7/ So now we have some guardrails around our discussion. One aspect of product taste is the judgment necessary to differentiate between gamechangers, showstoppers, and distractions.
But how do you build this judgment?
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8/ I think has a pretty good framework. He says that product sense decomposes to:
- Empathy
- Domain knowledge
- Creativity
Quote Tweet
There's a lot of confusion on evaluating a candidate’s Product Sense in interviews.
So let’s analyze bad, good, great answers to an interview question:
"Why do threads on Twitter typically get more engagement than a tweet that links to a blog post with the same content?"
Show this thread
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9/ My only quibble is that he doesn't describe how he makes difficult product decisions himself.
But a model for how he thinks about evaluating other people's product ability is still useful! Shreyas argues you can improve in the first 2, and maaaybe the third.
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10/ This seems similar to Slava's advice. Both authors write 'go talk to a lot of people (in your product domain)'. (See screenshot for Slava's exact words)
I've done this a lot, and can confirm it's common sense and it works.
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11/ But if you want to get at the inner mental models of product people exercising their judgment, what you'll want to get to is 's summary of Christopher Alexander.
This is the good stuff.
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12/ I've always found Alexander incomprehensible. I think Singer's summary is the first time I've understood why so many good product people love Alexander. If you'd like a shorter summary, check out 's notes:
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13/ My 1 tweet pitch for the talk: how do the best product people design? They do so through iterations. They build something small, evaluate it, and then use that to inform the next.
Product taste in this context is the ability to pick the RIGHT order of things to design.
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14/ And Alexander's work is all about this 'step-by-step unfolding' process of design.
There's something deep and true about this that I didn't appreciate earlier, perhaps because I hadn't made enough mistakes. (A full accounting of my mistakes are in commoncog.com/blog/product-v)
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15/ To wrap up: good product people talk about taste and Christopher Alexander. (Or they don't, they just exercise taste). Novices talk about the trappings of process.
I couldn't resist, I made a meme for this:
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Replying to
I often feel like the last stage in your meme, but I wonder if I'm not just being lazy and skipping my homework, vs actually applying (subconscious) product sense gained over the years. How to distinguish the two?
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Replying to
My take: If you think you have perfect product sense you probably don't, because you won't have the required humility to recognize what good is.
"I know that I know nothing" - Socrates
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