Situations / Designing products
Designing products
Deciding what to build and how people will use it.
Traps you might be in
- No. 0074 Bandwagon EffectYou join the long line at a food truck before looking at its menu.
- No. 0217 Correlation-Causation FallacyYour best salespeople use the new dashboard most, so you make everyone use it.
- No. 0233 Curse of KnowledgeYou write six clear steps for a new hire, then spend an hour explaining what you thought needed no explanation.
- No. 0326 Endowment EffectYou list your old bike for $300, then realize you wouldn’t pay that much for it yourself.
- No. 0367 False Consensus EffectYou choose a remote cabin for the group trip, sure everyone wants to escape the city.
- No. 0587 Loss AversionYou find $20 in an old coat, then lose $20 on the train and spend the evening thinking about the loss.
- No. 0681 Not-Invented-Here SyndromeA colleague offers a tool that does the job, and your team starts planning its own version without even opening the demo.
- No. 0732 Peak-End RuleYou call the whole weekend wonderful because of one spectacular dinner and the easy ride home.
- No. 1008 Survivorship BiasYou scroll through traders’ success stories and start planning how to quit your job.
- No. 1027 Texas Sharpshooter FallacyAfter trying twenty cuts of a sales dashboard, you find one winning customer group and call it the campaign’s intended audience.
Tools to try
- No. 0001 A/B TestingYour team prefers the new signup page, but you keep the old one live for half the visitors to see what happens.
- No. 0141 Chesterton’s FenceYou delete an old approval step, and the next payment goes to a bank account nobody verified.
- No. 0351 Explore-Exploit Trade-OffYou order your usual lunch while a new place across the street posts a menu you haven’t tried.
- No. 0386 First Principles ThinkingYour team debates which competitor’s checkout to copy, and you ask what a customer actually needs to finish buying.
- No. 0532 InversionBefore moving day, you list everything that could leave you outside the new apartment with a packed truck and no keys.
- No. 0541 Jobs to Be DoneYou buy a meal kit the week you start a new job, though you have owned a cookbook for years.
- No. 0618 Minimum Viable ProductBefore building a meal-planning app, you sell five people a week of menus and make the plans by hand.
- No. 0878 SatisficingYou find an apartment within your budget and near work, then close the other rental tabs.
- No. 0892 Second-Order ThinkingYou waive a late fee to help one customer, then next month five more customers start paying late.
- No. 1057 Two-Way vs. One-Way DoorsYour team spends three meetings debating a button label it could change back before lunch.
- No. 1079 Via NegativaYour week is packed, and canceling one standing meeting helps most, delivering more than a better calendar app could.
Patterns at play
- No. 0018 Adverse SelectionYou turn down another low offer for your well-maintained car because buyers price it like one hiding an expensive fault.
- No. 0153 Cobra EffectYou offer a reward for each pest killed, then discover someone is breeding pests to collect it.
- No. 0212 Conway’s LawYour company sells one product, but customers need three accounts because three departments built their parts separately.
- No. 0245 Default EffectYou silence your new phone after a week of alerts from settings you never chose.
- No. 0379 Feedback LoopsYou turn up the microphone to be heard, and the speakers answer with a squeal.
- No. 0412 Gall’s LawYour team has designed the entire replacement system, but nobody has yet put one real order through it.
- No. 0437 Goodhart’s LawWhen a number becomes the goal, people find ways to move the number that don’t move the goal.
- No. 0458 Hawthorne EffectWith a researcher watching you try the new app, you read every instruction you would normally skip.
- No. 0665 Network EffectsYou download a new messaging app, then leave it unopened because everyone you need to reach is still somewhere else.
- No. 0728 Path DependenceYour team keeps using the clunky database because every report, script, and hire has been built around it.
- No. 0861 Risk CompensationYou install a new collision warning system, then start following the car ahead a little more closely.
- No. 0956 Social ProofYou walk past an empty restaurant and join the line outside the one next door.
- No. 1064 Unintended ConsequencesYou turn off phone notifications, then find yourself checking the screen every five minutes.