We need more companies like Medium
Today, Medium’s CEO Ev Williams made a quite intriguing announcement: Medium is taking a few steps back in the direction they were headed to, reducing their team in about one third and eliminating 50 jobs in sales, support, and other business functions.
Bringing Medium’s announcement to a smaller scale: this is a good example of design decisions UX Designers and Product Designers have to make every day. When we’re deciding which features to prioritize in our product, one of the most common challenges we have is to balance out the user’s interests with the brand’s interests, to ensure what we are building is both relevant and sustainable from a business perspective.
Now step back for a second and stop thinking in terms of “interests”.
Think about “mission”.
It’s not about choosing the features that are going to bring you the highest short-term value, but choosing the ones that will keep your brand’s values in check — the ones that will give your brand enough runway to achieve their long-term vision. A tough design decision that becomes more and more important in a world bloated of features, services and snowflakes.
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