DPL Reading List – March 31, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Eric Ries on 4 Common Misconceptions About Lean Startup – “If you believe that lean startup methods lead to cheap products and companies, or that lean startup companies don’t think big, think again. The digital revolution, globalization and technology platforms have forced companies to bring products to market faster than ever to stay alive, and even behemoths such as Experian are benefiting from a lean startup philosophy.”
Your Traffic Went Mobile; Why Hasn’t Your Design Process? – “The mobile audience is now twice as big as desktop. Does your organization’s design process reflect that mobile is now your primary platform?”
The Cognitive Distortions of Founders – “I’ve met thousands of founders over the last decade or so and I think many of them are wearing special goggles that make them, well, more like founders. The special founder goggles create cognitive distortions. And the cognitive distortions create superpowers. Here are some of the distortions that I’ve seen in successful founders.”
How Morale Changes as a Startup Grows – ““When we think about startup cultures, we imagine ping pong tables, kegerators, and Nerf guns. More importantly, we envision an esprit de corps that drives employees to happily burn the midnight oil to build the next big thing. However, this startup cultural utopia invariably hits a rough patch for about 70% of startups in years three to four, regardless of how happy the team was before. We call this the “cultural chasm.””
Iteration is not design – “The prospect of great products arising out of a primordial soup of nebulous product ideas and gradually evolving into great products without the need of designers is a stirring notion for some. The problem is, it doesn’t work. You can’t design by iteration and incremental improvement.”
Practical Color Theory for People Who Code (Thanks to Cassey Lottman for recommending this) – “Sass color functions give you the same creative power as owning a set of paints, brushes, and canvas.”
Forget Multitasking! How to Improve Your Focus and Productivity with Single-tasking – “When we’re working on two things at once, and our brains are constantly switching back and forth between them, that extra time it takes to switch adds up. It might be too small for us to notice, but research has shown overall we’re slower at performing tasks when we try to do them at the same time, instead of one after the other.”
