 Oh, hi there. My name's Brittany and I'm gonna tell you today about the four essential books you have to read if you're a product designer. I'm reading them all at once. Like one big book. These four books are actually a requirement to work at AJ & Smart. Every single person on our staff has to read them. So before we get started, just to let you know, we have linked all of the books in our description. So I'm gonna go through the books, tell you what they're about, what you can expect. Let's do it. Book number one is our Bible. It's called Sprint. Jake Knapp is the author of Sprint and basically this book is like every product designer needs to know how to run a design sprint and this book walks you through all of the exercises. So a design sprint is actually a one week process where you go from an idea or a challenge to a user tested prototype. He gives you really concrete examples of how to use sprints. And honestly, this book pretty much changed the game for AJ & Smart. We read this and we've never looked back. What I love about this book is that it's so concrete and the amount of examples that are in it from real world startups and businesses is amazing. So he's not just talking about a theory. He's actually run design sprints. By this point, hundreds of them. With real businesses, real startups. And you actually get to see the sprint in action and you see kind of the powerful outcome that the design sprint really can have. The book is incredible. It's like really fun to read as well. It's not a boring read, which is great. So props to you, Jake Knapp. Well done, well written and a game changer, honestly. If you haven't read this yet, you have to. So this is definitely the number one. So book number two is by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown and it's called Hacking Growth. Now this book is so powerful for a product designer. I have to say though, for this book, it is for the product designer who wants to have a little bit more of a strategic impact on the business. So we're not talking about specific design tools and techniques, we're actually talking about growth. So this book actually walks you through how to design a growth team and how to run growth experiments. But the whole idea is to focus in on the business or the product or the service in really specific ways. So you're looking at things like acquisition, retention, and activation. And how can you improve those aspects of your product? It's actually a breakdown of how to run growth experiments. We were in Manchester recently running a growth sprint workshop, which what is that? Great question. So that's something between a hacking growth experiment and a design sprint. We kind of combined the two, which the ultimate, right? So this was a one day workshop with 70 people. We made this video to walk you through exactly how the workshop runs. So you can definitely check that one out as well. Here at A.JaneSmart we've all read Hacking Growth. It has changed the way that we actually see our own internal agency run and the way that we're helping our clients design their products. We're thinking in terms of growth, which means that we're having a bigger impact on the bottom line of the business. And as a product designer, there's no greater value you can give. So number two on the list and very close to number one is Hacking Growth. So book number three is The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath, also known as The Heath Brothers. So what's really cool about this book is basically the whole premise of it is that there are moments in our lives that impact us. They're either positive moments or negative moments, but quite often these moments of impact that we will always remember happen sort of by chance. The idea that Chip and Dan Heath get into in The Power of Moments is what if we could create those positive moments for our customers? It's about actually creating products and services that are sticky with your customers. And when I say sticky, I don't mean sticky. So what I mean by sticky is actually creating these moments that are very memorable for your customers, something that they'll remember and tell a friend about, you know, and that's what I love about this book is it's a very honest approach to creating good shit. Right? I think actually everyone working in any industry could really benefit from this book. Well done Heath Brothers. That was book number three. Book number four is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Now this book is really good for anybody who is a manager or has a manager. See what I did there? That's almost everybody. The advice that Kim gives in this book is coming from her days working at Apple, working at Google, working on some, like she was working in like a diamond mind? Whoa, what's it? It was something involving diamonds, I swear. We'll look into that and put it on the screen. The basic premise of this book is learning how to talk to people in a really honest way, which is really hard for a lot of people, including yours truly, I'm the worst, Canadian, you know, so I never want to hurt anybody's feelings. The stories that Kim Scott is telling in this book are also unbelievable. I mean, she's in meetings with Tim Cook, she was in meetings with Steve Jobs, just the way that she talks about it, she really brings up a lot of her mistakes that she's made and shares them so that we can actually learn how to be better managers, but also how to understand our managers a little bit better, and I think that's what's been a really big impact for me. I think we're often really eager to discount our managers and their abilities, but she really puts things into perspective, and I think that this is a really good read for anybody who's working within a team. So book number four is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Can I call you a Kimmy? Probably not, I don't think so. By the way, I feel like I've ordered these in order of importance, but that's not necessarily true, honestly. Whatever tickles your fancy first should be the first book you read. Okay, so to summarize, the four books you have to read if you're a product designer are Sprint by Jake Knapp, Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath, and Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Okay, hold on, let me pick those up again. By the way, they are being dropped onto a bean bag, so they're being treated really well. I know some people get bent out of shape about mistreating books, which I completely understand, because books are knowledge, and knowledge should not be mistreated. These four books are actually an essential at A.J. and SMART. Every employee has to read every single one of these. To be fair, this was just recently decided that these are gonna be the four books that everybody has to read. Thank you so much for watching this video. I wanted to give you just a little bit of an idea of what you can find in each one of these books, so you're not just blindly reading them, because I told you it's weird, you know? And you probably find one of them more interesting than the other, based on what they're about. That's usually how it works with books. Anyway, if you wouldn't mind liking this video if you liked it, that would be a huge help. And also subscribing, if this is the first video that you've seen of us, or if we just hadn't convinced you yet to subscribe. Now I'm begging, please subscribe. We have new videos coming out every week on product design, product strategy, building a business, running an agency, so there's tons of stuff to learn. Thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful day. Goodbye. I'm just reading. All the books at once. Hi, everyone. Oh. Callum, how are you doing with the four books? I'm sorry. You started? What does that mean, right? You're fired, okay? I'm doing it live on the camera. I love when people always say just like stop right there. When I say sticky, when I say sticky, did I say sticky too many times? I'm not going to say sticky, I'm just going to say it once again. Okay. Sorry. Oh God, was that recording? It was, wasn't it? Kim, I'm marketing your book for you. Whether it's like restaurant industry, you're working in whatever, I'm not going to name industries. Okay. Why would I start naming industries, Brittany? The advertising industry, I'm just like going on like listing all the industries. In a cocktail bar. When I met you. All right. Sorry, did I get it wrong? Yeah, okay.