Product Strategy

Qualitative versus quantitative data: we’ve all been involved in a conversation debating their respective merits at some point in our careers. We’re often flipping backwards and forwards between letting feedback from a handful of customers drive all our product decisions or requiring everything to be backed up by statistically significant data. So which type of Read more »

I was recently on a long haul flight and ended up whiling away my time watching random shows on the in-flight system. One of the shows I watched was a sitcom. I didn’t find it great (in fact I don’t remember chuckling at even one single joke) but I still ended up watching a bunch Read more »

Having spoken at conferences twice this year on the subject of design and emotion, I was spurred into writing this post by the number of people who gave me positive feedback. Why is Designing for Emotion so Important? When we recall past experiences, we are not wired to remember the whole experience with total accuracy. Read more »

If you can change the way that you behave, then you can start to experience the world in a different way. That then changes the way that you think. In this engaging talk from Mind the Product London 2017, Barry O’Reilly shows that this is almost always what needs to happen when we look to Read more »

Gain Valuable Feedback Without Overpromising We’d spent weeks perfecting the roadmap presentation for our annual customer conference. We thought it was pretty compelling. Every detail was worked out, every timeline de-risked, every benefit clearly articulated. Our SVP, who was usually uneasy in front of large crowds, even got through all the slides smoothly, even crisply. Read more »

Product management can be hard enough, but when you scale beyond more than one product, product portfolio management is a critical tool to prioritise between multiple products, ensure resources are assigned to the right products, and that you have a pipeline of new product ideas ready to grow. Success is a Terrible Teacher Whether you’re Read more »

The word “build” originally comes from using atoms to construct things. In 1884, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier were innovators who were looking to build the world’s largest structure out of rarely used materials – steel & iron – for their employer Mr Eiffel. The grander your idea, the greater the risk that whoever you Read more »

The consumer buying journey is changing, yet today’s product design doesn’t always reflect this. In the past, consumers typically read product reviews and bought the product that most reflected what they wanted. Products were simple, with a few buttons and straightforward directions. Today however, many products are accompanied by an app, which affects this buying Read more »

Last month I participated in a Design Sprint, a structured and facilitated Lean development workshop designed and championed by Google Ventures. This is a regimented five-day process of unpicking a core business challenge and working up a speedy solution that then gets tested with real humans. On the face of it, the primary goal of Read more »

When I lived in British Columbia, Canada, I used to go running in the forests behind our house. My housemate (appalled at the idea) insisted that I run with his dog to keep the grizzly bears away. At the end of one run I was chatting with a neighbour, a retired Canadian mountain guide with Read more »