Pocket Guide to Design Evolution

Business can be a dirty word in our industry, but some knowledge of it is essential to succeed. Many good designers and developers fail, not because their ideas are bad, but because they don't know what to do after launching their product.

A good product alone doesn't equal success. The story of what we build still needs to be told, the customers we have need to be cared for, and the products that we create need to evolve.

In this book, Josh Long will show you how to take your product, and grow and sustain a viable business around it.

Who should read this book?

This book is for designers and developers that want to take their product ideas from launch version to a sustainable and viable business.

Topics include:

PART 1: THINK DESIGN EVOLUTION

The current approach most designers take when trying to take their products and businesses to the next level often takes them in the wrong direction. By looking to perhaps the greatest designer of all, nature, we can find some answers to set us on the right track.

PART 2: REDUCE TO THE ESSENCE

Most businesses assume that growth means adding features, grabbing more clients and incurring greater overheads. Intelligent growth starts with subtracting, reducing and stripping elements away until a product is distilled to its essence.

PART 3: FOCUS ON CORE USERS

Our first inclination to grow a business is to get as many users as we can, as fast as we can. But there's nothing more important than creating a foundation for future growth on our core customers, even if it means keeping some users out early on.

PART 4: SPREADING THE VIRUS

With our foundation set, it's time to market our product and expand our user base with as little selling as possible. We should spend our time making the product better, so we need to get our customers to sell our product for us.

PART 5: GROW THROUGH YOUR PRODUCT

The best way to cultivate long-term growth is to grow through the product. We need to leave the future of our product open-ended and find the hidden elements that will help it grow incrementally and effortlessly.