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Mind Your Product Language

Mind Your Product Language

Language matters, because "words create worlds," as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said.

The past few years have shown just how much everything we create is connected to everything else in complex ecosystems of interactions. Yet, if we fail to tackle complexity with complex thinking, we’re doomed to oversimplify problems and develop over-simplistic solutions that fail. This explains the mindset of designing for complex ecosystems and why it is essential to design for detail, the big picture, and human behaviour simultaneously. It argues that product people must mind their product language. It can easily create mental models that lure organisations back to familiar modes of industrial thinking and management. If the mental model is an assembly line, teams work in disconnected silos. When products and services are created in silos, customers experience them in bits.

In this talk, I suggest a different metaphor of gardens – ecosystems in which each part affects the whole and are never "done" or "shipped".

The talk was given at Mind The Product Engage Hamburg 2022: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/mtpengage/hamburg/schedule/?day_id=37

#mindtheproduct #mtp #prodcuct #servicedesign #andypolaine

Andy Polaine

June 16, 2022
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Transcript

  1. Mind your
    product
    language
    Mind the Product, Hamburg 2022
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Andy Polaine, PhD
    @apolaine
    polaine.com

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  2. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    01.
    Semantics

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  3. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    “Well, if you want to talk
    semantics…”

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  4. “Words create worlds”
    – Abraham Joshua Heschel
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Prisoner of War
    Asylum Seeker
    Activist
    Invasion
    Enemy Combatant
    Illegal Immigrant
    Terrorist
    Special Operation
    Semantics matter

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  5. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    02.
    Industrial
    thinking

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  6. Ford assembly line at rest during a strike, September 1945
    Source: Life magazine archive ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Industrial mindset:
    Fixed products,
    departmental silos,
    top-down, command &
    control management.

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  7. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    These are not products

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  8. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    "Services created in silos
    are experienced in bits”
    – Løvlie, Polaine, Reason, Service Design

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  9. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    “Many companies are confused by the
    word product. You say product and
    people think of an app, a feature, or an
    interface.
    Products are vehicles for value.”
    — Melissa Perri, The Build Trap

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  10. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image: Ethan Weil on Unsplash
    Shift the focus from
    designing for users and
    things to designing for
    people’s activities in a
    broader context

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  11. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    03.
    Ecosystem
    thinking

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  12. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Product service ecosystems are
    exponentially nested layers of complexity
    Single touchpoint “product”
    Source: Polaine (2016), Design to the Power of Ten

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  13. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Product service ecosystems are
    exponentially nested layers of complexity
    Multi-touchpoint & channel service
    Single touchpoint “product”
    Source: Polaine (2016), Design to the Power of Ten

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  14. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Product service ecosystems are
    exponentially nested layers of complexity
    Business ecosystems
    Multi-touchpoint & channel service
    Single touchpoint “product”
    Source: Polaine (2016), Design to the Power of Ten

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  15. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Product service ecosystems are
    exponentially nested layers of complexity
    Political, economic,
    social, technological,
    environmental, legal
    ecosystems
    Business ecosystems
    Multi-touchpoint & channel service
    Single touchpoint “product”
    Source: Polaine (2016), Design to the Power of Ten

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  16. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Photo by hello-i-m-nik on Unsplash

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  17. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image source & ©: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/

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  18. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    These are not the
    flowers you think
    they are
    Image source & ©: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/

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  19. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    These are discarded
    bikeshare bikes – the
    physical consequences
    of “digital” disruption
    Image source & ©: https://www.wired.com/story/photo-of-the-week-a-dizzying-view-of-a-bicycle-graveyard-in-china/

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  20. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    VC funded
    Product lens
    Scale
    No feedback loop
    Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash

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  21. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    05.
    A different
    metaphor

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  22. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    “My sense is that Slack’s teams think of
    themselves as adding ‘features’ to a
    ‘product,’ instead of as stewards of a
    place where people work.”
    – Jorge Arango, Not Just a New Feature; a New Compact

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  23. ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image: Durkc - Wikimedia

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  24. Gardens require long-term
    thinking.
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image: Durkc - Wikimedia

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  25. Gardens require long-term
    thinking.
    Nobody says “we shipped
    the garden.”
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image: Durkc - Wikimedia

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  26. When you work on
    features, make
    sure you connect
    to the rest of the
    garden.
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Image: Anna Shvets on Pexels

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  27. Danke!
    ©2020 Andrew Polaine
    Andy Polaine – Service Design & Innovation Training and Coaching
    [email protected]
    Twitter: @apolaine
    Newsletter: https://pln.me/nws
    Podcast: https://pln.me/p10
    Slides: pln.me/mtp22

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