Daniela Meleo

Well I’m off. Love all the great people — designers, AusPol thinkers, artists & historians — I’ve followed here since those heady early days, but it’s way past time I got out of here. You can find me on 🦋.

@nurijanian @threadreaderapp please

1/ The uncomfortable truth: Your stakeholders don't read PRDs. They SCAN them. Looking for specific answers to: • What problem are we solving? • When will it ship? • What are the risks? • Who needs to do what? Your job: Make these impossible to miss.

Most PRDs die in a graveyard & you as a PM become the PRD interpreter. Not because the content is bad. But because no one can find what they need when they need it. After reviewing 50+ PRDs and building a library of templates, here's what actually works:

@nurijanian Unroll @threadreaderapp

Stop pretending surface-level observations are strategic insights. Real analysis is a skill. Like any skill, it requires practice and good frameworks. Complete system for deep product analysis: prodmgmt.world/products/produ…

Confession: Most PMs (myself included) do surface-level analysis and call it strategy. We miss root causes, ignore power dynamics, skip edge cases. Not because we're lazy. Because we don't know what good analysis actually looks like. 🧵

@joenatoli Dealing with a challenging situation & tried asking myself what I thought you’d say — think I found it !

On the heels of a Sprint planning session this morning with a client, I've got a takeaway in the form of a PSA for my #ProductManagement friends out there: Speed is great — until it sends you backward, because you're driving in the wrong direction. Many of you often tell the #UX and #ProductDesign folks on your teams, “we don’t have time for that” — but here’s what happens when you skip discovery and research and design iteration: You ship the wrong thing. You fix it later — at 5-10X the cost. And somehow, I continually see designers blamed for those results. Look, I'm gonna say it again, even though it's a truth you already damn well know: fast is only good if you’re sure you’re going the right direction. So UX is NOT slowing things down — they’re actually helping you keep the pace. They’re preventing you (and the team as a whole) from wasting time doing things that really aren’t worth doing in the first place. They get paid to do that. So LET them. #UXdiscovery #ProductDesign #LetsGetReal (Photo: Benjamin Farren)

@joenatoli Love your passion & agree! As I listen again to Orchid.

I wrote a thing for all of you. On the most important lesson I can ever impart — and the real reason I do any of this. #UX #ProductDesign #Life give-good-ux.kit.com/posts/gratitud…

@ant_murphy This is where dedicated & experienced researchers can make a huge difference. Skilled at picking up on subtle queues, avoiding false positives, and not attached to the design.

"Come up with ideas like you're right, but test them like you're wrong."

36 years ago today, thousands of courageous students, workers and others filled Tiananmen Square, demanding freedom, democracy, and a government that served its people. The Chinese government responded with tanks, bullets, and blood. No one knows the true death toll from that night. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed. Survivors were hunted down, tortured, and jailed. To this day, Beijing censors the truth, bans remembrance, and tries to erase what happened on June 4th from public memory. Yet still, brave activists continue to risk everything for a freer China.

@joenatoli @allenholub I respect that.

@danielameleo @allenholub Well, I'm stubborn. I'm not letting ANYONE drive me out. Period. 😎

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen UX folks or product designers throw up their hands and say, "Well, we can’t do anything the right way. It’s just not possible here.” That’s my cue to ask, “why isn’t that possible?" “Well, because we need two weeks of user research and they just absolutely will not agree to it.” To which I ask: “OK, will they agree to an hour or two?" I get blank stares. Or snark. Because PROPER User Research(™) couldn’t possibly be done in an hour or two, hrmmmmpf! LISTEN TO ME HERE: just because you’re not getting exactly what you asked for doesn’t mean you should do nothing. And if the response to every bit of strategic work or research you propose is “no,” it’s highly likely that your ask is too big to begin with. Not because it doesn’t need to be done — but because it’s simply NOT GONNA FUCKING FLY in the reality you currently work within. You don’t have to like that, but you do need to accept it and move on to things that are worth your time and talent and emotion and effort. Get real — and think small. First, accept the reality that other people in the organization are on the hook for different things than you are. So their intent is different than yours, by design. Accept that. Second, ask for less. Ask for one day. Ask for two hours. Here’s why: if you just say, "I need an hour or two to do some research,” you’re a lot more likely to get it than if you ask for two weeks. Whatever that looks like, whether it’s actually interfacing with users or not, I don’t care. If you asked for that short time and you get it, there’s a really solid chance that you’ll uncover something that in a lot of cases will buy you more time. When you bring that problem or potential game-changing opportunity to people, you may hear, “WOW…OK, we had no idea that was happening. We should probably address this.” I’ve seen that play out more times than I can count across the last 20+ years of my career. Get real, think small and ask for less. You might be very surprised at just how much changes. Not just in the work itself or the outcome, but in your relationships with the people around you. If that opened your mind a little about what’s possible when working inside a corporate environment, I’ve got a LOT more to give you — strategies, tools and techniques I’ve been using for 30 years to move the needle inside some of the largest companies in the world — many of whom are insanely dysfunctional. Learn more at my UX 365 Academy: ux365academy.com

@joenatoli @joshlamar Just noticed fine print, never mind!

@joenatoli @joshlamar Have just made a small redesign in exactly this space & will see if it affects user engagement soon! Not sure if I’d make 4:30am (for me) .. do you plan to record ?

YOU'RE INVITED! I’m thrilled tell you about on online event/discussion I'm doing on April 2nd with @joshlamar to tackle a number of critical, emerging questions about the the use of #AI in #UX, #ProductDesign and other fields, such as: - How transparent should we be about using AI? - What does "appropriate use" actually mean? - How does transparency impact perception and the future of our work? - Where’s the line between AI assistance and AI dependence? - How does disclosure affect trust and perception? - Should AI-generated content be credited differently? - Do different industries need different standards? - What are the legal and compliance risks? This mission-critical event is organized by the brilliant @MicheleRonsen and inspired by The AI Transparency Framework, a tool designed to help teams think critically about when, where, and how to disclose AI use. This conversation is for anyone thinking seriously about how to use AI responsibly in their work — from #research and #healthcare to #marketing and #productdevelopment. Join us to unpack what a more transparent, ethical, and collaborative AI future looks like, including authorship, attribution, trends, and challenges. And come ready to discuss the image that sparked it all! The link to register on Eventbrite is in the comments below. #userresearch #uxr #UXresearch #Ethics #product #AIethics #Transparency The link to register on Eventbrite >> eventbrite.com/e/130227381904…

@joenatoli @allenholub I’m just not able to keep using this platform much longer, & gradually unfollowing & reducing use. Posts from a few (like you!) keep me sneaking back.

@allenholub @danielameleo Nope. It's a haven for me, have met a lot of other cool music nerds and I'm hell-bent on keeping it that way ;-) I mute every account that shares anything other than music in my feed, including reposts. ZERO politics.

@joenatoli @allenholub Over there I’ve re-followed so many UXers I learned from in the early years of Twitter. But they also understandably post a lot about what’s going on in their world, politically.

@joenatoli I try to encourage empathy between my design teams &their stakeholders, POs & others : understanding the reality & working within it as much as possible. It just builds trust right?

@joenatoli It’s a bit depressing you felt the need to say this Joe. But thanks for saying it.

Not for Nothin' Dept: For those of you who reply to posts using #AI...it is painfully obvious. And disingenuous. And self-serving. Even if both of those perceptions you create are unintentional. All of which means it gains you nothing worth having, professionally or personally. Just be you instead — YOU are enough. What YOU think is valuable enough to add, in your own way. You don't need AI to validate your thoughts or ideas or opinions or words. Think about how you can spark a meaningful conversation instead of just parroting the poster's points back to them. Ask a question. Share an alternate point of view. Expend on what's been said already. The effort is the reward, not just in this but in *everything* in life. Give it some thought.

@jesseddy @figma Table of contents. It creates a list of links to all your FigJam sections . I don’t love the endless panning & zooming to find something on a large board, and this solves the problem.

What is your favorite @figma plugin and why? Share, and it might end up in the next article on everydayux(dot)net.

@ant_murphy I feel like you’re listening to my crew’s calls !

Of course this illustrates the proverb: Quantitative data can tell you what happened, qualitative will tell you why. Ok that felt like a mini-rant 😅

Too many companies are clinical in their discovery and data efforts. Here's a real example (all with great intentions): Team A: are trying to work out why customers are calling customer support vs using online services.

@ant_murphy I think better velocity comes as a side effect of improving our way of working & going a little slower during discovery. Better than chasing it as an end in itself.

@danielameleo I’d love to know why :) (not that it’s wrong, this is context dependent, had people argue with stuff in the list a lot when that’s not the point)

"Leadership is language". Words are powerful tools that energise or deflate, inspire or dishearten. antmurphy.medium.com/leadership-is-…

@ant_murphy My experience too. (Glad to have bumped into you today )

Product Discovery should speed up delivery, not slow it down. Discovery when done collaboratively creates shared understanding, focus and empowers engineers to make decisions. In my experience this removes most of the back-and-forth in development.