The Best Articles in Product Design
The most useful articles and videos in Product Design from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Product Design Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Product Design by Refind users in 2023 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford)
Christina Wodtke is an author, Stanford University professor, and speaker who teaches strategies for building high-performing teams. She’s also the author of...
How to ask the right questions, project confidence, and win over skeptics
Paige Costello is a beloved product leader with a reputation as a remarkable coach and mentor. She is currently the Head of Core Product at Asana, where she ...
The power of strategic narrative
Andy Raskin helps CEOs align their leadership teams around a strategic narrative—a single story that powers success in sales, marketing, product, fundraising...
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork & Airbnb, and thriving as a PM
Jiaona Zhang (JZ) is a product leader with a strong background in consumer products and extensive hiring and management experience. She is currently Senior V...
Moving fast and navigating uncertainty | Jeremy Henrickson (Rippling, Coinbase)
Jeremy Henrickson is Rippling’s SVP of Product, responsible for scaling their product and design team across three continents. Previously, as Chief Product O...
What is ...?
New to Product Design? These articles make an excellent introduction.
What is Product Led Growth? How to Build a Software Company in the End User Era
What is product led growth? Blake Bartlett explains the latest to-go-market strategy, how we got here and why the end user is now the most powerful buyer.
What is information architecture? Structuring content for maximum value
Information architecture ensures content and data is structured, organized, and categorized in an effective and usable way, thereby maximizing the value of your websites and applications.
«Information architecture is a discipline focused on structuring, organizing, and categorizing content and data in an effective and usable way, largely for websites and applications.»
A beginner’s guide to guerrilla research
This is the user research method that even the most budget-conscious stakeholders can get behind.
What is Good Product Strategy?
“What is your Product Strategy? YOU NEED A STRATEGY.” When I replay this scene in my head, I can hear the CTO very audibly yelling (slash pleading) with our product team. He was on edge. We had been experimenting towards a very concrete goal for two months, and had made a lot of progress. We had lea
«Most companies fall into the trap of thinking about Product Strategy as a plan to build certain features and capabilities.»
What is Product Design?
This frequently misunderstood field is in need of a proper definition.
How to ...?
How to Create a Voice of the Customer Program
8 tips from product leaders at Figma, Etsy, Google, and more.
«Customers are genuinely happy to see their feedback incorporated into a company's product roadmap. Retention increases, loyalty increases, and NPS scores generally go up.»
How to Create a Product Content Strategy
Developing a product content strategy means product managers, designers and UX content writers working closely together.
How To Navigate Product Management Specializations
In the tech world, the Design, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales functions have each had specialities for years. But, Product Management has not yet defined specialities . This leads people to think a…
How to Draw a Wireframe (Even if You Can’t Draw)
Even people with limited drawing abilities can learn to sketch a wireframe if they learn a few common conventions used to represent various design elements.
«Use physical constraints to prevent obsessing over tiny aesthetic details: Thick pens or sharpies Time boxing Limited space for the sketch»
How To Design a Bulletproof Product Strategy
Anytime a company consistently ships product faster than the average, people will assume they are doing something heroic.
«Great product companies have four things in common: a clear product vision; a product strategy; a set of priorities; and a way to measure outcomes.»
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Product Design on Refind.
The psychology behind highly effective landing pages
Learn what mistakes to avoid when creating landing pages and how to design highly effective ones using psychology.
Don’t Build It, Yet: How Content Can Validate Your Next Product Idea
Discover how Parabol's unique 'content-led product' approach not only attracts customers but also shapes what they build next.
«Content-led product challenges this wisdom and says, "If they come to us, we will build it."»
The Tyranny of the Marginal User
why consumer software gets worse, not better, over time
How to do product positioning
Making products is hard. The advice you get doesn't help much; either it's too vague to be useful or too specific to be applicable to your situation. These notes build a model of how products work…
How to validate your startup idea quickly
In this post, I’d like to share my learnings on how to validate product ideas quickly. This is an extremely useful skill to have when building 0 to 1 products, because most product ideas will fail in…
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Product Design—all under 10 minutes.
How you can "think different"
Three ideas, five examples from psychology
«Default question: “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?” Better starter question: “What’s working, and how can we do more of it?”»
Psychological Moonshots: Radical Product Improvements With Little Cost
“It’s easier to make something 10x better than to make it 10% better.” How? With psychological moonshots. Here's how:
You Can't Hack Product Positioning
Why positioning determines victors in SaaS and AI.
How Figma draws inspiration from the gaming world
The parallels between Figma's technical challenges and those in the gaming world
TikTok is confusing by design
TikTok isn’t the way I want the internet to work, but it’s where the internet is going.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Product Design.
Lean Product Design: A Playbook
Creating a new product is an exciting process. You’ve dreamed up a killer idea, drafted some sketches and maybe even started to think about how you’d make money out of this world beating idea. But…
Don't design for your users
Guiding principles for designing and building products with intention
“That little island changes everything”
How we designed Lyft Live Activities to elevate the rider experience
Figma, I love you but you’re bringing me down
Confronting the conflict between what’s possible and what’s practical
«Designers are not the tools they use. But designers are constantly learning, and the things we learn are heavily influenced by the tools we use, the features they offer, and the problems they solve»
How to Pivot and Succeed as a Solo Non-Technical Founder
Alma founder and CEO Harry Ritter sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he tackled a huge pandemic pivot that turned his initial startup idea on its head and found…
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Product Design, including:

zeldman
Author. Designer. Web Standards Godfather. Employer Brand @Automattic. Publisher @AListApart @ABookApart. Ava’s dad. Pete’s brother RIP. He/him.
Joel Spolsky
co-founder of Fog Creek, Trello, Stack Overflow, Glitch, and http://HASH.ai - I have moved to @spolsky@blackrock.city on mastodon
Jason Fried
Founder & CEO at 37signals (makers of Basecamp and HEY). Non-serial entrepreneur, serial author. No DMs, email me at jason@hey.com.
Brad Frost
Design system consultant, web designer, speaker, writer, musician, & artist. Author of Atomic Design. Mastadon: http://mastodon.social/@brad_frost
Julie Zhuo
Building Sundial. Angel investor. Former Design VP @ FB. Author of "The Making of a Manager" http://amzn.to/2PRwCyW. Obsessed with systems. Design + data person.
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Who are the thought leaders in Product Design?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Product Design, including zeldman, Joel Spolsky, Jason Fried, Brad Frost, Julie Zhuo.
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