notes from Mind The Product conference at San Francisco 2015

1. Mind The Product
Conference SF 2015

2. Key topics
● Product design approaches
○ Game approach to create „UX world“
○ Empathetic product design process
● Culture
○ Create culture of learning
○ Create culture of engaging in debate
● Product development
○ How failing/successful companies work

3. Kathy Sierra (video)
Creating passionate users
book: Flow: Psychology of optimal experience

4. Flow state: Take me to another world like a game or play
● Like a concert, sport, culture
● Total focus on context, no worries outside zone (tool)
● Every experience has the potential to be transformative
● Surprising Examples:
a. Even easy things like Sudoku are transcendent
b. IntelliJ Idea: code world which makes me feel like hero
● Humans anthropomorphize everything
(Google suggestion: my cat is trying… to kill me)
Cognitive leaks
knowledge you need in head to be able to play/work
ability
challenge
hero
flow
frustrating
boring
Transcendent (transformative) UX

5. Crafting world extraordinary experience, help them to find it
1. Help them to feel more human
2. Help them to find Flow through challenge
Add „world“ to whatever users do with your product.
Reduce cognitive leaks
Focus on context, rather than tool (flow lives in the context, cognitive leaks in tool)
Opening vs. leaving experince
● opening: immerse into the game
○ user is asking „What can I do in this extraordinary world?“
● leaving: will influence the experience
○ Help them get back: Hollywood serials: taking you back to last context

6. Conversation mode:
● different behavior within the conversation (forgiving) than right after
● Conversational language causes people to pay more attention
We can never make perfect product: admit it and tell them
● FEE/FEF instead of FAQ: Frequently Experienced Emotions/Feelings
● User is not ideal persona from a great marketing image (happy father etc.)
● WTF button: I’m really freaking out.
● 75 % of Amazon customers used Mayday button

7. Jon Kolko (video)
Where do the great products come from
design strategy: VP of DG @ Blackboard, Thinktiv, Frog Design
Book: Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love, bit.ly/welldesigned

8. Contextual/Behavioral research
Synthesis & Sensemaking
Behavioral insights
Value proposition (promise)
Feature definition
Launch & Usage metrics
Iteration & Expansion
Communication strategy
Community feedback
Empathetic product development
Product/Market Fit
Behavior insights
e. g. Uber strikes
product is
made by
expected
value identity
social
precedence
broad
tech/political
infrastructure
e. g. Google Glass

9. ● Behavioral research:
○ Observe what people do rather than what they say (with curiosity) to understand their
needs
○ Transcribe full sessions to embed participants collective voice into our heads
○ Distribute transcriptions into individual utterances on post its to be able sorting them
● Synthesis:
○ Synthesize them into meaningful insights
○ Group and summarize them by statements
○ Provoke introspection by why questions and try to answer
○ Create series of provocative insight statements about human behavior to arrive at the
scaffold of new product/service/idea
i. e. g. Students think they have an idea of what employers want in a candidate, but they are often wrong
ii. or Recruiters make snap judgments, directly impacting a candidate’s chances of success.
● Product development:
○ Merge and compare insights, narrow-in on a what-if opportunity to arrive at emotionally
charged value promise
○ Create hero flows that help users become happy or content
Empathetic product design processto create products that users will love rather
than just use: (method manifest, example)

10. Great product manager:
1. Ability to tell stories about optimistic future
2. Ability to make sense of signals from people and
market
3. Passion for listening people (be interested, not interesting)
4. Curiosity about other disciplines
5. Be affable (moderator)

11. Tom Chi(video)
Experience Lead, Google X (glasses, car)

12. 1) Create a culture of learning
2) Stay in the medium
3) Optimize loop length

13. Culture of right&wrong => Diminishing progress
Culture of learning => Additive progress
Track and measure key learnings
● Key learning is embodied or observed experience that materially changes
your path forward
● What did you learn by success/failure: both increases understanding
● Success without learning has limited value
1) Create Culture of learning

14. Guesses aka „conjectures“ are opinions about what will work without yet having
an actual experience
● Conjectures => Experiments
● Actuals => Decisions
Google Glass: 150 prototypes / 10 weeks => key learnings
e. g. projected laser keyboard points to eyes of peer if you turn head to achieve eye contact
1) Create Culture of learning

15. 2) Stay in medium (as artists)
What if artist would has to go to meetings/review with every brush stroke?
Minimize meetings/reviews.
What is product builder’s medium?
Human behavior in the Real World
Product Management Medium is uncertainty. Through the process of wrangling
uncertainty something beautiful comes out.

16. 2) Stay in medium (as artists)

17. Revision Speed index: 5/h = fast, 1/w slow
Mall prototyping to get feedback
● demographic segregation by particular shops
● team of 2 guys have 40 % chance
● guy+girl: 55 %
● 2 girls: 70 % success rate
Innovation grows from insight/adaptability
Start out any new process with design for adaptability
1. Adaptability => Answers
2. Scalability => Do it big
Separating these two will allow you to get further
3) Optimize loop length

18. 3) Optimize loop length
Search for Magic moments = Eyes Light Up moment
= why product matters to people, not you
Add features that add to and amplify this magic moments
Magic moments of Uber:
1) car appears on single click
2) leaving without payment

19. Rochelle King (video)
VP dg UX at Spotify

20. Encourage conflicts (don’t focus on winning but learning)
● agitating creative process with conflict can lead to some rich discussions
● but is (exhausting) conflict needed (worthy)? Express goals!
● look for patterns in conflict to step back and get larger picture
Embrace debate
● argue against what you believe at
● get enemy feedback on early ideas before stakes are high and to foster
relationship
Make sure temple is worth getting, that it’s worthwhile to cross the river, and it’s
worth going to battle for.
Create culture of engaging in debate

21. Metrics
Behind every data is person, and data allows you to have a conversation with
that person
Make sure metrics are aligned with goals: Spotify:
● Engagement DAU/MAU?
● Spotify: are people listening?
design quality issues document on releases to manage
frustration

22. Ryan Singer, PM Basecamp (video)
Basecamp = password protected blog for clients
Orthogonal product parts can move independently (as opposed to coupled)
Map them focusing: time & affordance
● capability is pouring of water, affordance is handle of cup
You need domain expert or need to be one
This allows you to call things done.

23. Linda Rising (video)
Observe
Convinced by good story, not science
Decision makers want action, not investigation
Is agile placebo?

24. Josh Brewer (video)
As product people we are responsible for the ramifications
of the decisions we make.
Behaviours that drive your engagement numbers potentially
have a disastrous effect on us as humans - not making the
world a better place.

25. If you chase two rabbits you will lose them both. Russian
proverb
Saying no:
● Articulate problem
● Find common ground in goals
● Consider alternative solution
Mina Radhakrishnan (video)

26. Marty Cagan (video, narrative)
Silicon Valley Product Group, eBay, AOL, HP,
Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love, cagan@

27. Typical product development:
1. Ideas
2. Biz case
3. Roadmap
4. Requirements
5. Design
6. Build (agile:)
7. Tests
8. Deploy

28. How failing companies work:
1. Ideas: missing sources (data, engineering…)
2. Biz case huge fallacy: you can’t know how much money you are going to take from idea
3. Roadmap Half will not bring value, rest needs iteration. >Vision over details!
4. Requirements gathering reqs is role of project manager, not product; >Prototypes over req docs
5. Design when lots of (wrong) decisions has already been made
6. Build (agile:) late dev involvement => lost context, don’t understand/believe, late fdb on complexity,
don’t know what is possible
7. Tests
8. Deploy Output instead of outcome = Results!
Customer validation too late! Incredibly ineffective. Count opportunity cost of all of that!
= Mercenary process: Where is agile?

29. How successful companies work:
Define vision and OKRs instead of roadmap.
(problems to solve, not solutions)
Continuous discovery and delivery 20 iterations/week!
Ideas
MVP tests Discovery
Delivery valuable
usable
feasible
ethical
Product/Market fit!
vision and OKRs
MVP is just a test, not product

30. Time to money instead of time to market
Be stubborn on your vision but flexible on your details. Jeff
Bezos

31. Successful companies adopting
agile process
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Etsy, Workiva
Companies which did the successful transformation towards this agile process:
In Kaspersky lab, the successful transformation was lead by Ilia Kuzneetsov

32. ● Check the videos for more
● What we can apply to GoodData?

33. Interesting products
Intercom
Progress Data Direct

34. Intercom
Observe
● See what customers do in the product: analytics
Acquire
● Talk to visitors on website to help them become customers
Learn
● Get quality product feedback from the right customers
Engate
● Guide signups to become active customers
● Announcing new features
In-app support
● Streamline support for your team and customers (Zendesk integration)
● Behaviorally triggered chat and support while the problem appears
david.bell@...

35. Progress DataDirect
One connector to Progress to all their data sources?
Selected data sources compatible:
● Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra...
● Relational DBs...
● SF, Marketo, GA, Azure…
● EDI/XML/TEXT
● DWHS: Redshift, Teradata…
● OpenAccess SDK for custom sources