Product – Shankar is thinking

Don’t let your product hunches die

Very often, product thinkers have hunches. Hunches about how something can be made better. Hunches about problems worth solving for, worth going after. But hunches are very different from their big brother, ideas.

The abbreviation disease

Before you start reading, I want to mention that this isn’t an attack against anyone specifically. This is a behaviour I’ve noticed in teams I’ve worked with over the years. I couldn’t find a better analogy to express this idea. The abbreviation disease leads people to use unclear short forms to convey something that canContinue reading “The abbreviation disease”

Content eats icons for breakfast

This is a tiny lesson in design I learned at Freshworks. The lesson seems obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t so obvious when we were making the mistake.

Business software is so good now, that it’s competing with consumer software

For a long time, business software was clunky. Consumer software continued to radically innovate on user experience, staying ahead of the curve. Palm to iPhone. Styluses to capacitive touch. Taxis to Ubers. Torrents to Netflix. MP3s to Spotify, etc. We’ve lived through this story of how innovation in consumer software radically improved our lives inContinue reading “Business software is so good now, that it’s competing with consumer software”

Fighting outdated tribal knowledge in sales and support teams

When businesses start out, support and sales teams (like any other team) are closely knit. The teams are small and most folks know the ins and outs of the product being sold. Everyone stays on top of new product updates by playing with the latest features, reading documentation or just being quizzed in the hallwayContinue reading “Fighting outdated tribal knowledge in sales and support teams”

On team reorganizations

Things to consider when you’re reorganizing teams

Three ideas to help you get started with user research

I started out in PR at Freshworks. I rarely spoke to customers when I was in PR, except when I worked on doing some case studies of how people used Freshdesk. It’s something I regret now – I should have used the first two years of my career to get in front of more customers.Continue reading “Three ideas to help you get started with user research”