Top Product Management and UX Articles of 2021

In my opinion, these were the best product management and UX articles of 2021, which is the 6th year I’ve compiled this list. I read quite a few articles, and I’m very happy to include some new authors on the list this year. I hope you all enjoy the list as we look toward a brighter 2022.

Product Management

1. Product Sprawl by Rich Mironov … Read it at https://www.mironov.com/sprawl
2. The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More by Pete Flint … Read it at https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing
3. How Product Can (and Can’t) Speed Up Development by Rich Mironov … Read it at https://www.mironov.com/productive
4. What Are Survival Metrics? How Do They Work? by Adam Thomas … Read it at https://builtin.com/product/survival-metrics-product-management
5. ICED Theory — Growing Infrequent Products by Vivek Kumar … Read it at https://www.reforge.com/blog/iced-theory-growing-infrequent-products
6. A Framework for Understanding Market Problems by Saeed Khan … Read it on Medium
7. A Framework for Understanding Value by Saeed Khan … Read it on Medium
8. Don’t Let Ego-Driven Development Drive Your Product Creation by Adam Thomas … Read it at https://builtin.com/product/ego-driven-development
9. Service design for product managers by Emily Patterson … Read it on Medium
10. Lifting the Feature Factory Boulder by Katie Saindon … Read it on Medium

Honorable mentions:

• The Risks of Replatforming by Rich Mironov … Read it at https://www.mironov.com/replatforming
• Your guide to SaaS packaging by Kyle Poyar … Read it on Substack
• A New Way To Tell if a Company Is Truly Product-Led by Kyle Poyar … Read it at https://openviewpartners.com/blog/how-to-tell-product-led
• The Growing Specialization of Product Management by Adam Fishman and Keya Patel … Read it at https://www.reforge.com/blog/product-specializations

UX

1. Design for Safety, An Excerpt by Eva PenzeyMoog … Read it at https://alistapart.com/article/design-for-safety-excerpt
2. There’s no such thing as fully automated web accessibility by Anna E. Cook … Read it on Medium
3. Legibility in User Interfaces by Nitish Khagwal … Read it at https://prototypr.io/post/legibility-in-user-interfaces
4. Best Practices For Modal Window Design by Nick Babich … Read it on Medium
5. A Comprehensive Guide to AI Assistant Design by Nick Babich … Read it on Medium
6. Getting Started with Journey Mapping: 27 Tips from Practitioners by Alita Joyce … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-tips
7. Designing Human-Machine Interfaces For Vehicles Of The Future by Nick Babich and Gleb Kuznetsov … Read it at https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/12/designing-human-machine-interfaces-future-vehicles
8. Recruiting and Screening Candidates for User Research Projects by Therese Fessenden … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/recruiting-screening-research-candidates
9. Dangerous UX: Consequential Options Close to Benign Options by Page Laubheimer … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/proximity-consequential-options
10. Overlay Overload: Competing Popups Are an Increasing Menace by Kate Moran … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/overlay-overload

Honorable mentions:

• Why You Cannot Trust Numbers from Qualitative Usability Studies by Raluca Budiu … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/true-score
• How Many Participants for Quantitative Usability Studies: A Summary of Sample-Size Recommendations by Raluca Budiu and Kate Moran … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/summary-quant-sample-sizes
• How To Create An Engaging And Useful Chatbot by Marli Mesibov … Read it at https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/01/create-engaging-useful-chatbot
• Scenario Mapping: Design Ideation Using Personas by Kim Salazar … Read it at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/scenario-mapping-personas

What did I forget to list? Please leave a comment and let me know. Note: I left out a lot of great podcasts and videos, but I hope someone else can compile a list of those.

2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016