The Metaverse gets legs and Google's new Workspace APIs
Plus how to onboard new UX hires and Microsoft unveils its vision of hybrid working. Product Briefing, 14th October, 2022
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Hello product people,
TikTok is reportedly planning to build its own warehousing infrastructure to support its push into ecommerce. Following a successful trial of live shopping features and a major partnership with Shopify that allows consumers to connect their storefront to the app, the social giant is now hiring logistics managers for a global fulfilment centre. With social media apps notoriously difficult to monetize, TikTok clearly sees ecommerce as a major opportunity for monetization.
Speaking of social apps, BeReal’s domination of the app charts continues as it proudly sits atop the charts in many countries around the world with a whopping 53 million installs (more than Instagram had when it was acquired). But things might not be as rosy as they seem. According to research by app engagement company SensorTower, just 9% of the app’s users open it every day. This compares rather unfavourably with Instagram at 39% and TikTok at 29%. The French startup will be hoping its initial success can be sustained but based on these leaked engagement figures, the company has a lot to do to keep users engaged beyond the initial buzz.
In other news, Meta held a major launch event this week as the company unveiled its vision of the future. Meta’s hardware event included a new high spec VR headset, the Quest Pro, and the announcement of third party app support from Microsoft. The partnership with Microsoft will mean that Meta users can access Microsoft Office tools such as Teams in VR. The company also announced that avatars will get legs for the first time. Naturally, not everyone was impressed. You can watch the whole event here.
Not to be outshone, Google also made some major announcements of its own this week - some of which will be of interest to product teams. A new set of APIs will allow third parties to create and manage Meet events with Asana as a launch partner. Plus, new Meet add-ons will make it possible to integrate tools like Figma directly into a meeting.
Finally, if you’re looking for creative new ways to showcase design prototypes to stakeholders, this new tool has you covered.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
New technology
Mark Zuckerberg unveils new 3d renderings of avatars
New product launches - Microsoft unveils new Places app for hybrid working
Microsoft previewed a new app that will attempt to help companies, workers, and real estate facilities managers address some of the emerging challenges of the new era of hybrid work. Among them: showing up in the office to find that everyone else on the team is working from home; conducting a virtual meeting with a colleague who turns out to be just down the hall; or realizing too late that the conference room you’ve reserved is too small for the number of people who showed up in the office that day. (Geek Wire)
Process - How to successfully onboarding new UX hires
If your team or organization already has an existing onboarding process, you’ve already got a head start! Your main task will be making it specific to UX and the tasks that they will be working on. (NN Group)
Design - Why simple isn’t always better: an argument against superficial simplicity
Many designers have internalized the quote attributed to Leonardo, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” We love to make things simple. Simple things are easier to use than complicated or messy things. Simple is more beautiful and desirable.But simple isn’t always better. (Sarah Dorweiler)
Skills - How product managers should work with scope
The scope of a functionality covers the number and quality of features, the level of technical excellence (built as a robust solution vs. hacked together), and overall the amount of work put into it. It’s easy to suggest out-scoping items if there is time pressure, but the question is: would the feature still be as valuable — or very close to that — as customers expect them when they’re paying for it? (UX Planet)
Technical explainers - Object oriented programming explained
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a style of programming that focuses on using objects to design and build applications. In object-oriented programming, each object is a separate entity created, manipulated, and destroyed independently. (Hackernoon)
New product features - Google Meet adds automatic meeting transcriptions
Until now, you needed a third-party service like Otter to record and transcribe your call for you. Now it’s a built-in service. The new feature is now available for meetings in English, with support for French, German, Spanish and Portuguese coming in 2023. (TechCrunch)
Product strategy
Former Google software engineer Warren Craddock on why internal momentum is difficult to stop even when all the signals suggest you’re building the wrong product:
Other product news in brief
Spotify is acquiring Kinzen, a company that detects harmful content
CNN shuts down its NFT project amid accusations of a rugpull
Twilio unveils Richard Whitt as VP of public policy
Life in the metaverse is lonely as daily transactions plummet to just 38 on Decentraland
Facebook is closing Bulletins, its newsletter service designed to rival Substack
Amplitude welcomes Tifenn Dano Kwan as chief marketing officer
UK security agencies warn the expansion of China’s tech, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), threaten global security
Product Stacks episodes 1-5 recap
In our Product Stacks series we chat to product people from top companies including Google, Shopify, Uber and more to understand how they do product - and what you can learn from their set up. Here’s a recap on the episodes so far:
Camilla at Uber shares PRDs, one to one templates and more
Majed at Venmo talks team set up, Jira and confluence
Christin at Shopify shares PR FAQ templates, product team set up and how to do an assumption slam
Diego at Google talks the importance of understanding the why before the how and how to juggle dependencies when building hardware products
Suji at LinkedIn shares how she uses Figma, Slack and G Suite to supercharge productivity
Keep an eye out for the next batch of episodes coming soon with more product people from top companies.
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