Hurricane Harvey was the first time I’ve ever participated in the civilian response to a natural disaster, and I learned a lot in the process. My husband and I made a map that showed tweets of people wanting to be rescued (previously housed at harvey.geocod.io, but since taken down out of respect for victims’ privacy). By the time Harvey left the Texas coast, it had logged over 1,800 requests for

This past week, I had the fortune of co-presenting a talk at Laracon in NYC on Launching and Scaling a Side Project. It was my first time speaking at a conference, and since I lived to tell the tale, I figured I’d share what I learned in the process. 1. Deckset is awesome, use it. I resisted. I normally make slides in Google Slides, but my co-presenter, my husband, insisted on

It is a rare and special book that helps you with how to think in addition to what to think. And the more I work in product, the more I realize the importance of honing cognitive skills in the form of frameworks and mental models as a way to structure the information and world around me to ultimately find opportunities. Each of these books has given me a unique perspective on the world and

The DC Metro system is an unenviable product to have to fix. For years, the system was reliably unreliable and could be a downright unpleasant experience even when it was supposedly functioning as normal: delays, outages, overcrowding during rush hour, and a lack of air conditioning on trains during DC’s blistering hot summers were all par for the course. The Metro’s problems are so bad that there’s a Twitter account

Written February 17, 2017 I recently ran a user feedback survey that exposed a flaw in my thinking — and resulted in a completely unexpected product change. The survey’s intended goal was to aid in developing a deeper understanding of the various use cases customers have for Geocodio and features that might help them more efficiently complete those activities. I also put in a general feedback field for open ended

About two years ago, I switched industries from political consulting to financial services. I had a somewhat notable lack of experience in finance — I’d never even bought a stock before — and so I embarked on a quest to learn as much as possible about the stock market. The result has been about two years of non-stop reading, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. If I were doing it all

If there’s anything product people love, it’s problems — solving problems, finding problems, uncovering problems. We just love problems. And there are lots of great frameworks for researching customer experiences to help uncover problems. Yet, no framework can ever tell you what the problem is. So when you’re staring at a sea of Post-Its and knee deep in a spreadsheet, how do you determine where the problem is and what you should focus

There are three major things I’ve learned since I started doing product work four years ago: Understand the fundamental value you’re delivering to the user Focus on user problems rather than starting with ideas And the third is something I’ve only just come to understand in the last few months: 3. Assume you’re wrong. Of everything I’ve learned, this is probably the most counterintuitive, difficult, and even painful to implement.

Think back to the last time you had a new idea. It was exciting and energizing, right? You were probably so excited that you jumped to a whiteboard to sketch the idea or shot off an email about it to a close friend. The possibilities! But now let’s picture that idea differently. Imagine it lives in this little box. But your idea doesn’t live in this box alone. Instead, ideas

Several months ago, I was drafting an internal job description for a new position on our Product team. Among the many qualities I thought this person should have, I listed Passionate about product. It seemed like an obvious thing to include. Of course someone who wanted to work in product would love product and immediately know what it meant to be passionate about product. But my manager at the time, who