Friday, August 30, 2013

listening to people takes time

Recently, some people I really love invited me to give them some feedback on a project. I was very happy to do it... What surprised me was we had about five minutes or less at the end of the meeting to talk!

When you ask people to help you, by letting you interview them, or by giving you feedback, it's important to allocate enough time to listen and understand. Understanding is not always instant; in fact, in gathering insight you're usually trying to discover what's behind first responses, asking why a lot, to ferret out people's feelings, motivations, and real behavior. This last point is important, because we often answer questions baed on who we'd like to be rather than on our actual habits.

It's wonderful when someone takes the time the really listen, and seek understanding. It's also a great way to learn what you could make that might delight them.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

the Steve Jobs paradox

Sometimes people point out to me that Apple's development method under Steve Jobs was not a co-creation process with customers or potential customers.

Whenever someone says this, it reminds me of Seth Godin's nice observation that "Apple had one customer," meaning that Jobs was, in fact, at least one half of the co-creation process with Apple's designers.

What I want to suggest is that you could certainly innovate based on this model, if you had a strong and visionary enough internal customer/creator.

There are certainly businesses of all kinds which are characterized by this kind of approach, and many people have likened Jobs' Apple to a fashion house.

Whether your co-creating customer is internal or external, I would argue that the process will be fundamentally the same: prototype, get feedback, iterate. 

why problem interviews are so great

In his book, Running Lean, Ash Maurya recommends validating the problem you want to solve by interviewing potential users/consumers. His idea is that you can get a strong signal about whether the problem is really important, even from as few as 15 people who would be early adopters of your product or service.

In addition, what he calls the problem interview enables you to meet and recruit potential users, and get them to recommend others who might like to participate. This is great, of course, but a third advantage to problem interviews is that you can discover problems you hadn't thought of yet, or realized were important.

All of these outcomes of the problem interview are extremely useful in determining whether there could be value in developing a solution. Nonetheless, part of the art of problem interviewing is to ask questions which will allow you not only to validate your idea, but to get new insight. Also, it's important to be open to the possibility that the problem you've defined isn't worth solving based on the strong signal you've received. But if you took good notes, and paid attention not only to what people told you, but how they said it, you may be able to look back and find something really worth pursuing.

the beauty and challenge of trial and error

You may have come across this TED talk in your travels, but in case you haven't, here it is.

Tim Harford makes a very strong case for trial and error with a compelling story at the beginning. You may feel that the talk swerves a bit towards the end, when Harford branches off into the story of two Japanese mathematicians, but I would argue that the concept of "making mistakes in the right direction" is absolutely key to a scientific approach.

Obviously, Harford's indictment of the "god complex" is at the heart of the talk, and a salient point for all of us who've been encouraged to become (or try to seem to be) experts rather than people who discover. What would it be like to completely abandon our obsession with expertise in a subject, and become experts in "making mistakes in the right direction"?



I would be very interested in hearing your responses to this talk. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who visited yesterday. 

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

the one-day challenge

Do you like to work by yourself?

I used to. I found it peaceful and satisfying; I felt it gave me the chance to make something really nice, really complete, before sharing it with someone else.

It had a downside, though. For one thing, sometimes I was barking up the wrong tree. For another, I was missing the contributions that others could make. Probably the worst part was receiving negative or constructive feedback at the end, when I would generally be inclined to defend myself.

My husband is a big proponent of artistic collaboration, and it's been a struggle for me to learn to do it. In the context of innovation and experimentation, however, I can see how important it is.

So two months ago, I gave myself the one-day challenge: to never work on anything for more than one day without sharing it and getting feedback from someone else.

The results have been powerful so far. My projects have gone smoothly, and I've learned to take feedback as a key part of good creation, rather than any kind of criticism. I've felt accompanied in my work, and been able to share the results with others in a way that has brought us closer.

Now, it's hard to imagine working any other way.

gift minded

Why gift giving?

If you visit the d.school at Stanford, which I highly recommend, you can take part in their crash course in design thinking. One option for the course is to redesign the gift giving experience. You do this activity with a partner, in a rapid cycle of  interviewing (gaining empathy), prototyping and getting feedback on your solutions. It's truly excellent, so please give it a try!

I think they made an inspired choice of topic, because at the heart of innovation and problem solving is something akin to the desire to give. Certainly, part of the thrill in solving a problem is intellectual, but part of it is in offering the solution to another, and partaking in their pleasure.

Also, the gift giving experience is riddled with danger, in the sense that the giver often has an emotional investment in the gift being received well, with joy, surprise, delight, gratitude, etc. Have you ever given a gift that the other didn't seem to appreciate? It's a painful experience, and one that sometimes damages a relationship. The other might feel that you weren't paying attention, or weren't generous, or even that you saw him or her in a way that was fundamentally at odds with his or her vision of self.

It's basically the same when we make a product or service: we're showing our level of insight and compassion, and our vision of our users.  So the gift giving approach is one to keep in mind as we endeavor to amaze and delight.

problems worth solving

In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki presents (insists on?) three reasons to start a business: to make people's lives better, to right a wrong, and to keep something good from disappearing. His opinion is that if your business idea doesn't have one of these motives at heart, it has a low chance of success.

These aren't bad jumping off points for innovation projects. One definition of innovation is solving valuable problems, sometimes problems that no one identified as such. I suppose the most famous inventors and entrepreneurs could be described as solving problems people didn't know they had, or didn't imagine could be solved.

The great news for us is that problems are everywhere, all the time! The art is in seeing them as launchpads for something interesting...

Eric Ries and Ash Maurya have both provided a very clear method for discovering and validating valuable problems. Essentially, whether the problem (read opportunity) is coming from your users or clients, or from you yourself, it's important to check that the problem really exists and is worth solving. In these first weeks of working with innovation, I perceive that problem validation is even more key than I'd realized....

Since most of us got into our jobs by cultivating expertise, there's something inherently off-putting about interviewing people before you start prototyping solutions. But jumping to solutions, and solution testing, can be a big mistake, especially if you test you solutions with people who may not have the problem. Here's an example: if you show me six designs for a diamond ring, I can certainly give you a strong opinion about which one is the best. But as I will probably never buy such a ring, how much will my opinion really be worth to you?

Problem validation allows you to make sure you have something worth solving, while identifying and potentially capturing early adopters for your product, service or process. And, to be honest, it's fun too, because in addition to confirming that you have an interesting idea, the people you interview might mention a few other juicy problems along the way!