drawn to it by the fact that it was written by someone involved with IDEO.

For those of you who don’t know what IDEO is, they are a world renowned product design firm based out of the San Francisco Bay area. They are responsible for many product designs you are probably familiar with, such as the Palm V and HandSpring PDAs, the Swiffer sweeper, the interior of the Amtrak Acela commuter train and others. You can check out more about what they have done and what they do on their website.