Product Design

John Cutler asked a great question on Twitter; how do we describe less visible skills like qualitative research in comparison to technical skills like software development? Initially I was intrigued by the parallels with translation vs interpretation in linguistics. I can see similarities between a software developer translating requirements into code. And a design researcher interpreting customer interviews to help produce the right software requirements. I also liked a response by Tiffany Chang suggesting that one skill is more concrete and the other more abstract. That resonated with human centered design approaches for me. And the idea of not jumping straight from problem to solution: ...

In a recent sprint review we were asked how our findings, which were based on a relatively small number of customer conversations, could be meaningful. Were they statistically significant? I’d got used to our stakeholders being familiar with the background to qualitative research and how we don’t try to quantify it as such. And that the selection approach / recruitment matrix mean that we can have confidence in the insights. However staff had come and gone and so it was a good reminder to address the common concern that a survey would have been better and more statistically significant. ...

I was preparing for our company celebration of CX Day 2018 on Tuesday and was reminded of this great interview with Warren Berger on the IDEOU site. The interview drills into the power of questions, and how the right question can lead to a breakthrough and real innovation. The bit that sticks out for me is the question that led to the Polaroid instant camera: ...

On a recent holiday we got to go to a Cirque du Soleil show. The show was “O” and you should seriously consider checking it out if you ever get the chance. Absolutely amazing! Aside from being thoroughly entertaining, for me the show reinforced some recent experiences around innovation and creative leadership that I’d picked up from companies like Empathy Design and IDEO. ...