The 2021 Product Awards brought together the very best in digital products, highlighting the market leaders that are taking the product world by storm in this new Age of Product. How can product leaders maximize their user research and accelerate iterations in the lifecycle? Join us in The Winners Circle with Invision Product SVP Jeff Chow where we discuss how to become a product-led organization and collaborate in a remote work environment to make award-worthy digital products with world-class product design.
The 2021 Product Awards went completely digital this year, bringing the best of the best in digital products to the living rooms of product leaders worldwide. Watch the entire rebroadcast at the link below, then get to know all of this year’s winners in the 2021 Guide to the Best Products for Product Managers.
Watch the entire broadcast of the 2021 Product Awards and get to know the best tools for product managers.
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Read the 2021 Guide to the Best Products for Product Managers.
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On what makes an award-worthy product in 2021
In the eyes of the user, product design is one of the singular most important aspects of a product. Beautiful design can repeatedly pull a user back to a product, which is the entire goal of building an award-worthy product, and it’s up to product managers to make that happen. InVision has proved itself to be one of the brightest stars in a PM’s design toolkit.
“In general, great products have always been kind of similar, they just have evolved with the technologies. It’s always a very clear problem to solve, and it’s usually empowering a person to get the most out of an experience.”
“One thing that we’re seeing a lot of in 2021 is something I would call extensibility. It’s not just simplicity, the clear utility, but also how to make it your own. How do you make it customizable? Is it personalized? This is applied to the consumer space, but also in the enterprise space. Everything is a lot more personal.”
On how to collaborate in the new remote workspace
“As product builders, I believe strongly that the culture of a company reflects the user experience.”
Collaboration is a clear necessity when building products. As the world navigates moving from fully remote to a possible hybrid office, companies need to once again find the best way to collaborate with teams both internal and external. Jeff offers his thoughts on the importance of inclusivity within remote and hybrid teams.
“InVision is actually a remote first company since its inception, so there’s never been an HQ. As we went into the pandemic, we had a strong opinion of how to work asynchronously, but even we felt the pain a little bit. That really has triggered a lot of our reflection on how we build tools that can to not just help productivity, but to connect.”
“Do you really need the meeting? I think that’s generally the open question that people have to be honest with themselves. Let’s leverage the tools that we have and do it on our own time. I think the async approach really does reduce the amount of meetings for meetings sake.”
“As we go back to some level of hybrid, it’s probably going to be even worse. There’s going to be that natural tendency for some to just go back to the in office kind of normalcy. First and foremost, product managers are connectors. We’re not conductors, we’re orchestrators, we’re really trying to pull people together. The number one thing that is a great sense of a great team is inclusivity and empathy.”
On being a product-led organization
“There’s a very big distinction between product and product management. Product Management is the function, but everyone is involved in building a great product.”
It can be difficult to separate the product from those managing the product, especially when one has decision power and is living so close to the product at all times. That, however, is the clear difference between a product-led organization, and one led by its PMs.
“You need that Northstar to give direction to a team, but you have to be willing to take every signal as you’re going along and assess whether you want to make a tweak, do a stronger pivot, and go on that journey.”
“When I think of product-led companies, the first thing I tell people is, this isn’t product management-led companies. You’re letting the product lead first – the product-market fit how consumers adopt it, how people use it – it really is taking the ego out of product management, and making sure that it is a team sport. Our job is to get the best out of everyone to build great things.”
InVision is a digital product design platform powering the world’s best user experiences. It is the platform for inclusive collaboration within digital product design and development. Watch the entire video above to see a demo of InVision Freehand, the online whiteboarding tool that helps teams collaborate in real-time together, all in one place.
Give your team the ability to draw, write, plan and create together with InVision Freehand.
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