Product Cards Update - New cards, new design, release plan

Getting you up-to speed with the current state of Product Cards.

It’s been three months since I announced Product Cards, a curated set of 100+ cards to help you improve your product engineering teams (learn more here about the concept). 

I spent quite some time showing Product Cards to people, seeing how they play with it, and gathering feedback.

The interest I got is heartwarming. There are still a couple hundred people constantly nudging me about letting them in as early adopters - I thank you for the support and ask you to be more patient. :)

This week, I wanted to quickly get you up to speed with the current state of Product Cards.

Roadmap

Here is the product roadmap so far:

What’s new in Product Cards?

Since the announcement in May, I’ve spent much time refining the card design based on your feedback. I wanted to make the cards more straightforward, helpful, and fun.

New cards

I’ve been working hard to create more cards for Product Cards. Currently, there are 112 cards in total, in different stages of progress.

Introduced Card category

I introduced a concept of card category to help you navigate hundreds of cards.

A card category is a visual cue that points to a specific area the card belongs to.

Want to work on improving your team’s Direction? Look for 🟧 orange borders. Looking for all the Challenges out there? Grab the 🟥 red-border cards.

This way, you can easily find the cards you’re looking for, especially in the physical version where you don’t have a set of filters in the UI.

Added back-side

For the physical version of Product Cards, I’ve designed a back-side for each card. 

The back side contains practical tips and examples on applying the concept from the front side.

It also provides links to other cards (marked with a bolder font and an icon) and a handy QR code to expand the concept further. 

New cover art-style

After playing around with a few design concepts, I finally settled on one art style. It keeps the sci-fi vibe, but it’s more cohesive and intriguing. 

Here are some examples of the new designs:

New card art styles

I will update all the existing cards with the new style soon.

Updated visual design

Card designs have been overhauled. They’re cleaner and simpler now.

Bigger cards

To fit more useful content on the physical cards, I’ve decided to increase the card size. They are now 88mm x 145mm, compared to 63.5mm x 88mm before.

This also makes them easier to read and handle.

Here is a comparison of the old and new sizes:

Removed card rarity

The first version of the card had a rarity indicator inspired by RPG or TCG games. The rarity was supposed to reflect how common or uncommon a particular practice was in the industry and how impactful it could be for your team. For example, product vision is less common than Scrum, so that it would have a higher rarity.

However, I decided to remove this feature because it created unwanted bias - people favored “rarer” cards over “common” ones. Rarity does not always mean better. For example, the SAFE framework is rather rare, but I don’t recommend it.

Public alpha (Digital version) in Q4

I plan to launch a public alpha version of Product Cards (Digital version) in Q4 this year.

You will be able to access and use Product Cards online without waiting for the physical version.

The digital version will have some features that are not possible with the physical version, such as:

• Search and filter cards by category, keyword, or connection

• Save and share your favorite cards or collections

• Rate and review cards and give feedback

• Suggest new cards or edits to existing ones

• And more!

I will share more details about the public alpha soon, so stay tuned!

People who already signed up for early access will have the priority. You can still sign up for the early access list here.

What’s next?

I plan to roll early alpha to more and more people in the coming months.

My areas of focus for the next year are:

1. Official digital version of product cards

2. Physical cards

3. Detailed guides for each card (digital version)

4. Mobile companion app

I hope you enjoyed this update and are as excited as I am about Product Cards.

I’m still working hard to make Product Cards the best tool for improving your teams.

Let me know in the comments section below if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

I truly appreciate your support so far. ❤️

Until next time, Piotr.

P.S. If you haven’t signed up for the early access list yet, don’t miss this opportunity to get Product Cards before anyone else. Just click on the button below and enter your email address. It’s that simple!