Tales of Design & User Experience (ToDUX) #9
⁂
Dear readers and friends,
I hope this issue find you well. In today’s newsletter, I want to focus on two things:
- A new article about product management.
- Stewart Brand’s “Access to Tools” philosophy and how I want to use it for this newsletter in the future.
Who Invented Product Management, Anyway?
I have a new piece in The UX Collective, titled “A very short history of product management.” It explains the origins of the field and briefly outlines its historic and contemporary relationship with product design.
Why did I write this article? Firstly, product management is often perceived as a relatively new field. However, it’s not an invention of the 21st century. Secondly, I guess everyone working in product design or product management has had their clashes with the “other side,” feeling that they want to “steal” part of their job. In light of this, I believe it’s useful to take a step back and learn about where something actually comes from, to put things into perspective. I did exactly that and my latest article is a summary of the research I did.
[P]roduct managers own the problem and product designers the solution. Product management brings in the business perspective while design focuses more on the user. […] By working together, product managers and designers can ensure that products are developed with both the customer and business in mind, ultimately delivering an enhanced user experience that benefits all sides.
☞ A very short history of product management … and its evolving relationship with product design
And I almost forgot … before this one, The UX Collective also published the third article in my series on how to develop a comprehensive strategy for a design team.
☞ Team values: the foundation of any strategy
Access to Tools
While the primary purpose of this newsletter is to keep you updated with my latest writing (thanks so much for your continued interest!), I’ve already included articles and books I found especially read-worthy in past issues from time to time. Inspired by Stewart Brand, I want to approach this in a more structured way from now on. Last year, my brother gave me John Markoff’s book What the Dormouse Said as a birthday present, which tells the story of personal computing. Reading it, I was so intrigued by the character of Stewart Brand that I read his biography—Whole Earth, also written by John Markoff.
Stewart Brand’s philosophy of Access to Tools was brought to life through the creation of the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968. The Catalog’s purpose was to provide diverse tools to emerging counterculture communities, self-sufficient households embracing rural living, and individuals pioneering advancements in technology, design, and architecture. Steve Jobs described the Whole Earth Catalog as “Google in paperback form, thirty-five years before Google came along” in his famous 2005 Stanford commencement address. Before the era of search engines, access to tools and information was much more complicated, so people had to rely on curated catalogs. Then, for a brief period of time, the World Wide Web had exactly the right size so that you could find the most useful stuff through a simple Web search. However, nowadays, search engines are so broken by SEO and SEA marketing, and there is such an immense overflow of all kinds of tools and information, that the need for curation has reëmerged.
This is what I want to do with the new “Access to Tools” section in this newsletter. From now on, in each issue, I will share with you up to 3 tools I find particularly helpful, and up to 3 articles and/or books I find particularly worthy to read. For this first occasion, let me start with some obvious suggestions (at least for the “reading” part).
Reading
📖 What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff. This book delves into the history of personal computers, examining the strong connection between the ideology of the collaborative defense research community of the (post-)World War II era and the budding cooperatives and psychedelic culture of the American counterculture in the 1960s.
📖 Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff. This biography explores the diverse and vibrant life of Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and key driver of the “Access to Tools” philosophy, tracing his journey from an influential figure in the Bay Area counterculture to his roles as a business consultant and advocate for nuclear power and genetically modified organisms.
Tools
🛠 12ft.io is a website that enables you to bypass online paywalls by masquerading as a search engine crawler during webpage requests.
🛠 oldgamesdownload.com is an archival project that compiles a comprehensive database of abandoned video games from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s. It allows you to rediscover cherished games from your childhood that were released on different platforms.
🛠 urban-vpn.com is a free virtual private network (VPN) service that provides high-speed connections and unlimited bandwidth. It leverages an extensive network of fast VPN servers across 80+ locations.
⁂
Enjoy reading and until next time. As always, I welcome your feedback and comments on my articles and this newsletter. Simply reply to this email to share your thoughts.
Cheers,
Max
☕️ If you have enjoyed this issue of ToDUX, a coffee is always highly appreciated: Buy me a coffee
⁂
This is an issue of my newsletter Tales of Design & User Experience (& Other Stuff)—abbreviated ToDUX—that has been cross-posted here for archival reasons. If you want to get my latest takes and writing delivered straight to your inbox, you can subscribe at maxspeicher.com/newsletter. 🗞
2008 – Tales of Design & User Experience 