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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2021
I read this as a book club read on my last role as a UX designer at bank. The intent was "hey this is how Silicon valley does it, let's to it like them"... I certainly appreciated the details and the thinking but this book is missing some key things.
- There is no one-view process diagram / map to illustrate their process. This means as you read through it, you are constructing each prior step in your head, thus one big memory challenge. This makes it hard to follow along and know where you are in the process. This is also absurdly counter to much of what the book preaches - in terms of communicating ideas efficiently!
- The last third (or more) of the book is dedicated to design research and low-fidelity design methods. If you have any experience as a design researcher or a designer, you are likely familiar with some (or all) of these. While a great reference for PMs / Dev, only pixel level designers would benefit from this information. Further there are better resources for design and research methods.
- This book is actually lacking any visuals at all! It is nearly 100% words. It's a big miss in my mind. We don't develop products with words only!
- I had to wonder if this was purposefully limited as a teaser for consulting work with his agency. If so, my gripes wouldn't do them any favors.
I did like the short chapters, as you could make good progress reading in just a few minutes. He also lists several techniques that tech behemoths use effectively (I can vouch for them!). In summary - this is worth a read if you are in product development, but you will be wanting more visuals to describe process and examples, not just a book of words!
- There is no one-view process diagram / map to illustrate their process. This means as you read through it, you are constructing each prior step in your head, thus one big memory challenge. This makes it hard to follow along and know where you are in the process. This is also absurdly counter to much of what the book preaches - in terms of communicating ideas efficiently!
- The last third (or more) of the book is dedicated to design research and low-fidelity design methods. If you have any experience as a design researcher or a designer, you are likely familiar with some (or all) of these. While a great reference for PMs / Dev, only pixel level designers would benefit from this information. Further there are better resources for design and research methods.
- This book is actually lacking any visuals at all! It is nearly 100% words. It's a big miss in my mind. We don't develop products with words only!
- I had to wonder if this was purposefully limited as a teaser for consulting work with his agency. If so, my gripes wouldn't do them any favors.
I did like the short chapters, as you could make good progress reading in just a few minutes. He also lists several techniques that tech behemoths use effectively (I can vouch for them!). In summary - this is worth a read if you are in product development, but you will be wanting more visuals to describe process and examples, not just a book of words!
