In this week's episode of The REWORK Podcast, 37signals’ co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson share their approach to product design, explaining why the first version of a product (V1) is always built for the company's internal use case. They discuss responding to user feedback and the importance of actively using their own products to uncover issues. They also dive into the challenges they've faced when building software for someone else's needs vs. their own.

Key Takeaways:

00:35 - The problem with imagined use cases
07:21 - A trimmed down V1 gives you permission to focus on what's most important
10:28 - The story of Highrise
17:27 - “Dogfooding” to help identify and address product issues
20:48 - Avoid the temptation to react too quickly to early customer feedback
23:11 - Design breakthroughs come to life by creating innovative solutions

Links and Resources:

Version 1 is for you – Jason Fried's HEY World post

Books by 37signals

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HEY World | HEY

The REWORK podcast

The Rework Podcast on YouTube

The 37signals Dev Blog

37signals on YouTube

@37signals on X

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