Empathy & Inclusion: Product Development's Secret Weapons

Building inclusion and gaining empathy in your product team or startup are the keys to successful product development for startups.

This talk was given as part of the Developer track of Austin Startup Week 2018.

Transcript

1. Empathy and Inclusion: Product Development’s Secret Weapons Annie Hsieh Austin Startup Week 2018
2. About Me
3. – Brian Chesky, Co-founder of Airbnb “If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.” The Beginning of a Startup/Product
4. Steps to Building a Successful Product 1. Build a solution for your own problem. 2. Offer your product to other people. 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!!
5. https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/ ???
6. Example #1: Health Tracking Apps https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-an-expansive-health-app-so-why-cant-i-track https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/09/apple-stops-ignoring-womens-health-with-ios-9-healthkit-update-now-featuring-period-tracking/
7. Diversity Having or being composed of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization
9. Inclusion The act of including The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity
10. Building Inclusive Teams Hiring - job descriptions and interviews Culture - meetings and communication styles
11. Inclusive Meeting Culture
12. Inclusive Tech Organizations to Support
13. Example #2: Payment Form "Credit Card Payment Checkout" by Alvaro Alvarez, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
15. Empathy The ability to understand and share the feelings and perspective of another
16. Gut check User stories Receive feedback and iterate! Stages of Incorporating Empathy Into Product
17. Example #3: Store Relationship Management
18. 7 Ways to Build Empathy
19. Dogfooding Eat your own dog food Use your own product like a real user would
21. Do Support
23. https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-grid Get Data About Users
24. Talk to Existing Users
25. Observe Users in Your Product
26. Talk to Potential Users
27. Shadow Co-workers on the Job Listen in on sales and user interview calls Engineering demos and hackathons “In Your Shoes” program
28. https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/ Putting It All Together
29. Inclusion is being mindful about the diversity of your users but starts within your organization
30. Empathy is all about learning, iterating and prioritizing users’ needs
31. Ways to Build Empathy Dogfooding Do support Get data about your users Talk to existing users Observe users in your product Talk to potential users Shadow co-workers on the job
32. Growing empathy and inclusion can be challenging but is necessary for great products