Amazon recently emailed me with the subject line “Amazon.com: Automated Refund of Your Prime Video Rental(s)”.

With Netflix tanking a couple of weeks ago, it’s as good as a time as any to revisit personal consumer subscriptions. With inflation on the rise and consumers feeling the squeeze, I wonder what these consumer-subscription-based businesses are doing to retain consumers and continue to grow their revenues, especially as some of them approach market saturation. Understandably, it seems that many are starting to crack down on sharing accounts.

I read nearly a book a week about technology, management principles or corporate histories. These remain my top recommendations to understand Silicon Valley history and principles.

Following up from last week’s Design Critique breakdown, here are a series of phrases that are common in modern SAAS design critiques.

• “First read”
• “Eye is drawn”
• “Draw your eyes up”
• “Similarity”
• “They are related”
• “Whitespace”
• “Layout”
• “Font size”
• “Typeface”
• “Contrast”
• “Pop”
• “Size”
• “Color”
• “Sectioning”
• “Bombardment of information”
• “Nav bar”
• “Logo”
• “Menu bars”
• “Radio button”
• “Visible”
• “Breaking down into steps vs showing someone everything at once”
• “Consistency”
• “Horizontal vs vertical layout”
• “Whitespace as an object itself…showing what goes together”
• “Gestalt — these particular groups”
• “Focus”
• “Relative font size”
• “Small target to hit with a mouse, finger” (re: Fitt’s Law)

Demos are expensive: they take a lot of time to build, and a lot of thought and effort. This scares a lot of teams…spending a month iterating on a single design idea, and perhaps it won’t ship? It’s risky. Still, demos are a required part of the journey of building a product. Whether you’re a product manager, designer or engineer, demos are the single most important tool to convince others of your idea early on.