Do Design Thinking ao Design Doing - como usar a empatia para criar produtos que as pessoas amam

by Jon Kolko

Como usar empatia para criar produtos que as pessoas amam Os inovadores de hoje devem se soltar e pensar de modo objetivo para serem bem-sucedidos. Em um mundo obcecado pelo novo, onde novos recursos atropelam as reais necessidades do consumidor, o próprio cliente é quem sofre. Acabamos criando produtos que deixam a desejar. Neste livro prático, o especialista em design de produto, Jon Kolko, mapeia esse processo, demonstra como você e sua equipe devem conceber e construir produtos bem-sucedidos que se conectem emocionalmente com seus clientes. A chave, diz Kolko, é a empatia. Você precisa entender profundamente as necessidades e os sentimentos do consumidor, e esta compreensão deve se refletir no produto. A interação muda o comportamento e cria um engajamento profundo. Estes são quatro passos importantes: 1. Determinar o product-market fit; 2. Identificar insights comportamentais; 3. Esboçar uma estratégia de produto; 4. Refinar os detalhes do produto

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Psychology, Art Design, Entrepreneurship

Paperback

First published October 28, 2014

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should caveat this review by saying that I am a software tester and developer. This book appears to be designed specifically for product managers. I'm normally all for crossing barriers between domains. However, I don't feel like this was a good guide for those trying to get a peek into the world of a project manager. The book gets awfully specific about certain techniques that product managers might use to create empathy with the users, but there just aren't enough examples to see how those techniques are really applicable or useful. I think I would have prefered either a more shallow look at the techniques that gives me a better idea of the benefits of the techniques or a deeper dive into each of the techniques that would allow me to comfortably exercise it on my own and see the benefit. As it is, I don't know why I would spend my time doing any of the things in this book nor do I have any reason to convince my team or my clients to spend time trying any of these activities.

Books on usability and user empathy are typically well designed themselves. Sadly, I think this book broke the trend for me. The writing style is a bit manic, changing tones between technical to conversational and back in the course of a few paragraphs. It seems like it was trying to be both a textbook and friendly introduction but didn't do either very well. Each chapter ends with an interview. Frankly, I didn't get the point of them. I carefully read the first couple interviews, but gave up and skimmed the rest of them. They just seem to be name drops of people that worked on important projects. I didn't see the connection between each interview and the content of the chapter or the book for that matter.

It's unfortunate that the negative aspects of this book stuck with me the hardest. This book does make me wish I understood the role of product manager better. I might start looking into books on the construction of wireframes and hero flows now that this book has got me interested. But, when I find a book on creating a stellar hero flow, I'll probably recommend reading that book and skipping this one.

[Céleste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kolko argumente l’importance d’utiliser l’empathie pour construire un excellent produit pour un Product manager. Il propose des idées de framework pour structurer sa recherche utilisateur, des conseils pour poser les bonnes questions. C’est assez bien illustré. Pas un must-read mais intéressant, ça permet d’asseoir ses convictions

[CitizenDrain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well designed by Jon Kolko can be seen as one big case study. It has almost a novel character on how to approach product management, backed with method descriptions and practical tips. The author leads through a design-driven approach to product management, from determining product-market fit to product strategy to polishing the details.

The intended audience are designers with an interest in, if not the desire to move into product management. The ideas Kolko describes are basically applying design thinking methods to product management, with the goal of fostering empathy and make sure a product is based on user needs. In all honesty, nothing new if you come from a user-centred design background.

Each chapter is further enriched with interviews from other product managers, sharing their experiences, learnings and failures. This gives the book a practical perspective, especially pointing out that situations and environments are different, and that frameworks and guidelines will only get you so far.

I feel the book is a short and worthwhile read, especially to learn about some tools and methods when moving into a product management role. It’s not as deep and fundamental as other PM readings, but it connects some dots between product management and (user experience) design. Key take-away: You should have hired a UX researcher already six months ago.

[徐 仲威 · Rating 2 out of 5]

兩顆星是給繁體中文版的，翻譯與裝幀都很糟糕的一本書。內容像是在看 Google 翻譯，看了很多，卻什麼也沒看懂；中文和英文的錯字數量多到懷疑出版社沒校稿；書頁紙張磅數太厚，看過最難翻的一本書。整體來說，覺得台灣出版社做這本書的「同理心」在哪裡？

[JG · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about using empathy and customer emotions in order to develop better products that are deeply rooted in lives and behaviors of clients. The aim is to create products and services which are more emotionally connected with the desires, wants and needs of the customer, and the way of doing it is being more empathetic with them, ie, step into their shoes, spend more time with them in their daily lives and most importantly ask Why do they do what they do.

The author supports his theory relying on interviews and the development of a fictional case. The interviews (which I think are the best part of the book) include some very known personalities in the world of tech startups like Gary Chou, Josh Elman, Frank Lyman among others.

The author explains that make Empathy the priority in the Product Management will give better results than a Market or Technology centered approach.

The book lays down the steps for succeeding with the making of an empathic and emotional product, but as often happens with this kind of books, I have one quibble: all the inferences that are made are based on anecdotes. Anecdotes have two main biases: survivorship and representativeness, ie, we don't know what would have happened to those who applied the Steps and didn't succeed.

I think some of the things the author talks about are very valuable and can be applied not only in Product Management, but also in a wide variety of activities that are closely related with human behavior and social sciences, especially in policies and programs focused on humanitarian aid.

[Ellen Chisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the closest I've come to one that summarizes the process I've used to build things - and one of the better books on the role of the PM discipline (especially through interviews).

My only major concern is the lack of diversity featured in the book - just one interviewee talking about Kathy Sierra, and a brief snippet from a designer at Frog.

I think getting a bit further away from the typical "product" people would have added nuance and depth to the concepts.

[Mohd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really taught me about user empathy - go out of your office, watch users consume your product(mere interviews won't give you insights. U gotta watch how do users use your product).
Right from the concepts of sharing economy(resources are scarce),avoiding feature creep(creating more and more features would make your users take more time to solve their pain), resisting from the urge of pushing your thoughts ahead of your consumers, among many others, this is really one hell of a book.
Although, it is all about digital products, you can apply these theories to offline products as well.
This book also taught me that apart from the pains that a user wants to solve by using your product, you as a manager need to understand the context/setting in which your product is being used by the consumer - perhaps your user is really busy but has loads of money, how are you going to make your product so that the user gets to ease your product in a easy and fast manner; circumstances matter a lot, hence study your users in and out; demographics is not about age, income. It is about the daily routine of a person.
Emotional appeal fillers which are non functionalities should also be added in your products.
An awesome book which EVERYONE SHOULD READ !!

[Sam Hysell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great primer to people who are not well versed in design thinking and it's application in software development... Definitely super valuable for those getting their feet wet though and some of the actionable recommendations are great refreshers.

[Zachary Slayback · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of interviews with successful product designers and some useful tools -- both practical and mental -- for product design and management.

[Erwin Portillo]

It had some really good insight on establishing the foundations of companies trying to create easy flow to the work process. Really had some great advice.

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love by Jon Kolko is a comprehensive guide that emphasizes the importance of empathy in the design process. The book provides a step-by-step approach to designing products that resonate with users' needs and emotions. It explores how empathy can be used to create meaningful, user-centered designs that are both functional and emotionally satisfying.

In Jon Kolko's "Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love," the central idea is the power of empathy in design innovation. Kolko highlights that while many believe a product's success is solely based on features or technological advancements, it's actually empathy that plays a crucial role. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding users deeply, observing their interactions with products, and engaging with them in a meaningful way. By immersing oneself in users' experiences, asking relevant questions, and creating a product synthesis wall to organize feedback, designers can gain invaluable insights. This understanding can then be used to create products that not only meet users' needs but also resonate deeply with them. Ultimately, the book suggests that by adopting an empathetic approach, designers can create products that people can't imagine living without, turning users into fans and customers into advocates.

Kolko begins by defining empathy and its significance in the design process. He explains that empathy involves understanding users' thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and using that understanding to inform design decisions. By empathizing with users, designers can create products that meet their needs and solve their problems effectively. The book then explores various methods for developing empathy, such as conducting user research, engaging in ethnographic studies, and using empathy maps. These methods help designers gain insights into users' experiences and emotions, which can then be used to inform the design process.

Kolko also discusses the importance of storytelling in design, and how it can be used to communicate empathy and create emotional connections with users. He provides examples of companies that have successfully used storytelling to create compelling product experiences. In the final chapters, Kolko discusses how to use empathy to create successful business strategies and foster a culture of empathy within organizations. He emphasizes the importance of aligning business goals with user needs and emotions, and provides practical tips for doing so.

Overall, Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love is a valuable resource for designers, product managers, and anyone interested in creating user-centered designs. It offers practical advice and techniques for using empathy to create products that resonate with users and drive business success.

[Sarah Cupitt]

WIP - also note that this book is similar to the idea Jo had for her first book so tell her to go with the open strategy idea instead + look at WILEY proposal for her to work out book positioning

Notes (PM):
- more focused on product managers?
- “There are common traits shared by product managers. The idea of control goes out the window. The more tightly a product manager tries to control the situation, the less successful they will be. Another trait is the ability to ask good questions. If you can ask good questions, you can challenge things, because you are thinking deeply about the problem you are trying to solve, not because you are charismatically trying to assert your point of view on the team and on the world.”

More notes:
-Pay close attention to their interaction with the product from beginning to end.
- It’s not just about making something that sells; it’s about creating something people can’t imagine living without. This approach turns users into fans and customers into advocates. That’s the power of empathy-driven design.
- In the end, creating a successful product is less about the designers or even the product itself. Instead, it’s more about understanding the needs, goals, and behaviors of the users.

Quotes:
- “If it succeeds, great, you have a business. If it fails, you have a great experience and stories to talk about that make you very marketable to teams that need people like you.”
- “Great ideas can’t be tested. Only mediocre ideas can be tested.”
- You can’t apply data to see if you should do a radical idea. You do the radical idea, and then you measure how it worked.
- “Design is about humanizing technology or finding ways for technology to integrate into the fabric of our culture.”
- “Some things get big as people store more data in them; this is called progressive commitment.”

[Brian Kovesci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me just get this off my chest before I start in with the review: I'm so tired of the general use of the words "design" and "designer." A "graphic designer" could make a career out of print media, app development, motion design, etc, and all of these fields require specific and unique skills to be a master. An "industrial designer" can made a career out of designing shoes, cars, chairs, apps, experiences, medical equipment, packaging, etc, and all of these fields require specific unique skills to be a master. Let's quit with the rhetoric that core design skills are transferrable, because although I believe this to be true, it's misleading in that a shoe designer will not successfully design packaging without considerable experience which takes years to build.

*inhale*

This book is principally a business book about project management within the specific creative fields of app and software development. This book concentrates on general core principles that are transferrable to different design disciplines for the most part.

I did find support for my need to observe human behavior (p. 72), which I'm having a hard time convincing management at work is a worthwhile activity. I also read about the wisdom of gaining outside perspectives (p. 137). Another takeaway was the suggestion to have 3 concepts that are grounded in reality and one wild out of bounds concept, which helps ground the 3 in reality while also hinting at what a future without constraints could look like (p. 161).

[Adam Zabell · Rating 4 out of 5]

tl;dr - design-focused thinking leads to products people like to use

Market to insight to strategy to vision. And ultimately, shipped out the door for the market that started you. Thinking like a designer -- "using empathy" -- is held in contrast to analytical thinking. For a Designer, the choices are intuitive first and then backed by a tangible artifact (customer research, white board full of colors, team meeting notes). The hardest part is not the thinking, but the ways to communicate that thinking to the rest of the business. Most of the interviews in the book gave conflicting opinions on the ways to do that, perhaps intentionally. When you're a Designer, you need to communicate your Vision, and unless you're the only one with a vote, that communication is always going to be tailored to your audience.

[Max Oliveira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Assim, o título do livro pode ser um pouco obscuro, então já te adianto que por 'Design doing' ele fala de gestão de produto. E nesse ponto talvez que fica minha maior desavença com o livro, não sei se pelo fato da disciplina ainda ser muito nova ou se é pela carência de sistematização na área, o livro acaba 'atirando' para varias direções diferentes nas suas proposições de boas práticas, ficando um tanto complexo traçar um eixo lógico do que seriam as práticas ideias adequadas aos casos do mundo real.

Nisso o livro acaba meio que virando um grande guia 'decoreba' de prática aplicáveis quando você se encontra em situação idênticas ou muito similares as apresentadas no livro, sem muito mais substância que sirva para ser transposta para situações diferentes. Por isso duas estrelinhas.

Sem recomendações, no mais,
God Bless & Grande Abraço.

[Matthew EKeller · Rating 3 out of 5]

like it was good - it brought up a lot of rly important points and my main takeaway was the difference between a product-focused organization rather than technology or revenue focused or whatever. this book highlights the importance of keeping the user at the centre of your tech design process, and to think of things with empathy for the user. one standout is how the average user understands a technology "product" - they arent rly thinking of one thing offered by one company as its own entity, but more as a piece of a continuous ecosystem that they may expect to work for them across domains (desktop, phone, browser, etc). tbh good book but could've been more concise. i didn't really find the interview interspersed throughout that interesting

[Arnold Saputra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book slowly because, there are lot of practical things that you can do when working especially in startup or tech company. One thing that memorable for me are; how small things like clean & proper design execution can affected your product. So many people diminish and override pixel perfect interface. Eventually, the perfect design execution could make people lover your product more and more. The tips to convince the engineering team is to give what kind metric that we'll achieve with this sleek design and make that metrics their OKR or KPI too.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Well Designed Mr. Kolko provides solid case studies in the form of interviews supporting the idea that empathy allows product managers and designers to build and design products people will truly love and use. This book was difficult to read at various points and that may have been because I am not a designer so I had to go back and reread them This book is well worth the effort to read and I would recommend it to others.

[Aniket Patole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes it easy for anyone and everyone to know about design. It is written in such an interesting way that even if you are from non design background, reader will understand more about design. Its obvious that there is more to design than what is collected in this book. So this book is very good for everyone who wants to get started with UX Design. But then again you'll have to read many other books and keep up with the changing trends of the market.

[ebrar · Rating 3 out of 5]

ürün tasarımı süreci en basit şekilde anlatılmış, yolun başında olmama rağmen benim için bile aşırı ufuk açıcı değildi. yine de başlangıç için güzel bir kitap. en çok beğendiğim yönü ise çeşitli product manager ve designerlarla kısa röportajların olmasıydı. böylece farklı ürünlerin gelişme süreçlerini ve neden kullanıcılara hitap ettiklerini daha iyi anlamış oldum.

[H · Rating 3 out of 5]

To begin with, the title of the book is very well designed. A nice read for people who don't know much about design or who fantasises design to be something mysterious. Design isn't mysterious. Design is about making a series of good decisions that often refers back to its project brief.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The design process I’ll lay out...leads to innovation and emotionally engaging new products and services. This process is centered around empathy and is built on deep research with real people in their natural environments.”

[Paricha duangtaweesub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for anyone working on product innovation. This will be doing on my work book shelf as a reference - it is full of practical guides for working day to day in leading a team through an empathetic vision.

[Stephen Maser · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a slog. I really tried to get through this book but after reading half way through I gave up. I realized I would have read 5 pages, didn’t retain anything and couldn’t tell you what I had just read.

[CJ Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only one woman is quoted in this entire book about design and empathy. One.

The rest is a "take these design steps" for product managers with one exercise in empathy.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great overview of the product management process. This book also covers how product management changes through companies and stages in companies.

[Emma Ripley · Rating 3 out of 5]

30,000 ft view with a few practical exercises. The interviews were also pretty good!

[Cara Embry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting step by step process on product management and the bigger role of design therein.

[Jeamy Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic, as all the models truly help one develop a reality from their envision. Overall a great read, highly recommend!!

[Mehmet Tümer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is essentially abou the Product Management other that product design or industrial design. With every detail, Jon Kolko manages to give what is Product Management and how to do it at best.