Build Better Products – Laura Klein on The Product Experience

Nobody rants quite like Laura Klein. Others have tried, but we’ve yet to find anyone else with her depth of experience (spanning stints as a developer, designer, researcher and product manager), her empathy for both users and stakeholders, her experience as a teacher, and her sense of humour. She’s author of Build Better Products: a Modern Approach to Building Successful User-Centered Products (US / UK), the funniest trove of practical advice we’ve come across, as well as UX for Lean Startups (US / UK), which we didn’t have time to read before our chat.
Quote of the Episode
Has clicking that icon met the user intent of the feature? I mean obviously no… But it turns out that when you start looking into it, that this one freaking little icon that looked so “Oh it’s 5 seconds, we’ll just draw it in there”… it turns into you’re going to have to hire more people, write a policy guide, and create an entire admin system for [it].
Listen if you’d like to learn more about

* Building better products
* UX
* How to work with designers
* How to work with anyone

Links mentioned in this episode

* Follow Laura on LinkedIn and Twitter and at her own site (Users Know)
* Laura’s got a couple of podcasts of her own: What Is Wrong With UX and Engsplaining

Hosts
The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.
Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media and entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he’s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music
Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau,