The power of user science

Product managers help teams create winning products by combining insights across multiple test types. - Brent Tworetzky I love this line from Brent Tworetzky’s recent LinkedIn article, A Product Manager’s Superpower: User Science. Brent is the Executive Vice President, Product, at XO Group, Inc., owner of magical products such as The Knot, The Nest, and The Bump. In his article, Brent walks through his definition of User Science, the tools PMs employ to collect insights to better serve users, and how the usage of those tools to make magic happen and create the product manager’s superpower! The reason the article is so powerful is that it highlights the way many of us think about agile development and iterative testing, but rarely put into practice. Brent has taken his experience working at leading at Silicon Valley start-ups such as Mint.com, Chegg, and Udacity, to develop a strong methodology for his team. At XO Group, Brent’s team of designers, researchers, and PMs all learn how to utilize Sketch, Invision, UserTesting, and Optimizely throughout the product development lifecycle. Here at UserTesting, where we believe in empowering all team members to test early and often to create great experiences, Brent’s methodology is music to our ears. While years ago, companies would run a handful of tests before launch, we see the most successful companies constantly iterating their product designs. This might start at the sketch and prototype phase for web and mobile, but extends deep into the customer lifecycle and across multi-channel experiences as companies need to understand the ‘why?’ behind their metrics. If you’re a PM or work with PMs, Brent’s article is a must read.