Alexander Osterwalder

Strategyzer piece explaining that 42% of startups fail because they build the wrong thing, and the cure is a process that tests desirability, viability, and feasibility early. Useful when leaders want to set up an innovation process that doesn't waste years on a wrong idea.

Eric Ries

Eric Ries explains that the biggest source of waste in startups is building products no one wants, and frames it as a tactical mistake, not a technical one. Useful when a team is over-investing in build before testing demand.

David Bland

Live coaching session with Alex Osterwalder and David Bland on moving from a big idea to a validated business case using their Testing Business Ideas approach. Useful when a team needs to learn how to go from rough idea to evidence-backed plan.

Pablo Cruz Pou

Explains the core MVP idea from a venture investor and former founder, with examples like Airbnb and Uber that started small and scaled. Useful when a founder or product lead needs a refresher on what MVPs are really for.

Uzma Barlaskar

Uzma Barlaskar warns that being purely data-driven can push teams to optimize for clicks at the cost of users. Useful when leaders need a story to push back on metric-only decisions.

Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen explains why pure data-driven thinking can mislead teams and why data-informed gives room for vision and strategy. Useful when a team is over-rotating on metrics and missing bigger product bets.

Anthony Coppedge

Explores why proxy metrics in product design are controversial and argues that talking to users beats relying on proxy data. Useful when product teams are leaning hard on proxies and need a counterweight argument.

Sajal Chaplot

Frames growth design as a user-centered approach that uses experimentation to drive business metrics. Useful when a designer wants to shift their mindset from feature work to outcome-driven experiments.

Purnimaa Arya

Walks through how data-informed design uses both quantitative and qualitative input to inform decisions and iterate fast. Useful when a designer is trying to balance numbers and user feedback in their daily process.

Christopher Wong

Argues for a 'just enough data' approach where designers add lightweight data to lift impact, especially in low-maturity environments. Useful when a designer wants to bring data into work without taking on a full analytics role.

Michael S. Sandberg

Long-running blog focused on getting business partners excited about their data through good visualization. Useful when you want examples of charts that help business teams act on data.

Elias Isabel (formerly Axelsson Björklund)

Lists five reasons to combine qual and quant including deeper insight, the why and what, and modern tooling that makes mixing cheap. Useful when an insights leader is making the case for a mixed methods program inside their org.

Bruce Temkin

Lays out four traits of strong CX metrics: consistent, impactful, integrated, and continuous, drawing on Temkin Group research. Useful when a CX leader is rebuilding measurement to support real action and trade-offs.

Adam Maidment

Adam Maidment explains the benefits of iterative design for product and brand work. Useful when leaders need a simple pitch on why iteration is worth the time.

Product School

Product School video on building a culture of experimentation, told by an Optimizely PM. Useful when leaders need a real-world story to push experimentation in their org.

Eira Hayward

Eira Hayward starts a series on how product teams should think about experiments. Useful when teams are new to experimentation and need a clear primer.

Shane Doyle

Shane Doyle reflects on running many product experiments and what kept him coming back. Useful for PMs trying to build a personal habit of testing assumptions.

Mike Belsito

Mike Belsito shares lessons from product teams running experiments at scale. Useful when leaders want to learn from common pitfalls before standing up an experimentation program.

Jeff Gothelf

Jeff Gothelf's classic Smashing essay defines Lean UX as a way to get out of the deliverables business and into iterative, low-fi cycles with quick feedback. Useful when a team is buried in Photoshop comps instead of testing ideas.

Pavel Samsonov

Pavel Samsonov argues that Agile dogma blocks real iteration and that design methods (sketching many options, throwing them away) are cheaper ways to learn. Useful when teams ship to learn and stop short of real iteration.

Lindsey M. West Wallace PhD

Lindsey M. West Wallace argues we should stop dividing generative and evaluative research — most projects need both, and the split slows teams down. Useful when a research team is forced to pick one mode and a leader wants a counter-argument for blending.

Athena Lam

Athena Lam describes iterative research for relevant innovations — staying close to users while looking for surprise insights that point to new directions. Useful when a team wants research to push into new ideas instead of just confirming the current roadmap.

Sarah Weise

Sarah Weise's LinkedIn Learning course on iterative market research — how to set up a project, run small studies, and apply learning before the next round. Useful when a researcher wants a structured course to set up their first iterative program.

Matthew Duhe

Matthew Duhe explains how to master the iterative process in research — small loops, clear hypotheses, and built-in stops to reflect. Useful when a research team feels stuck in linear projects and wants a way to convert them into loops.

Bryan Zmijewski

Bryan Zmijewski argues speed wins in product design when teams pair rapid iterative testing with clear research questions. Useful when a team is debating depth versus speed and needs a frame for shipping signals fast without losing rigor.

Bryan Zmijewski

Bryan Zmijewski outlines iterative research as small, repeated experiments that compound into insight — built on the atomic research pillars of experiments, facts, insights, and recommendations. Useful when a team wants to run continuous research without standing up a heavy program.

Audrey Xu

Amplitude's overview of customer journey analytics — what it is, which tools to use, and example questions it answers, like where users churn and which paths convert. Useful when a team is shopping for a journey analytics approach and wants the basics laid out before tool selection.

Vy Alechnavicius

Podcast with Ha Phan on building product through experiments and emerging-tech UX at Zillow and GoPro. Useful when product leaders want stories about running R&D-style design teams.

Sandra Bermudez

Frames product validation as an art of managing risk before scaling. Useful when you need a way to talk about validation as risk management with leadership.

Reddit, Inc.

Subreddit where people share aesthetic data visualizations and get community feedback. Useful when you want a steady stream of dataviz examples and quick critique.

Nadieh Bremer

Personal story of moving from astronomer to dataviz designer through self-teaching, books, and community. Useful when you are switching into dataviz and want a real career path to learn from.

Stefanie Posavec

Year-long postcard project where two designers turned their lives into hand-drawn data visualizations. Useful when you want fresh inspiration for personal, analog ways to show data.

Nathan Yau

Long-running blog by Nathan Yau covering data visualization projects, tutorials, and analysis. Useful when you want a steady source of dataviz examples and design ideas.

Joseph Downs

Joseph Downs explores whether lean experimentation is the future of retail UX, with examples from real shops. Useful when a retail or commerce team is deciding how lean their UX process should be.

Natalia Maksymenko

Shares an alternative discovery framework that does not lean on opportunity solution trees. Useful when a team has tried OSTs and felt boxed in, and wants a different way to organize discovery thinking.

Kateřina Mňuková

Intro post to a product discovery series that frames why discovery matters and what to expect. Useful when a PM is onboarding a new teammate or stakeholder to the basics of discovery.

Brendan Marsh

Lays out a hands-on product discovery framework for teams that want to actually ship learning, not just talk about it. Useful when a team is stuck in a loop of stakeholder meetings and needs a concrete weekly rhythm.

Greg Tucker

Pairs key CX metrics with the tools that collect them, from in-product surveys to session replay. Useful when a team is choosing a CX tool stack and wants a shortlist tied to the metrics they care about.

Luke Korthals

Luke Korthals reports that across 900+ projects very few orgs consistently track UX KPIs, leaving teams to make gut-driven decisions. Useful when design teams need ammo to start a real KPI program.

Inspired X team

Inspire X newsletter outlines HCAI design and evaluation: people's needs come first, users participate actively, and evaluation mixes objective metrics with subjective ones like trust. Useful when teams need an evaluation rubric for AI products.

Kate Syuma

This article outlines growth design as a mindset that blends product design with growth strategy to drive key business outcomes like acquisition, activation, and retention, emphasizing behavioral psychology, data-informed decisions, rapid iteration, and clearly defined success metrics. Growth designers balance user experience quality with measurable impact and help cross-functional teams align design work with business goals. Use this when you’re deciding how to integrate design into growth strategy, prioritize metrics, and ensure design efforts contribute directly to product success.