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The Design of Everyday Things

By Don Norman

4 recommend/use · 4 sourced episodes

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Short attributed excerpts only. Timestamps are approximate.

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Leadership4 steps

Barrels-and-Ammunition Team Design

Staff each team from the gap, not from a fixed PM/EM/designer template

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Deadlines as P-Zero

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Communication3 steps

Emotional Discovery: Feel Bad Like the Customer

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Evals as Articulating Success

An eval is just a clear spec of ideal behavior — the shared language of AI product work

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Growth Team as a Rigor Forcing Function

Hire a growth leader early — the second-order effect is that it exposes everything you haven't measured.

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Influence4 steps

Interview as Discovery: Be the Solution to Their Burning Problem

Treat a job interview like product discovery — find the hiring manager's burning problem and position yourself as its solution

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Innovation5 steps

Minimum Viable Experiment + The Dogfood Gate

Ship the cheapest version of an experiment — but use it yourself before you trust its null result

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Self-Mastery4 steps

Optimize for Learning: The Impedance-Match Career Test

Choose roles by where you'll learn most and whether the mission truly matches how humans are wired.

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Marketing7 steps

Optimize the Second Screen (Post-Click Leverage)

Everyone crowds the ad; the compounding wins sit on the page people land on after it

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Strategy5 steps

Run Toward the Hard Use Cases

Don't disable high-stakes uses to avoid downside — engineer them to be great

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Innovation5 steps

Ship-to-Learn: The Emergent-Product Loop

When product properties are emergent, launching is how you discover them

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Innovation4 steps

Systematized Creativity by Extremes

Build the most extreme version along one attribute, feel it, repeat in the opposite direction, then find where they meet

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Strategy4 steps

Systems-First Scaling (One to 100)

Once you have product-market fit, go slow to go fast: build the systems before you hyperscale.

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Productivity4 steps

The 10% Working-Version Rule

Have a testable working version by the time 10% of your time budget elapses, not at the halfway point

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The AI Startup Moat: Data Flywheel + Crafted Workflow

Defensibility for AI apps comes from a proprietary data flywheel and a deeply crafted vertical workflow.

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Mindset5 steps

The A-Side / B-Side Career Ledger

Track the failures between your highlights so setbacks read as moments, not verdicts

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Marketing3 steps

The Double Triangle: PM as Go-To-Market Discipline

Sit the PM between two triangles — build (eng/product/design) and sell (sales/marketing/PM) — and originate the customer's language

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Leadership6 steps

The Five PM Archetypes

Hire and compose product teams by five distinct thinking styles, not one generic ideal PM.

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Leadership4 steps

The Maximally Accelerated Question

A forcing question that separates critical path from what can wait

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Strategy3 steps

The Middle-Manager Reporting Veto

Automatically say no to customization features that ease manager reporting at the cost of IC workflow

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Leadership3 steps

The Painful-Mistake Growth-Mindset Interview

Screen only for growth mindset by asking for the most painful mistake and what changed because of it.

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Communication3 steps

The Say-Do-Said Loop

Say you'll do the thing, say you're doing it, say you did it — to align, adjust, and close the loop.

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Leadership3 steps

The Six-Month Autonomy Razor

If you're still telling a hire what to do six months in, you hired the wrong person.

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Communication7 steps

The Unique Voice Test

Ask of every line: could any other company have written this? If yes, rewrite it

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Leadership3 steps

The World-Class Proof Interview

Two questions: why here, and what are you world-class at — plus how do you know?

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Entrepreneurship6 steps

The Zero-CAC Consumer Subscription Engine

Mission, no paid ads, retention-as-value, and data rigor — why Duolingo survived where B2C subs die

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Strategy6 steps

Treat the World as One Market

Default to one global version; localize only where law or platform forces you to

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Productivity5 steps

Two-Mode Prioritization for AI Products

Prioritize backward from model magic AND forward from customer needs

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