Author Archives: jen leibhart

Mapping Experiences – Session wrap-up

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Thanks to Aconex, UX Melbourne and the UX Design Group of Melbourne for inviting Jim Kalbach out to Oz and pairing with us to host this event.

Jim is the author of 2 books: Designing Web Navigation and his latest Mapping Experiences. Our focus for the evening was mapping experiences.

Currently, Jim works at MURAL which helps teams design together when they are working remotely. He started out as a librarian, moved into the information architecture direction – which finally landed him in the UX space. He spent some time at Citrix leading with the design experience across the SaaS communications cloud.

 

[pullquote]”Start with the customer experience and work back to the technology, not the other way around” Steve Jobs, 1996[/pullquote]

Getting the Apple reference out of the way early :-), Jim talked about the need for the customer to come first with everything you do which will in turn create value for the business. Steve Jobs wasn’t the first to talk about this concept though as Jim shared a reference from Theodore Levitt.

[pullquote]“that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products.” Theodore Levitt, 1960[/pullquote] In 1960, Theodore coined the term ‘Marketing Myopia’ and talked about the value comes from the customer.

With the scene set for customer focus, Jim took us through his four principles.

  1. Survival requires a reversal in business thinking: start with the experience and creates value from there.
  2. The aspiration of design should be more than “delight”. We help re-align the business perspective by visualising (actual) value.
  3. Mapping experiences leverages our design skills to become facilitators and grass roots leaders in the organisation
  4. Shift your measure of progress from generating and testing ideas to validated learning about your riskiest assumptions.

Survival requires a reversal in business thinking: start with the experience and create value from there.

Maps help with visualising value.

A beautiful example Jim used showed the process of buying a house, mapped out by Sofia Hossain. Sofia uses a circular style for her visualisations which really stands out. This style also shows the contribution of external vs internal activities

Most of the experiences a customer has will repeat themselves. There may be a long time between buying your first house til the next time but the cycle starts again in the same way each time.

An example of her work on planning events is here. .

The individual and the organisation overlap by a certain amount and that overlap is where the “exchange of value” occurs. This set of interactions or touch points is where it can all go marvelously wrong or beautifully right. If you don’t understand what these are you can only keep throwing solutions at symptoms instead of fixing the problem permanently.

This is where Alignment Diagrams become are great. They’re useful and important to help you understand these points of interaction plus help you communicate the situation to others in your organisation. Use them to help build brilliant products & to communicate what needs to be involved to resolve problems faced by the customer.

A couple of examples of different ways to do customer experience maps included mental models (Indi Young) and spatial maps (Paul Kahn), but anything that makes it visual and drives conversation falls into the group of alignment diagrams. 

The aspiration of design should be more than “delight”: We help re-align the business perspective by visualising (actual) value.

The designer needs to be a facilitator for a broader conversation in the organisation.

You are driving all the steps: 

  • Initiate
  • Investigate
  • Illustrate
  • Align
  • Envision

 An experience map by being visual and drawn together in a collaborative way becomes a “campfire that draws people in” to talk and huddle over. This metaphor is particularly powerful to remember the purpose of these efforts and a reminder that if a team is working on a map but it is hidden away in a room where no one can see it, then it isn’t doing its job.

One has to follow through with the information gathered and run experiments to prove a solution will work. It is pretty easy these days to prototype, test and thus learn. Be careful with your definition of MVP…..

Again a process to encourage Empathy, expand out to Envision, converge again as you Evaluate and then Plan experiments to learn.

Mapping experiences leverages our design skills to become facilitators and grass roots leaders in the organisation.

An organisation already has more than enough ideas. Ideas are overrated and assuming the best idea will just rise to the top is not owning the outcomes. To find the kernals within ideas that are worthy of being implemented, you need an active process. Use a hypothesis format to ensure concepts are properly tested & evaluated. The structure below starts with ‘we believe’ as it sets the stage to help remind youself that you don’t know.

We believe providing [individual, customer, user] with this [feature, solution, service] will result in this [desired outcome].We will know this when we see [measurable result].

Shift your measure of progress from generating and testing ideas to validated learning about your riskiest assumptions.

Jim’s last point is a good reminder! Often we focus on “proving out” ideas and concepts and possibly we are just adding to our confirmation bias – whereas what we really want to know is what we don’t know!

Thanks again to Aconex for putting on a fabulous event and coordinating this fantastic opportunity!

Jim’s slides:

 

RSVP for our next event on April 14th – Roadmaps: Friend or Enemy?

API Product Management & PM in general – a Googler’s perspective

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We hope you can join us on Thursday March 17th when Elena Kelareva, Product Manager at Google, talks with us about product managing APIs and product management at Google. RSVP now.

From the API perspective, the session will help you evaluate if an API would benefit your product by examining the potential benefits – like driving adoption, enabling niche use cases and opening up new revenue streams. Elena will also cover product strategy for your API, give a high-level overview of API design considerations, and present several issues to watch out for, such as differences between web and native mobile APIs, dealing with authentication and abuse, and what to do if your API ends up being too popular or not popular enough.

Elena will use examples from the Google Maps APIs as well as several well known APIs for other products.

And because there’s always questions on how Google does product management, Elena will also share her experiences.

Elena Kelareva is the Product Manager for the Google Maps Web APIs, including the JavaScript Maps API, used by over 2 million websites. She has a PhD in Computer Science from the Australian National University, and has previously worked as a Software Engineer at OMC International, building software that improves safety and prevents ship groundings at some of the world’s largest cargo ports.

Thanks to Envato for hosting!!

February session: Using Google Design Sprints for Innovation

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When the folks at Seek decided to explore a potential new market opportunity, they wanted to come up with ideas & test them quickly. To do so, they used a process similar to Google Ventures Design Sprints.

On Thursday Feb 18th, Product Manager Rob Alford & Lead UX Designer Rob Scherer will discuss their goals, lessons learned & what happened after the design sprint. They will also share how they modified the methodology to drive innovation, engagement & collaboration.

Join us for the 1st session of 2016 – RSVP now!

Our wonderful sponsors for the evening are Thoughtworks.

If you’d like to read about the Google Design Sprints Methodology before the session, do so at Google Ventures.

RSVP

Agile Australia is looking for Product & UX speakers

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This June (2016!), Agile Australia is hosting their next conference – ‘Towards an Agile Country’.

They have put out a call for speakers – deadline of March 11th (it is never too early to start thinking!).

AND they are looking for submissions for the ‘Build the Right Product’ topic.

They thought some of us might be interested 🙂

Have a look & get in touch with them if you have any questions.

Agile Australia are especially interested in case studies. Anyone who’s been using the lean/product/biz canvas to plan & communicate and happy to share learnings should have a read of their site. And if can talk about iterating with customer feedback, they’d like to hear from you too.

For our UX folks, check the ‘Design Mindset‘ topic

Would be awesome to have our Product Anonymous folks represent at this conference! Check it out now…

November event: End of year social

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Why does Product Anonymous always have a ‘social’ in November?

  • Because November is our birthday – Product Anonymous is turning 5 this year!!!
  • Because part of Product Anonymous’s mandate is to get product people meeting other product people & this event gives you much more time to say hi than our usual evening events.
  • Because it means one less speaker Jen & Liz need to organise 🙂

Yes, it’s all about saying hi to people you’ve met at other Product Anon events this year or making new friends.

We don’t have a speaker but you can tell us what you’d like to hear about next year & suggest speakers.

And we need to celebrate everyone who’s attended a Product Anonymous event, helped out at an event, re-tweeted us, the companies who sponsored our events, told their friends about Product Anonymous and everything else that has helped get us to our 5th birthday! Thank you!!!

Our sponsors for this event are Versent and Level 3.

Hope to see you there!!

RSVP

Our Sponsors

Versent:
We are a young consultancy where we do our best to change the face of enterprise IT. We believe in bringing craftsmanship back to technology, building the best and most solid systems on the largest scales. We are currently hiring and interested in hearing from anyone with passion careers@versent.com.au

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Level 3:
Level 3 is a purpose built collaborative space for events, hackathons, industry meetups, product development and desk rental in the heart of the CBD. Please enquire with us if you interested in renting the space enquiry@level3.space

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Wrap-up September: Product Management at Startups

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This month we talked about product management at startups including how you know when you need to hire a product manager at a start-up.

Our experienced panel to help us in this discussion were:

Megan Linton – currently a Product Manager at Flippa.com but has also worked at TradeMe where scaling was definitely challenging.

Nick Kenn – is General Manager at Flippa.com, hired their first product manager and knows how hard that first recruit is.

Chris Dahl – co-founder of Nitro and currently BDM at Pin Payments. He has grown a product team at Nitro and currently works in a start-up so had lots of valuable insight to share.

Jason Kotchoff – who is a software engineer turned entrepreneur and just had some great coverage for his product StockLight. He is currently doing this all himself so had some insight into why he hasn’t hired product so far and some advice on working with product people.

When did you first recruit or encounter a product manager?

Nick opened the session talking about the first time he had to hire a Product Manager at SitePoint. He had to first understand what aspects of product management the business needed then what types of Product Manager would be attracted to a business with no formal history of the discipline.

There is a lot to consider when bringing in the discipline for the first time.

Megan was one of the first PM’s to join TradeMe and certainly found it challenging to manage the role. Product managers came in really late in the game (10+ years late) and she realised she had to be a chameleon to get things done.

It is a tough gig to be the “jack of all trades” but the master of none and manage the communication that is needed to keep so many people informed as to what is going on with product.

Chris knew he needed product people once he realised he couldn’t get everything done himself and needed help.

The key thing he looked for was culture fit. Chris had some experience making wrong hires but realised that everything except attitude can be taught. It’s better to choose the right fit than try to find a person who can do everything!

[pullquote] Everyone wants a unicorn![/pullquote]

Jason hasn’t hired a product person. His needs have usually required technical knowledge, capability to really drive innovation and the work instead of asking for or suggesting product ideas that just aren’t feasible.

With a lot of engineers already in-house, Jason feels a real clarity of technical language is critical.

What were the teething problems bringing in product?

This question tapped into the scaling perspective.

Megan experienced rapid growth at TradeMe and jumped in first on this question. Communication was difficult to manage as the company grew. Ensuring information flowed from the product team to all staff and all staff back to product was a challenge.

Nick talked about how incoming ideas are difficult to coordinate and the challenge of letting people know if they will be used, actioned or followed up on.

What is great about working at a start-up as a product manager?

You can’t hide anywhere!

What about your relationship with the founder? How do you manage this?

There were a few comments about the founder continuing to be involved with product and sometimes not always in alignment with what may have been agreed to as the current plan.

The audience joined in with some comments at this point about their experience. One topic was whether their founder was “a product person” or not. If the founder is, it can be very helpful as they understand the value of product management rather than needing it proven to them.

You certainly need to be ready to build trust with the founder.

They need to realise that you will evangelise their product as well as they do and bring a helpful impartiality to the discussion. You help bring data and user tests to the thinking as well as know how to execute on the exciting and visionary ideas.

Plus of course you just need to do whatever needs to be done to to suit that company and that product at the time!

Thanks again to Flippa for being a wonderful host and sponsor!

June event: Innovation at Large Companies

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Last month we had startups and this month we’re going to the other end of the spectrum with our topic – Innovating in Large Enterprises.

According to this HBR article, large companies are bad at being innovative because they are designed to be bad at innovation. They measure success by profit, not product/market fit. Efficient operation that leverages existing assets, distribution channels & focuses on their best customers will help profit, repeatable & scalable will help profit – not the risk of innovation.

Our panel will talk about their experiences in innovating at large enterprises & answer your questions. We’ll be discussing:

  • How do you make room for failure? Getting resources for the project vs covering your ass. How can we overcome the fear of failure
  • Making time for innovation. You need to have time to think strategically but there might be a big problem if you’re not delivering. How do you balance the two?
  • How should your KPIs change if you’re trying to be more innovative?
  • What steps can you take tomorrow to change things?

Our Facilitator: Daniel Kinal – Daniel has been in product management for over 12 years, chiefly working IT with a focus on B2B products. He’s passionate about helping businesses become more effective in decision-making, more efficient in their processes and more engaging with their customers.

He is at his happiest when waving his arms about in front of a whiteboard with a bunch of smart people, exploring problems and weighing up solutions. He’s passionate about product management as a discipline and is intrigued by how businesses, large and small, grapple with the sometimes elusive concept of innovation. He will guide us through the discussion and bring some challenging questions for our panellists.

Our Panel:

1. Jamie Skella – When we first started talking with Jamie about this event, he was deep in the land of large enterprises but has recently left for a startup 😉

Currently Director of Innovation and UX at a new tech startup, Jamie has dedicated over a decade to strategy and design for the likes of the AFL, Coles, Telstra, Tatts Lottery and TAB. His long held belief is that building the best digital products can only be achieved with an intimate understanding of your customers, the pursuit of simplicity, and the seizing of technological opportunity.

2. Andrew Niere – has led the Technology Innovation Fund at the State Government of Victoria and has managed innovation in government for over five years; he also founded and managed a game development business for a decade so is very familiar with the challenges of product management.

3. Mark Andrew – During a long career in senior IT management roles at Telstra, Mark Andrew delivered  a bunch of different applications including ops support systems and front of house CRM using a variety of then innovative approaches and techniques in the days pre-Agile. Mark also implemented Telstra’s first Usability lab in Telstra, using design-based thinking and usability observation tools to craft effective user experiences.

After leaving Telstra in the early noughties, Mark spent almost 9 years at Lonely Planet in various roles including LP’s IT Delivery Manager, and Digital Ops Director.  Mark played a key role in introducing Agile to LP and growing it’s lean and agile maturity. Mark is now in charge of Sensis’ Websites product.

While Mark would not call himself an innovator, he believes that innovation in even small ways should be an intrinsic part of our work lives, and should be fostered and nurtured at every opportunity.

RSVP now for Thursday June 18th. This month we’re being hosted and sponsored by Nintex.

nintex-logo

“We’re fun. We’re hardworking. We’re friendly. We’re passionate about what we do. We’re Ninsters.”

Nintex are continually growing and always on the lookout for talented, passionate people who want to work for a company that encourages, supports and rewards you. Our culture embraces integrity, teamwork and innovation. Our work environment inspires your best work. Fresh thinking is not only encouraged, but expected. Innovative ideas, excited conversation and impactful projects are all in a day’s work here.

 

How do *you* manage products?

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Often it seems the product manager role is different depending on where you work, who you work with, what stage the company is in & the current understanding of the value of product management.

Three companies will share how they work and manage product – their structure, how they work with other teams, their challenges and how the team brings value to the business. Each company will give a short presentation on their area and then we will throw to the audience for questions.

Redbubble – will talk about the differences and likenesses between physical and web product development. Nick Cust, Product Director and Vicki Stirling, Physical Product Director will talk about each of their sides of the business to dive into the similarities and the distinction between them.

Envato – Envato boasts a community of over 5 million creatives, but dedicated Product Management is a relatively new concept for the company. While growing a team alongside rapid expansion in engineering, the Product team at Envato continually focus on better ways to meet the needs of their highly talented and passionate global community. Luke Meehan, Product Manager and Stewart Boon, Product Director will talk about how they get things done with a global, two sided community of authors and buyers.

Zendesk – Zendesk has 20 scrum teams on 4 different continents building customer service software. In his short presentation Aaron Cottrell will outline what has worked, what hasn’t and where Zendesk is continuing to improve as a globally distributed product company.

A big thank you to Redbubble for being our hosts for the evening! RSVP here.

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Enhance your communication skills with sketching

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Liz & I are very excited about our March session on visual communication (ok, we get really excited about all of our sessions but can you blame us for having such amazing speakers?!).

So much of the product manager job is communicating and since we deal with so many different groups in the business, we need to be able to communicate differently. This month, Rebecca Jackson, will help us communicate more visually…

Thursday March 19th

RSVP!

Our brains are wired to understand and remember images more than words, so how can we put forward our ideas visually to take advantage of the way our brains work? Rebecca Jackson, sketchnoter and visual communicator, will share how we can use visual note taking in meetings, presentations and life to explain, influence and remember.

Rebecca will cover:

  • Why visual communication is awesome
  • How to introduce it into your work & life
  • Tools, tips & resources
  • Real time practice, try sketching for yourself in the session

If you’ve sketched a wireframe, you have effectively used visuals to assist in communicating a shared vision. Take the next step and RSVP now for March 19th.

Rebecca Jackson is a Social Media Manager by day, visual communicator by night. She has a background in Intranets, Marketing and Retail and an interest in change management and user experience design. After recently re-discovering her love of visual communication she spends much of her spare time sketching. She’s also a bit of a sci-fi nerd who is known to jog and practice yoga.

Note: We recommend you bring along your notebook and pen(s) of choice so you can participate in this interactive session. (We will have on hand if you forget).