Build Better Products: A Modern Approach to Building Successful User-Centered Products

by Laura Klein, Kate Rutter

It’s easier than ever to build a new product. But developing a great product that people actually want to buy and use is another story. Build Better Products is a hands-on, step-by-step guide that helps teams incorporate strategy, empathy, design, and analytics into their development process. You’ll learn to develop products and features that improve your business’s bottom line while dramatically improving customer experience.

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction, Management, Technology, Business Leadership

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2016

Reviews

[Gabriel Chartier]

The writing style was pretty boring. Even though I was interested in the material, I found it difficult to get through.

[Nadya Tsech]

Every chapter covers one step in a design process and includes:
– a goal (for example, do better research)
– theory
– an exercise to achieve the goal.

I'd recommend this book to all new designers, product managers, or anyone who is involved in building a product.

Experienced designers will find some new methodologies or learn how to explain design fundamentals in a fun and practical way.

[Milele]

I will be consulting this book over and over and using the approaches on my own projects. It is authoritative and very helpful. I assume others need as much help as I do to REALLY implement lean techniques and user-centered design and all the other things Laura teaches - even after several years of trying - and this book provides that help.

[Sannie]

For me as an experienced product manager, this book was mostly helpful in organizing my own thoughts about what my work actually consists of. I'm terrible at vocalizing my work, but Laura Klein has a really good summary of everything that needs to happen when building products. There were a lot of great ideas on running workshops and exercises with teams (note: of course there are LOTS of stickies involved).

Klein also writes very clearly and in an easy way to understand concepts if you're new to product management. Most surprising was how she presented everything that it wasn't dry and boring; she's actually pretty funny and uses lots of real-world examples.

Highly recommend for product managers, but also for designers and anyone wanting to know more about product thinking. I normally try not to read too many books for work because I want to read stuff for fun, but this is definitely a good book to read generally.

[Tuomas Silverang]

Pretty great, compact book for product builders. Nice companion to the Mom Test. Great examples and exercises, no fluff and dry humor sprinkled throughout.

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Some favorite quotes:

"Every day, companies are spending thousands of hours perfecting features that end up making their products worse."


"Keeping designers or engineers or any other type of employee in a pen with others like them just means that product teams aren’t really teams at all. They’re loosely related conglomerations of “resources” who have been temporarily assigned to implement something together."

"People in big companies are forced to work with dozens of complicated products every single day. The introduction of a new, complicated product does not instill in them the desire to spend a lot of their day exploring it. It makes them sigh resignedly and figure out if there is some way to avoid learning the new system until it goes away and is replaced by something else."

[Ardavan Mir]

This book is about the most essential methods you'll want to build a product. It's a collection of exercises and practices you can use to better understand/define your business goals and user needs, then validate and measure them. Laura Klien uses the concept of User Lifecycle Funnel to identify glitches in your system which I think makes a lot of sense if you look at things holistically.

It's great to understand business goals and user goals as a team, and that's exactly what this book focuses on. The exercises help team members to define and measure their progress and prioritize based on the value to users and business requirements.

There are also interviews with leaders from the industry who suggest very practical and applicable advice for each stage of product development. I'm gonna use this book as a reference from now on, and try to do the exercises.

[Valentin Shvets]

Can't recommend this book enough. Great structure covering every stage of product discovery, development and optimization bundled with interesting exercises which I'm hoping to try out soon (reading this on vacation). Although the author encourages to do the exercises as you read. i would recommend to finish the book first and then pick the ones you need and in the order that you need. Your product might be on different stages and your team might be of varying levels of awareness of untested hypothesis, not yet validated personas, etc. Loved the extras by invited authors in the end of each chapter.

[Saman Vahdat]

Build Better Products by Laura Klein is a comprehensive guide to building successful products. The book covers a wide range of topics, including user research, design, development, and analytics. Klein's writing is clear and engaging, and she provides practical advice that can be applied to any product development team.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is involved in the product development process. It is an essential resource for anyone who wants to learn how to build successful products.

[Marek Kędzierski]

One of the better UX-related books I've read recently. Specific. I felt sometimes like I was talking to an experienced person about what should be done and how (information that is often missing in books or at conferences). The author has a lot of experience and shares her knowledge nicely.

The book is rather for those a bit more advanced in the subject (not everything), but it's what I was looking for! With this book, you can improve your processes at work step by step.

[Stefan Reisner]

I don't remember how it got there, but I found the sample of this book on my Kindle and just loved reading it! The techniques for product design are not totally surprising or new to me, but Laura Klein presents them in a totally amiable crispy, down to earth and fun to read way.
€18 is quite a bit of money (well worth it, I'm sure!), so I'm not getting the whole book right now, but I'm definitely going to recommend it to everyone involved with product design.

[Michael]

Though the book has product management nuggets, there’s a lot not to like about this book:
- Author’s condescending tone is off-putting.
- Establishing rules or guidelines and then breaking them in the next couple of pages.
- Modifying the well-known pirate metrics and creating a confusing version of it and calling it their own.

I’d recommend reading the following as much better alternatives: Teresa Torres’s Continuous Discovery Habits and Dan Olsen’s The Lean Product Playbook.

[Daniel]

Absolute master piece by Laura. Learn about many different topics such as OKRs, user testing, mapping experiences, measuring better and much more. The writing style is quirky and humorous, making this read a breeze.

All of the exercises that are shared are extremely straight forward and provide actionable guidance.

Absolute must read for anybody involved in Product Design and Development.

[Amira]

Fantastic book for all stakeholders involved in the product making area. Loved the chapters topics, the amazing references and very smart exercises. Will be referencing Some chapters again. Heavy content and read indeed.

[Tim Broadwater]

This is a phenomenal book... you literally can take this book into meetings with you, adapt the exercises to your situation, and do the very important work that everyone wants to skip over (and leads to product failure).

[Nacho Bassino]

excelente y no tan conocido libro con "mejores practicas" y ejercicios para cada aspecto de creacion de productos

[Shalva Kashmadze]

The best product book I've read

[Peter]

A book as much for product managers as for ux people. A nice process recommendation, plenty of exercises to do, great stories, some deeper knowledge. All in all a good resource for product teams.

[Ane Ellasdatter]

Entertaining read with good advice, explanations, and workshops to do with your team.

[Stacy Holmstedt]

An absolute must-read for UXers and product people. I'm driving my coworkers crazy talking about it. The exercises have been really helpful for structuring new projects.

[Bryan]

Highly recommended for anyone involved in building digital products.

[Seif]

Everything is good, contains good brilliant practices

[Backslash]

Probably the top business book i have read in the last two years. This book plus lean product lifecycle and you can conquer the world.

[Rohan Khandelwal]

A must read and a book to use as a constant refresher for all Product Teams.

[Malakh]

Yawn

[Michal]

Good, but very basic concepts. It’s a good overview for somebody new in product management, but I would not recommend it later in your career

[Gaby Prado]

A very interesting summary of Lean UX applied to the design process.
Would be very useful for beginners, easy to understand and follow

[Xavier]

A nivel intro al tema está muy bien, pero la realidad es más compleja y casi nunca se puede seguir el proceso prescriptivo que dice aquí

[Ilya]

A great practical resource for UX, product designers and everyone else who is involved in building digital products.

[Tugrul Yuksel]

The overview I needed in a long while

It took me some time to go through the book, mainly reading in chunks. I would say, at this point, both the overall approach (in building team etc.) and little tips like not making your user discover while onboarding will stay with me.

[sarah semark]

Chock full of useful advice and practical exercises. I wish everyone building products would read this book first.