Helping Cartoon Network define their next digital product
We travelled to London to give a workshop on Product Thinking to the directors of Cartoon Network International. What we taught and what we learned through this experience.
At Aerolab, we work with entrepreneurs and companies from all over the world to create products that people love to use. It’s not an easy job, but we are constantly developing new ways to help our clients from the very beginning of their projects.
This is why we developed a Product Thinking service. This approach enables us to give our clients the tools to define their product, align ourselves with their business strategies and establish a methodology that allows us to streamline work processes and eliminate obstacles.
A few months ago we travelled to the London headquarters of Cartoon Network International to conduct a Product Thinking workshop for their regional directors.
What is Product Thinking?
Product Thinking is a series of techniques that we’ve adapted and perfected over the years to help our clients define their products and implement effective strategies to carry out their digital projects. Essentially, it is a combination of two well-known design methodologies: Product Definition and Design Thinking.
With our Product Thinking workshops we aim to work closely with our clients to define best practices and the steps they need to take in designing their product and delivering the best possible user experience.
Our goal is to understand the KPIs that the client seeks to reach and make sure that those objectives are met through the different iterations of the product. This approach allows us to conceive the product as a means to solve a problem quickly and efficiently, while simultaneously emphasizing the value of the user experience.
Our experience with Cartoon Network
Our trip to London had two objectives. First, sharing the fundamentals of product design with the regional directors of Cartoon Network. And second, identifying improvement opportunities and analyzing different strategies and approaches for the project.
We conducted a workshop featuring two intense days of brainstorming with post-its, white boards full of insights, and the wizardry of Alejandro Vizio and Ezequiel Apelbaum. We worked side by side with the client to establish a strategy and an action plan.
In a nutshell, our Product Thinking workshops cover the following topics:
Gathering and summarizing insights
- Defining proto-personas
- Benchmarking the competition
- Reviewing statistics and analytics
Creating a Customer Journey Map
- Defining the CJM stages
- Determining which questions should be addressed
- Understanding the actions and emotions of our clients
- Identifying weaknesses and opportunities for improvement
Defining the product
- Defining the essential qualities of the product
- Determining product objectives
- Aligning the product with overall business strategy
- Analyzing needs and possible risks
- Adding value to the customer experience
Defining the features of the product
- Experience mapping
- Features management
- Anticipating the wants and needs of each stakeholder
- Imagining the right product for the market
- Must have, should have, nice to have
The goal of our workshops is to offer our clients an overview of the steps involved in creating a digital product , and help them improve the coordination between the different departments of a company by applying the strategies of Design Thinking.
We give them a detailed explanation of how our design and development processes function, which methods we employ in our design processes, what our daily work flow looks like, and what we need from them to make that flow operate smoothly.
Product Thinking for everyone
This wasn’t the first time we have offered an intensive training in Product Thinking. At the beginning of 2017, we worked with the Department of Public Innovation of the federal government of Argentina to help them design a new, more agile way to implement their digital projects.
We also applied this process with several projects we carried out with large companies such as Banco Galicia, Fox Sports, A24 and Cablevisión, as well as with several startups in Argentina and the United States, including Experiencia Manager, Grandata, Natania, Qwil and Raised Real.
We also applied the concepts of Product Thinking with conceptual proposals we prepared for Uber, Air Canada, Cris Morena Group, Radio Blue and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Although these proposals ultimately did not move forward, they were excellent learning opportunities for us.
Let’s start the digital transformation!
It is not uncommon for both startups and large corporations to encounter obstacles in workflow and decision making. This is why more and more companies are contacting us for our expertise in product design, our strategies to improve workflow, and our product definition processes.
Because we are living in an era of digital transformation, it is imperative for businesses to rely on the support and collaboration of a product design partner that participates in the project discussion from the very beginning.
In the near future, we will write an article going into greater detail about Product Thinking, how we implement it, and the major advantages it offers our clients and their projects. In the meanwhile, if you have a digital project you want to develop and are interested in learning more about our Product Thinking service, we’d be happy to talk with you.
