This Week I learnt: Continuous discovery, TikTok's algorithm & Negative Test
Edition #5
Hey there!
Welcome to “This Week I Learnt” - edition #5.
To become a better Product person, it's important to learn new things all the time. There are lots of blogs, articles, books, and podcasts, but it can be hard to find the good stuff. We want to help you by sharing the best learning resources you will need in your journey. We'll share only what we found to be the best and most helpful.
If you are upskilling to become a better Product person, you will love our posts.
📜 Continous Discovery - A Product Discovery method
This article discusses the concept of product discovery and how to carry it on effectively. Product discovery involves understanding customer needs, validating assumptions, and experimenting with ideas to build the right product. The article provides a clear methodology to understand the business outcome, translate it into a product outcome and arrive at opportunities to drive the outcome. It emphasizes the need for continuous discovery to adapt and iterate quickly without having to release a full feature or design a full prototype!
📜 Seeing Like an Algorithm: TikTok
TikTok has one of the most effective recommendation algorithms. TikTok's “For you Page” algorithm is remarkably accurate and efficient at matching videos with those who will find them entertaining. When we talk of algorithms/recommendations, we instantly think of ML, AI, Training data, etc. However, in this article, the author discusses exactly how the UI/UX design also helps its algorithm work as well as it does and how TikTok became its own source of training data. Even if you are not a coder/techie, you can read this!
📜 How to measure the value of a feature? - Negative Test
A Negative Test is an experimental approach to measure the value of a feature. By intentionally creating a worse user experience and observing the impact, such as a drop in acquisition or retention, the positive impact of a feature can be quantified. The test aims to verify assumptions about user engagement and assess the impact of certain features. Comments also include how other PMs/companies used this - Do not miss them!
Hope you learned something new this week! If you have any good resources, do share them as a reply, or in the comments section. We are eager to learn and share them with others.
Will come back with another interesting post. Bye! 👋