The Main Thing: The Empire Strikes Back

A few weeks ago I asked whether PWAs will take off this year. There were positive signs that Apple would need to enable PWA functionality that they had been holding back for the past 5+ years - but they came up with a pretty cynical workaround.

Apple must support other browsers with the same functionality as Safari on iPhones - just like Microsoft had to unbundle Internet Explorer many years ago. Since PWAs might threaten their App Store revenue their workaround has been to remove their existing support for PWAs from Safari. That way they don't need to let other browsers support PWAs either.

I understand why Apple is doing this - they will lose money if they support PWAs. This action, though, has broken a lot of existing sites because they relied on that functionality being available. It's an interesting gamble Apple is making. The ill-will they are generating could lead to bigger problems down the line. I guess we'll see how this drama plays out over the coming weeks and months.

You can read more about it in one of our links below.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

The Drama Triangle by Ken Norton
Things go wrong in all business and labour relations. However, the way a problem is framed influences both the approach and the motivation to address it.

Solving Hiring With a Dating Approach by Joost Minnaar
Dating, Flirting and Fiance: A three step approach to running trials with new prospective employees to increase the quality of new hires.

Product Direction

3 Reasons Why Every Department Needs Its Own Strategy by Andrea Belk Olson
Similar to departments, each product should have its own strategy. However separate functional strategies can lead to conflicting priorities.

5 Different PLG Pricing and Monetization Strategies by Ant Murphy
There are several different ways to price and monetize your PLG products from free trials, freemium, reverse trials, sandboxes, and more.

Continuous Discovery

How To Build Better AI Products With User Research by Claire Jin
AI should be invisible; it should enhance the quality of performance rather than become a performance in itself.

Introducing Opportunity Solution Trees at Texthelp by Melissa Suzuno
Tali Melchior, our UXDX Copenhagen ambassador, shares how she introduced her colleagues at Texthelp to opportunity solution trees (and her workshop at UXDX EMEA 2023).

Continuous Design

Design Without Process, Or The Form Factor Trap by Pavel Samsonov
In rushing towards visuals before establishing conceptual fidelity, UX designers risk creating negative value for their teams.

The Growing Issue With “Free” Trials UX by Louis-Xavier Lavallée
Learn how to improve your free trial user experience without falling into the traps of optimizing for conversions and upsells, resulting in a subpar UX.

Continuous Delivery

Apple Confirms: It's Killing Home Screen Web Apps In The EU by Matt Binder
Apple must let other browsers work like Safari on iPhones. Learn why PWAs threaten the App Store and lead to Safari feature removals.

Creating Effective Technical Documentation by Dipika Bhattacharya
Dipika shares the best practices to use for creating an effective and accessible technical documentation.

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New Videos Released This Week

The job of the Week

Data Visualization Designer
🏬 Charles River
📌 Fully Remote (with occasional travel as per business needs)

About Charles River
A Global Clinical Research Organization, offers a range of services for drug development, from discovery to preclinical stages. With over 20,000 employees in 110 facilities worldwide, it supports clients like pharmaceutical and biotech companies in enhancing drug development efficiency.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Do you prefer to Buy or Rent?

SaaS performed a lot worse than I expected. There has been an explosion in the number of apps that people are using and the cost of those does add up so it looks like Basecamp is right and there is demand for buying software.

It will be interesting to see if other companies follow suit and we start seeing more software available to buy over the coming months.