Jared Franklin

"This passion reflects, I think, something that we’ve always believed
as a company. That is, that the best internet services aren’t just
ways for people to escape their everyday lives. Instead, those
services with longevity –- with real “legs” –- enhance folks’
day-to-day experiences, deepen their relationships, and show them
things about themselves they didn’t know before."

— From Pal Sciarra’s Pinterest blog post

"

‘Managing the product’ means deciding what we do to the product and then making it happen.

When you unpack that, it involves strategy (what is important to do?), resources (how much time can we spend on it?), managing development (what do we need to build in order to do it?), managing experience (how will it look and work, how does it integrate into what we already have?). And all of it with regard to the bottom line of the business. Given a strategy, resources we have, a user experience bar to uphold — given all that, what can we do and why is it worth doing?

…

I try to lead every decision with user experience. What is the user-facing situation we want to change? Or if the motivation isn’t because of a user benefit, but a pure business reason — what is the impact on the user, and how can we align incentives so this at minimum makes sense to the user? This is critical.

…

Once the process is started, and programmers are implementing, we don’t bite off too much at once. We want to design one thing, implement it, and then see it in action. The design -> program -> review cycle is critical and it works best when it is a small and tight cycle.

Throughout the design -> program -> review cycle, it’s important to focus on flows not individual screens.

…

One of the best words you can internalize is “satisfice“ — in other words, “done enough” given a certain goal. There is no absolute measure of “done.” It’s up to you to decide, because all projects can go on forever. The best way to determine when you are done is to again lead with design, where the function of design is to reach a solution to a problem. When the problem is no longer a big enough problem to matter, you are done.

"

— Awesome post by Ryan Singer of 37Signals

"Incentives matter and if you can figure out what peoples incentives are, there is a good chance you’ll figure out how they’ll behave"

— Freakonomics

"We’re not social. We’re not viral. We just focus on trying to make a product that’s great for us. And be as open and transparent about it as possible."

— Phil Libin - CEO of Evernote

"People react positively when things are clear and understandable."

— Dieter Rams