The core user experience is not a set of features; in fact, it is the job users hire the product for. Uber’s core user experience is to get a taxi easily at any time. The countdown, displaying when exactly the taxi will arrive, is a suitable feature that expands this experience. But Uber’s product works regardless of this feature. The countdown, on the other hand, cannot live without the product (the certainty to get a taxi easily at any time). There is a one-way interrelationship between feature and product: Features don’t work without the product. This is why designers should think in products first.

Unfortunately, it’s an almost essential skill.We don’t have to accept everything in the world — but we do have to be able to accept when we fail, or accept when success doesn’t look the way we thought it would.

I worry sometimes that we’ve put too much weight on success. That we’ve sacrificed everything else to make success our religion and our creed, as though that’s where we can measure a life.

That’s where we get this idea that we’ve got to hack everything, or we’ve got to do everything. That’s where we get the incredibly misguided idea that people who are successful in one area must be experts in all others. We listen Jim Carey talk about vaccination like a few hit movies make him a medical expert.