• Order. When you deal with a list, you must think about what’s the order logic. Is it alphabetical? Or should we sort based on the latest added item first? This is an obvious thing that you might miss.

• Spacing density. When people see a list, they usually want to scan the list. Think about a list of transactions in your bank account. As a product designer, it’s important to decide when you want to make the list dense or airy. Consider making it dense if the users frequently scan the list. On the other hand, if the users are casually browsing the list—like the listing on Airbnb, maybe making it airy is fine.

• Keep the content short and easy to scan. Put a strong hierarchy for the main information. For example, if it’s a list of contacts, then make the name stand out compared to the other information. Think: What is the most familiar information users will look at when scanning the list?

• Consider icons. Think about the list of menus on the sidebar. It’s usually great to use icons to help users identify and differentiate the menu quickly.

• Reorder interaction. Sometimes, you need the users to reorder the list. What’s the best way to reorder items? Can they do it using the keyboard? What if they want to reorder multiple items?

• Bulk action. When users need to frequently edit the list, like editing their hundreds of products in their e-commerce store. How can you support them to do the action in bulk?

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How do we know if a solution is working?

But first, let’s talk about the comedians. Comedians continuously find new jokes so they can keep their shows fresh. Not an easy task, but it’s the best feeling in the world for some comedians when they make it work.

So how do they know if a joke is funny? Well, they put it out to the world. They tell the joke to their friends.

Observe the reaction.

Iterate.

So back to building products and business.

You can keep designing that idea in a vacuum. You can imagine how the solution will make a positive impact. But, those are all your hypothesis until you put the solution out there.

So the takeaway here is simple: You won't know whether your solution is working before you put it out there. Put it between you and the people you seek to serve.

But you do it in a way that helps you reduce the risk. Just like comedians, they tell their friends. Slowly iterate based on that. Once they're ready, you can come up to the large stage and tell it to the audience.

You identify the riskiest assumptions that your solution carries. Test it, refine it. Continue to the next one.

P.S. Hi friends,

Last week was fun. I literally learned how to record a video and edit them. I learned how to talk in front of the camera—a bit awkward, but getting better now. I did this because I need to record the learning material for Crafters.

Crafters have 32 members so far. Still small, but I'm so excited to keep growing this learning community.

Anyway, building a business and a community is really fun. Of course, it’s intense and nerve-wracking to run all this. But it has been a wonderful experience to build the operations, the community, and the learning program. I'm pretty sure some of you are in the entrepreneur journey as well. I hope you continue doing the important work.

Keep testing, keep learning, keep iterating. Good luck

—Budi

Related posts:

• Adoption - Part I: Define your core action

• Adoption - Part II: How many users are going to benefit from this feature?

• Prompt: The to-feel list

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1. There are different levels of qualitative evidence. From the weakest to strongest:

• Users say something

• Users say something they've done in the past

• Users tell specific stories about what they've done

• Users show you what they do

• You observe the users

2. If you have an opportunity to observe users in their natural environment, you should invest your time in that.

3. Natural environment: You go to the user's place. Lab environment: You bring users to your office or zoom.

4. Product Managers shouldn't outsource the research. Product Managers should involve themselves in the research activity, and make the time. The amount of context and nuance will help you sharpen your product intuition and strategy.

5. The goal of the user interview is to understand the mental model and how the users operate. The user research is not to ask what solution users want. Stripe’s CEO has shared the similar view on his Tweet.

6. When I'm discovering the problem, I look for 5 things when interviewing users:

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7. Before your user interview, prepare the debrief questions. After your interview, you should know to have at least a few reflection questions as a team. "Do we see users can accomplish X?" "Can users easily understand this content?"

8. Always debrief after your interview. Don't skip it. Spend at least 15 minutes. In that debrief, your team should understand what to adjust for the next interview as well.

9. If the key people can join the research activity, you don't have to spend time preparing the research report. After debriefing, you can just have a simple document with a bullet list to capture the key insights.

10. Don't ask for solutions from users. You should find and dig deeper into why they want the solution—then, you might discover the real problem or needs. Don’t ask what feature the users want. It’s not their job to figure out the next feature to build because people are terrible at predicting that.

11. Don't ask a hypothetical question like, "Would you buy this product?" You'll get bad data.

12. You can't validate everything from the qualitative. Sometimes, you need to launch in order to really understand if people actually use the product. Remember to launch with a minimum effort first.

13. But, launching without any qualitative validation or signal is actually a waste of time. You can at least get a signal: - Is the interaction good? - Is the content good? - Do people get excited about this? - Is our product actually better than the competitor's?

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1/ Be specific in defining who has the problem. When building a product, start determining who the target audience is—without it, you'll try to optimize for everyone and end up not optimizing for anyone.

2/ Be clear about what it is before thinking about what to do about it. It's a common mistake to quickly shift from defining what's the problem to proposing a solution for it. Diagnose: Consider the solution after you break the problems down to their first principles.

3/ Separate symptoms and the root causes. The initial observation is often a symptom. You need to keep asking why. Remember, a complex problem have multiple root causes.

4/ Align on the desired outcome before you talk about the solution. There are many ways to approach the problem—each will yield different results. Everyone will argue that their approach is best if they have different goals. What's the desired outcome you seek to make?

5/ Understand the users’s motivation. Suppose you've defined the problem for your users. What's their end goal? What is the job they want to get done? Why is that important? This way, you can get context on whether this problem matters.

6/ Is it a vitamin or painkiller? The problem is not a painkiller if the users can find a decent workaround. If it's only nice to have, why bother to solve it? When the users expressed a pain point, ask them what have they done so far to solve it. If their workaround is frustrating, then perhaps it’s problem worth-solving.

7/ Time is ticking; you can’t spend your whole time in problem discovery. In the real world, we have to dance with a time limitation. It’s helpful in timeboxing the problem discovery; you just have to use the best signal and experiment with a few solutions.

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Related posts

• Vitamin vs. painkiller

• Dear Budi: What’s the purpose of being a product practitioners?

• Dear Budi: What cadences do you run in your team?

• Make your 30 days onboarding plan

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Project management is only a small part of product management. But it’s crucial to be able to manage a project effectively. Hence, this shortlist:

1. The project should always have a clear intent. Break down the problem clearly and align the desired result for the users and the product. Write it down.

2. Always have one Direct Responsible Individual. The DRI will be the person who drives and is ultimately responsible for the project. Without a clear DRI, your team will fall into a consensus that can slow you down.

3. Understand how the project fits the broader strategy. Ask yourself this question: “How does this project support the organization’s KPI or OKR?” If there’s no clear answer, perhaps that’s not the most important project.

4. Have a cadence with a specific purpose. Some of my favorite cadences now:

   • Sync up. The cross-function members share the progress and align their priorities. It’s where the team shares their blocker too. I usually have this at the end of Friday to set the focus for the next week.

   • Discovery playback. The team shares any insights from the user interview, desk research, or experiments. What have we learned? How should we move forward? I like to have this on Friday morning.

   • Brainstorming session. A cross-function member will gather to sharpen the problem or brainstorm the solution. I like to keep this session around Thursday.

5. Take your task seriously and set a clear ETA for your team. Communicate when the ETA needs to be adjusted, especially if it blocks other people.

6. Have a dedicated Slack channel for the project. All of the discussion should be discussed there, not in the personal message or in the smaller group. Make the discussion visible so people are aware of the discussion and can catch up.

7. Take the project seriously, but be playful and keep it fun too. If the team’s morale is good, the work is enjoyable.

8. Set clear success criteria. How do you know if you have solved the problem? Often time, you can always measure it. But, sometimes, you gain signal qualitatively.

9. Appreciate and praise others’ efforts. When a crisis arises, don’t blame people. Instead, use the energy and the time to tackle the crisis.

10. Always share the digest and the focus every Monday with the broader audience. Share what’s your team’s priority for this week.

11. Wrap it up. Celebrate. But take time to identify what worked and what didn’t. You’ll need it for the next project.

What’s your favorite best practice for project management? Please let me know in the comment section.

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So, working with people is complex. But how do you handle conflict? Perhaps you feel that person is really weird. But before you label and resent that person, perhaps you can do much more to improve the situation.

1. First, it's important for product builders and designers to understand that collaborating with people is integral to the job. You gotta find a way to work with people to solve hard problems. So, your ability to maintain a relationship with the other people in your team is part of a collaboration skill.

2. People come from different backgrounds. They have different experiences and maturity. You will, no matter where, meet people who don't meet eye to eye with you. There’s no place where you won’t have conflict or differences.

3. If you want to improve the situation, you gotta share your feedback. If you stay silent, then the condition won't be improved. It’s that simple. You can share your observation with a respectful tone and it’s up to the other person how to respond to it.

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1) See it as an ongoing discussion, not one and done. Promotion means that a company invests in someone who they believe can help the organization get closer to its mission. This requires a serious assessment, so don’t hope it’s going to be an overnight process.

2) Do the work and establish trust first before initiating the promotion discussion. The best way to build trust is to be a team player. Be accountable to deliver your part. Prove that you have enough impact and consistency.

3) Avoid a self-serve narrative. The promotion is not only about you. Avoid saying something like, “I want to get a promotion, when can I get it?” Help your manager and the company understand what’s the value and benefit for the company if they’ll invest in you.

4) Frame the discussion around excellence and growth while making your reasons for wanting a promotion clear.

5) Focus on skill and impact. A company hired you because they believe you'd make a contribution. Hence, focus on the contribution. What skill do you need to improve to help you collaborate effectively within the team? Your goal is to help the team achieve its mission and create an impact.

6) Promotions aren’t just about skill. It’s also about your attitude and how well you work with others. Senior management needs to see you as a team player. After all, building great products is a team sport.

7) Gather feedback regularly. Assuming you have built a relationship with the team, proactively gather feedback from the team member. Let them know you're focusing on a specific skill and ask them how they value your contribution. Continuously iterate as you go.

8) Set a clear goal. I like to use personal OKR. If you want to take on a larger responsibility, set a clear goal and expectation to help you ready.

9) Prove your contribution, but ensure you can maintain it. Consistency is an important part. If you’ve successfully delivered something, you might be lucky. Senior management needs to know if you can constantly work with the team and deliver impact.

10) Take a larger responsibility when the opportunity comes. Whether to take some work from your superior’s work or a critical

11) Understand how promotion works in your company. Every company has its own way to do the promotion. What is it that makes people qualified to be promoted? What does your manager need to prepare in order to make the promotion proposal? What can you prepare to help that?

12) When your promotion proposal is rejected, try to understand the reason. Reset the expectation. Do the work. Improve your knowledge, skill, and attitude. There must be something blocking the senior management to promote you. Figure out what aspect affects your promotion readiness.

13) If you’re promoted, it means two things. One, it means your current position is vacant. How can you help the company to fill that empty seat? Two, it means that there’s a risk to promoting you. How can you help ensure them that promoting you is more beneficial than its cost?

1) Focus on learning, not proving. If you spend time trying to prove yourself, you'll end up asserting your opinions and ideas without appropriate context. Come in with a mindset to learn so you can grasp the overall situation quickly.

2) Learn about the team's mission. Understand how your team fits in the company’s larger picture. What's your team's purpose? Why is it that your team even exists in this organization? Your team is playing an integral role.

3) Learn about the problem. Try to understand the objective that your team is responsible for in this quarter. Ask around: Why did the team have that objective in the first place? What problem are we solving?

4) Talk to key people. Identify people who will work closely with you and the leads within your scope. Listen to what people have in their minds. Understand what role they play in the organization and what’s their strengths. This way, you know when to talk to whom.

5) Be prepared to adapt. By joining a new organization you'll be exposed to a different culture and way of working. You can't just copy and paste what you did in the previous job. Be ready to adjust a few things.

6) Take notes on anything standout. New joiners come with fresh eyes. This can benefit the team that has been exposed and saturated on the space for a long time. Ask obvious questions while you have a permission to do so. Also, take notes on the onboarding experience and share how you feel about it.

7) Identify the team's challenges. What are the challenges the team feels? Is there anything you can contribute to reducing those? Try to look for a small win for the team.

8) Identify red flags. Working with a team is a two-way relationship. Take notice of conflicting values, cultures, or approaches that annoyed you. After 2-3 months, consider if this team is a fit for you.

9) Build rapport. People won’t trust you overnight. Just be patient. Help people, deliver what you’re responsible for, and start a 1:1 session with your team member. At some point, you’ll no longer be a stranger and gain their trust.

10) Build a checkpoint for every 30, 60, and 90 to gain feedback from your team. In the first 30 days, ask for people’s feedback on how they perceive you. Identify if there are any big changes you need to make. Repeat this ritual until 90 days or after you feel settled.

1) Society falsely aims at happiness as a goal. The idea that modern humans should constantly be happy is destructive. We see highlights on social media. Then, it forms the idea that everyone "feels good" at a steady pace, and therefore we should too. What’s wrong if we just feel moderate?

2) Happy is only one feeling. It's okay to be angry, anxious, or scared. There's nothing wrong with feeling other emotion than happiness. Our goal is not to be constantly happy. Instead, our goal is to be able to express a wide range of emotions without suppressing or suffering.

3) Stop chasing happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of doing things that are challenging, meaningful, and worthwhile. It's better to pursue knowledge and broaden your perspective to help you make better decisions in life than to only chase to "feel good." It's better to do hard things, even if they make you vulnerable than to avoid them because you prioritize comfort.

4) If you don't have to worry about a paycheck, what would you do? Many people consider this question impractical, but they miss the point. This thought exercise helps you break from routines. This reflection question can help you think of what you want to pursue in life.

5) Try different things to understand what you like. Experiment, because you won't know what you like before you try it. I used to think I wanted to be a painter, but then I realized that I didn't enjoy the process of painting. I love looking at the final result. Trying things help us to differentiate what we think we like from what we actually like.

One idea to remember:

Our goal is to be able to express a wide range of emotions without suppressing or suffering. Happy is only one feeling among many others.

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This post is part of life principles where I collect all the learnings from my life and work. As I solve problems, I often learn new things and make mistakes. I find it useful to collect them in my notes to avoid common mistakes and make better decisions in the future. If it resonates, feel free to share it with your family, friends, or your networks.

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Budi Tanrim is a Senior Principal Designer at GovTech Edu—who works closely with the Indonesia Ministry of Education. You can find me on Twitter.

Perhaps you’ve evolved, and they’ve changed as well.

We’re all busy with our lives, but don’t forget to stay in touch and appreciate the role they had in your life.

In 2011, Ryan Adams and his group published a study in Developmental Psychology Journal. His study suggested that having your best friend around can reduce the effects of negative experiences. Your body will produce less cortisol—the stress hormone.

The time you spent together led you to who you are now.

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I have a new section in my newsletter: Life—Short essays about life.

Amare is a beautiful concept

The word amateur is derived from Latin, Amare—it means to love.

Amare is a beautiful concept. It gives us permission to try something new and expect to be bad at it.

As one of the studies found, beginners tend to make mistakes on their first try. But then, they increasingly make fewer mistakes afterward. In skydiving, for example, beginner jumpers are up to 12x to get injured than anyone who jumped at least once.

If we don’t give us permission to be bad, we are less likely to try.

If we don’t try something new, we won’t grow.

Permission to learn a new skill

Learning a new skill is beneficial for us.

One study that looked at young children who learned swimming lessons found benefits beyond swimming. The swimmers appear to have better eye-hand coordination than non-swimmers.

Amateur has a negative concept. There are a lot of labels to call a newbie in various industries: noob, rookie, or green. In chess, it’s “patzer.” In surfing, it’s “kook.” This would discourage many people. When you read the title above, you might feel a bit unsettled.

Perhaps, Leonardo understands that it’s important for him to become an amateur again—to have permission to try something new and expect to be bad at it.

We’re all amateurs and beginners at some point, and that’s not a bad thing.