How to define your Values and Principles

How do you uncover the true motivations behind how people use your products? Research! We can use the same approach to uncover the real values and behaviours that our company’s prioritise (and not just what they say).

Talk to senior leaders about how they reacted during a crisis, a period of growth or other high change situations. Listen to the stories that people tell about past successes or failures. Analyse who gets promoted and who doesn’t. Once you have identified your values you can validate them using longevity, universality and sacrifice tests.

If you want to know more, as well as see examples of values and principles from companies like Intercom, Slack, Shopify, Tesla, BBC and more, then you can check out my article below.

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

Inamori's Equation: Success = Attitude x Effort x Ability by Joost Minnaar
Kazuo Inamori's "human equation" is a way of assessing the performance of people that goes beyond just technical skills. His formula is: ability x effort x attitude (way of thinking).

How to define Corporate Values and Principles that enhance Decision-Making and Leadership Trust by Rory Madden
Rory shares how you can define values and principles that enable effective decision-making and build trust between leadership and teams.

Product Direction

Everything is a Product by Jeff Patton
What is a product? Everything, according to Jeff. He gives examples of different types of product and breaks down how to distinguish between them.

Should Your Company Build an Open or Closed Ecosystem? by Carmelo Cennamo and Feng Zhu
Linux won the server wars because it is open, but Apple are the most valuable company because they are closed. Carmelo and Feng argue you can follow a hybrid approach.

Continuous Research

How to Analyze User Interviews and Turn Raw Data into Insights by Condens
User interview analysis is the central step of a research project. Learn how to analyze user interviews effectively with this step by step approach.

Stop Inventing Product Problems; Start Solving Customer Problems by Pavel Samsonov
Pavel believes low-performing teams choose problems based on what they’d like to solve rather than what their customers need.

Continuous Design

Better Usability Through Information Architecture by Jorge Arango
Making products more usable isn’t just about ergonomics; semantic structures matter too.

Behind the Design: Meet Copilot by Jon Friedman and Kurtis Beavers
Jon and Kurtis share how they designed the Microsoft Copilot experience along with tips for when you are designing for a new paradigm.

Continuous Delivery

Island Architecture with Web Components by Simon MacDonald
By breaking down a web page into smaller, independently upgradeable units, Island Architecture achieves a balance between server-side rendering (SSR) and client-side interactivity.

How Amazon and Google view CI/CD in an entirely different way by Carlos Arguelles
Google has thousands of devs on one repo with no branches so they do a lot of testing before committing code. Amazon goes the other way with small repos and post commit testing.

UXDX EMEA Spotlight:
Product Transformation at the BBC

Learn how BBC are transforming from a well-known UK-centric brand to a globally recognized commercial product. Lee will share insights on the challenges and strategies faced and the lessons learned at UXDX EMEA.

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

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Video of the Week:
Motion for AI: Creating Empathy in Technology

Drawing from her diverse experience in design, animation, and robotics, Pavithra explores how motion can be harnessed to create more human-centric AI interfaces. From Disney's animation principles to cutting-edge AI applications, this talk is packed with insights on how to design technology that resonates on a deeper, emotional level. Check it out now👇👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: What does your bonus / promotion depend on?

This one surprised me a bit. Craft makes sense, outcomes as well, in terms of tying bonuses to company performance. But 20.6% of people, our joint top response, said the primary metric for achieving their bonus or promotion is their behaviour!

I’m sure there is some nuance in the answers that this poll didn’t get across but it is still very interesting to see that companies are putting a lot more emphasis in the attitude and effort of their staff, even over the outcomes achieved.