The document provides tips for designing successful products, emphasizing the importance of validating ideas with customers early, failing fast on ideas that don't work, quickly building minimal viable products to test hypotheses, measuring user behavior and feedback to determine what works and what doesn't, and iterating rapidly to improve the product based on lessons learned. It recommends focusing on solving core user problems simply and effectively with default-based designs before overcomplicating the product with unnecessary features or options. The goal is to achieve product-market fit and gain valuable customer retention as efficiently as possible.

1. Designing Product
100

2. 49
Why building an awesome
product nobody wants?
“Build it, they may not come”
Talk to customers,
before writing a single code

3. 50
Fail-Fast; and
Get Traction-Fast
Really means Fail-Fast on bad ideas
It does not mean abandoning project too
quickly

4. 51
Quick build, validate,
measure and learn.
It’s in our engineer DNA that we
like to build a perfect system
In an early stage,
Resist to be perfect

5. 52
Can you tell the difference:
Progress vs. Wasted Progress?
Run tight,
small loops of
Ideas (Hypothesis),
Validate/Measure and
Build

6. 53
Don’t just accumulate work
done without measuring
Measurement will give you
feedback to continue path, or to
change direction
User Traffic Retention Rate
Bounce Rate
User Happiness Conversion Rate

7. 54
It’s OK to write messy codes
during validation process

8. 55
Your spec should be UI
prototypes
Written spec is easily
obsolete
The cost of writing,
maintaining
UI prototype is minimal
and fun

9. 56
Suppress many of your ideas
It’s not a feature to feature
competition
It’s who solves
the problems the best

10. 57
Just build it now and fast.
No need for optimization yet.
Your code will likely
be a throw away
as you gather feedback

11. 58
Concentrate on core scenarios
Make it great!
No place for mediocrity
People either love it
Or hate it!

12. 59
Ignore your 10% cases.
That will take 90% of your energy

13. 60
Eat your own dog food daily
Use your own product
regularly
In the early phase,
It’s better than hiring
a full-time tester

14. 61
Boost virality, make sharing a
click a way
People love to share

15. 62
Boost retention rate.
Human is a curios being
Add a few analytics, news
about themselves and friends
e.g.“your doc has
been viewed 5 times”

16. 63
Boost retention rate.
Human craves for attentions
RIM (Blackberry), Twitter, Facebook do this perfectly
They make users addicted to their product, by telling
them – “You’re important”

17. 64
Minimize Frictions
Users are “very lazy” nowadays
One click
One minute setup
No installation

18. 65
Don’t give user options
Set appropriate default
They have enough
other things to
worry

19. 66
Ship your product with a
minimum feature set
Enough to showcase
Your core scenarios
Add features
later after
after undisputable
feedback

20. 67
After iterations, often ask what
features to drop, instead of add
Remember, your ideas are just
a hypothesis; willing to let go
Pivot on your core beliefs, and
go to other directions appropriately

21. 68
What Microsoft, Google, Apple
can’t afford, but you can?
They can’t ship a crappy product,
even for their beta
They have reputation to maintain,
You don’t!
Use it to run
a tight feedback loop to
improve your product

22. 69
Without instant gratification
Users drop like a fly
First 60 second experience is critical
I saw dead users
leaving

23. 70
Create a product that 10x
better
Dare to be different
Stand up and get noticed
The world is a very noisy place
(and getting worse by day…)

24. 71
Collect less, better privacy,
security.
Many analytics tools are good
enough to measure user behavior

25. 72
Don’t put any features, concepts
that you can’t explain in 15 secs
Does your product
ship with you?
Don’t make
user think

26. 73
Reach Product-Market Fit
Phase. Celebrate, Work Harder.
40% will be upset
If your service discontinues

27. 74
Watch out for your
site performance
Users have no patience
for sluggish sites

28. 75
Do a side project/experiment.
Minimize your risk
Many side projects
made it big

29. 76
Use Cloud Computing
Let’s not be IT guys
Let’s focus on building
great product
Sleep better at night

30. 77
Building a new walled garden,
community is really, really hard
Piggy back existing ones
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