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How to Empower Your User s So You Can Create a Great Product Johanna Rothma n @johannarothma n www.jrothman.com

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman The Future is Hard to See • Product people are supposed to know what the customers nee d • Customers don’t know what they need until they see somethin g • Want != Nee d • I might want a sports ca r • I need a minivan 6

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Many Product Problems • Solutions before problem s • Leads to fake certainty about the proble m • Insuf fi cient experimentation interes t • Missing organization strateg y • Need to identify ideal customers and problems the org solves for the m • Missing product strategy for this produc t • Missing the problems to solve for these customer s • Customers (buyers) differ from users 7

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Traditional view: Build products for users 8

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Alternative view : Collaborate with customers & users 9

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Cooperation vs. Collaboration • Cooperate: help or support others to achieve a common goa l • Assembly lin e • Collaborate: work together, often at the same tim e • Orchestra 10

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Prerequisites for Successful Collaboration • Willing to state problems before solution s • Everyone involved wants to collaborate 11

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Collaboration Alternatives • You might have heard of these already : • Paper prototypes • Watch user s • Listen to customers/user s • Change your question s • Work with the user s • Create more experiments 12

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Change Your Questions • Who are our ideal users ? • What problems do they have that we want to solve now ? • What outcomes can we expect (bene fi ts) ? • Release-speci fi c question s • Which users are we targeting with this release ? • What bene fi ts can they expect? 13

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Why Not Ask Users What They Want ? Many people don’t know what they want . They don’t know how they want you to solve the problem . Until you show them something. 14

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Start With Paper Prototypes • Paper, not wireframe s • Much more dif fi cult when we are disperse d • People react to the work fl ow, not the content when it’s clearly a prototyp e • More likely to discover the problems as you discuss the prototype 15

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Ways to Collaborate with Paper Prototypes • Prepare all in advance, walk through togethe r • Prepare initial state, develop remaining togethe r • Start with known problems, draw togethe r • Facilitator (less collaborative ) • Mobbing, where people rotate through the actual drawing 16 More cooperative More collaborative

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Watch Users (with Consent!) • Product manager (removed from the day-to-day team) asks users questions and might watch the m • Product owner watches users for current product and prototyp e • Team can watch users in same two way s • Requires : • Suf fi cient visual and aural fi delit y • Look for where people trip over the work or workarounds 17 More cooperative More collaborative

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Internal Data Gathering • Who does the product person speak with internally ? • Support, Training, other user-focused peopl e • Senior managers who want this produc t • Current product tea m • Customer s • Users 18 More cooperative More collaborative

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Beware of the “Telephone” Game 19

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman The Clari fi cation “Telephone” Game 20

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Delays of the Product Telephone Game 21

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman When can the team speak with (some) users? 22

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Modify Internal Questions • Many orgs ask for a business case and RO I • Assumes the changes are correc t • You can never predict RO I • Instead : • “How will the business bene fi t from these changes? ” • Might have new/different users, customer s • “How will we know that what we propose is effective? ” • Experiment to disprove and prune the possibilities 23

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Possible Bene fi ts • Increase revenu e • Acquire new customer s • Time to acquire new custome r • More revenue per custome r • Time to customer revenu e • Decrease wast e • Mean time to recover from a proble m • User cost/waste to work in the current wa y • User retention (user “stickiness” ) • User upsel l • Referral to others 24

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Work With Users (Side-by-Side) • Team works with the user s • Feel the wor k • Feel the frustratio n • Lab example, running between two machine s • Describing the problem wasn’t enoug h • The team had to feel the problems 25

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Create Experiments • Small, safe-to-fail experiments with users you trus t • Write down your hypothesi s • Write down the data you need to know if the hypothesis is correct. Create a system to measure that data . • Decide on how long the experiment should run (timebox ) • Measure the result s • After you gather the results, what does the data tell you ? • Decide: Continue, change, stop the experiment? 26

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman An Experiment Example • Sales said, “We have tons of possible sales riding on this feature! ” • Team said, “We’ll put up a page to collect signups. How many signups do you expect? ” • “Thousands over three days. ” • “Let’s see if we get 100 over a week. ” • They got 99. Didn’t do the feature then 27

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Collaborate With Your Users? • Paper prototype s • Watch how the user work s • Work with the user to understand and feel their pai n • Change your question s • Experiment to prune the feature tree 28

© 2021 Johanna Rothman @johannarothman Let’s Stay in Touch • Pragmatic Manager: • www.jrothman.com/ pragmaticmanage r • Please link with me on LinkedIn 29

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