Designing Products People Love

How can you create products that successfully find customers? With this practical book, you’ll learn from some of the best product designers in the field, from companies like Facebook and LinkedIn to up-and-coming contenders. You’ll understand how to discover and interpret customer pain, and learn how to use this research to guide your team through each step of product creation.

Written for designers, product managers, and others who want to communicate better with designers, this book is essential reading for anyone who contributes to the product creation process.

• Understand exactly who your customers are, what they want, and how to build products that make them happy
• Learn frameworks and principles that successful product designers use
• Incorporate five states into every screen of your interface to improve conversions and reduce perceived loading times
• Discover meeting techniques that Apple, Amazon, and LinkedIn use to help teams solve the right problems and make decisions faster
• Design effective interfaces across different form factors by understanding how people hold devices and complete tasks
• Learn how successful designers create working prototypes that capture essential customer feedback
• Create habit-forming and emotionally engaging experiences, using the latest psychological research

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Why Products Exist

Chapter 2 How to Create Products People Want

Chapter 3 What Are We Building Here?

Chapter 4 User Interfaces Begin with Words

Chapter 5 Tangible Trumps Theoretical

Chapter 6 The Mechanics of Interface Design

Chapter 7 The Psychology of an Experience

Chapter 8 Interpreting Feedback and “Leveling Up” Your Product

Chapter 9 Shipping Is an Art—and a Science

Review

“Products today aren’t designed like they were even just a few years ago. This breezy, easy-to-read guide walks you through modern product design as it’s practiced in the field by some of today’s best designers. Both an overview of the field and a handy how-to guide, this book has something for everyone working to make products people love.”

DAN SAFFER, AUTHOR OF MICROINTERACTIONS

“In a quickly changing space, Scott Hurff shares an informed, actionable perspective.”

RANDY J. HUNT, VP DESIGN, ETSY

“A thoughtful and charming guidebook for making great things.”

SCOTT BERKUN, AUTHOR OF THE MYTHS OF INNOVATION

“Scott’s new book connects the world of fast, startup-driven, design-for-mobile thinking with the traditional world of comparatively slower, “do-it-the-right-way” design and brand thinking. The new world of digital product design is interminably evolving, so this book is a great 2015 snapshot of the way modern digital designers needs to act and behave as more like explorers rather than conservators. Keep in mind that in 2016, 2017, and beyond, however, we should expect even more change to the field of digital product design — so I look forward to the future editions of Scott’s work as a historian of sorts in a rapidly evolving present-tense that gets old the very moment it ships.”

JOHN MAEDA, DESIGN PARTNER AT KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS

About the Author

Scott Hurff is a product designer and author, who’s worked at companies like Tinder, Kleiner Perkins-backed startups, and a pre-IPO ChannelAdvisor. He started his first company while in college, and became the youngest entrepreneur-in-residence at Kodiak Venture Partners in Boston. Scott has led product design for products used by millions of users in a variety of areas, including video sharing, entertainment, and consumer mobile apps. 

Scott teaches designers how to bring their designs to life at designers.how, and writes about what makes products great at scotthurff.com. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Smashing Magazine, Die Zeit, Quartz, Gizmodo, Business Insider, and Gamasutra.