DbD//

If you were a kid in the 80s and watched Saturday morning cartoons, then you know the utter awesomeness of the title of this post. [DbD// if you have no idea what I’m talking about, stop what you’re doing right now and watch this video: http://bit.ly/knowing-is-half-the-battle]

When it comes to creating user designed products, knowing what makes your customers tick IS half the battle. But how do you understand, identify, and empathize with your customers and users? Well, you need to talk to them, watch them use your product, ask them questions, and then repeat.

Do what you got to do to get in front of real users of your product and observe how they interact with your product. Steven Blank (Four Steps to Epiphany) said it best, “No facts exist inside the building, only opinions”. So put down the persona matrix, get out of the office, and put your product in front of real people.  That’s the best way to get the facts on the ground about your customers and true insight on your product.

Now you know.

http://bit.ly/knowing-is-half-the-battle

As I dive deeper and deeper into the theory and practice of design thinking and implementing the concepts into my projects, I’ll share the articles and assets that I find helpful and meaningful to my work.

Below are excerpts of an article from Rotman Magazine by Ryan Jacoby and Colin Raney from IDEO about design-based approach in business (http://bit.ly/decisions-by-design).

Managers tend to follow a very analytical process…by understanding all of the available options and rigorously determining the best path forward.

In contrast, designers tend to prototype and iterate ideas, learning as they go and often developing new ideas along the way.

As noted in the article, here’s a deeper insight in the design thinking approach:

• Initially, designers look for inspiration, collecting ideas and inspiration to spur thinking during the brainstorming process [art, metaphors, analogs, etc.]
• The designer soon will begin to create prototypes to understand how certain parts of the product or solution will work
• Through experimentation and iteration, designers formulate a deeper understanding of their options
• Over and over, they refine their ideas; building and building…until they arrive at the final object.

For designers, the process of building, prototyping and trying things is the decision-making process. Instead of boiling down a problem a problem to one large decision, designers make lots of little decisions, learning as they go.

As they build and learn…the best option often reveals itself and less appropriate options fall by the wayside.

Read the entire article here: http://bit.ly/decisions-by-design

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

http://bit.ly/product-fit-ma

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck’s.”