Digital Pond: EP#2 Harpal Singh — The Future of Product Management

During this episode of the Digital Pond, we’re joined by Harpal Singh.

Harpal is an AI Product Management Consultant, working with organisations across the world to build digital products using emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Computer Vision.

During our chat we explore where Harpal sees the AI space developing towards, why every UX and product design project starts with the customer, and his journey to creating his book: The Elusive Art And Science Of Finding Product/Market Fit.

You can listen to the podcast in full on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

You can find the full transcript for the podcast below.

Transcript

Danny Bluestone

Firstly , it would be great to hear about your main career achievements that you’ve had to-date and what really stands out now that you’re a seasoned, decorated professional.

Looking back what are the main highlights of your career?

Harpal Singh

First of all, thanks for inviting me to the show, Danny.

I’ll give a brief introduction of the key highlights of the career.

So first I’m going to describe what I do is I work with clients of various sizes and shapes build product-centric businesses.

So what I mean by that is that the entire business or the entire business unit revolves around the product. And every function revolves around the product, and product itself becomes the way to acquire customers, to scale the business, to grow the business.

So everything around the product.

As a result of that, my role kind of becomes taking new products to market. And that often uses emerging technologies like AI and computer vision. So there’s the elements of my core expertise — it’s still like product management, if you like, but I work with clients and projects, which require these emerging technologies.

So there are three core areas that have emerged based on my skillset. One is the product strategy , which I’m helping clients with. Then there is product market fit. And the third is one that I’ve only been doing for the last year, which is product-led growth. This is utilising the product itself to grow.

How I led up to this thing. I had a career as a UX designer earlier than I had my own startup, and then I moved into product. For the last like decade or so, I’ve been doing product leadership roles.

I think the achievements that I’m most proud of, I have been lucky enough to have been involved with many start-ups and larger businesses. And in my career, there are three companies that I’ve been involved with where I was part of the core team that managed to go from zero to one. And in this case, it means from zero to 20 million approximately in revenue within one or two years.

One of them got acquired, and one of them got scaled in March.

So these are my biggest achievements. Although you work across many startups , I think this is something I’m most proud of because it’s really hard to go from zero to one.

Danny Bluestone

Wow. One of the things that really appealed to me about your background is your experience in UX and the fact that you were, a very senior UX designer in lots of different businesses.

How have those kinds of UX skills help your career?

Harpal Singh

I think in short the biggest help, I would say is understanding of the customer. I think there are a number of people in technology who do not come froma UX background and they kind of struggle to get there, to empathize with the customers, to understand who they are building for and how the customers think.

So they end up designing and building products for themselves.

So, I think having a UX and HCI background really helps with this. Then so it’s almost like you’re taking yourself out of the equation. It’s all about the end user, it’s all about the customer.

And secondly, I would say the core part of HCI, which is human computer interaction. It’s all about going into psychology of how people interact with technology and the various mediums. So I think the more you understand the basics and how communication happens on various mediums — like we are talking through video right now — the better your product design will be as a result of that.

This created a very strong base for me to confidently go and take big bets on product design.

Danny Bluestone

Obviously with your UX experience, do you find that it’s kind of hard to switch off once you’re a UX designer. That you’re always thinking about UX? No matter what.

Harpal Singh

Yeah, I think it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Switching. I think it’s the only thing, sometimes it gets frustrating . A good UX designer always has good attention to detail, right? And the good kind of lean start-up methodology is all about getting something rough and raw out there and iterating and getting feedback from customers on that. So they are like polar opposites in that way.

So I think it’s about finding the balance for some of the products you have to kind of go all in and go over every fine details. But in other cases you have to like put the thing out there, be embarrassed about it and still get the job done.

Danny Bluestone

It’s a really interesting time now for, UX, product managers, product designers, UX designers. Obviously with this pandemic it’s been unprecedented time.

How do you think, businesses are going to change for your current and future clients, both here in the UK and internationally because of this new normal that we’re about to encounter?

Harpal Singh

Yeah. It’s a pretty broad question.

I think at least from what I’ve seen while working with the existing clients or new clients, there is a lot more acceptance of, and adaptation in terms of, the new normal and how they work. Think there was still some sort of emotional journey you go through like the denial and acceptance; I mean, your five stages. I think the same thing is happening in terms of how we all work. And of course there are challenges all across the board, whether it’s working remotely or whatnot, but what I’m seeing is there’s a lot more open-mindedness in terms of, we got to make it work because there is no other way.

This means that we are now going to go back to the way it was. And I think it’s almost like a false dichotomy to kind of go and try to achieve their situation. So it’s only going to be more of a hybrid working and some people are always going to remote. So I think it is how the effect of that is not only in how we provide service or build products, but also the tools we use and the way we communicate.

There is an increase in the collaboration tools. There are new products that allow , as an example, communication through a short video of two or three minutes each. So I think we will see more of these things. And ultimately it’s going to be good. I think it will level the playing field across the world, which means that companies will not hesitate to attract and hire good talent if there is a developer from Ukraine or if there is a designer from Spain. I think they will all working together effectively.

Danny Bluestone

Wow. So lots of things are going to change.

And consumers, do you feel that their adaptation or adoption of technology is accelerating and they’re having higher standards than what they used to have? Or do you still feel that there’s lots of, kind of a big polarization between the early adopters and the kind of laggards? Can you see sort of any changes there?

Harpal Singh

Yeah, I think from a end user perspective I would classify it as like a market changes or how consumers behave. That change was already happening at a pretty fast pace.

Personally. I don’t see it drastically changing. I think what has changed is the environment. And of course it has impact on it, but the change itself has always been happening in a way. And we were kind of coming up with new things.

However, if you look at the macro level or the macro economic level, because now when talking about the product or the market you’re talking about the politics and everything else, I thin k the change of the pace of change is increasing.

So there was change happening. But that has far wider replications. Because it’s going into areas where there was no tech earlier or not enough tech. So I think that kind of thing is happening.

So people who were in the technology field or using technology products, like our end users, that pace of change, I believe is similar, but the broader society level change is much faster.

Danny Bluestone

Yeah exactly.

And one of the things that you’re also doing is working with retail, e-commerce marketing technology companies . Obviously you have some really good AI understanding and, as a product manager you understand AI and work with AI.

Do you agree that there’s like this real AI versus kind of snake oil AI or pseudo AI?

Can you see any uses of AI that isn’t real AI, but it’s still called AI?

Harpal Singh

I think the way I see this is , we are not at a time where the hype, the AI hype, is dying down in any way. And it’s a good thing because that means that the companies who were actually using AI technologies, like machine learning, computer vision , they are standing out and even that will disappear from the vocabulary.

So we don’t talk much about the software engineering or the languages itself. We talk about the problem solution. And although we are still talking right now, we’re still talking about the AI as a thing, but I think that thing will disappear and it will become about like problem solution solving.

So this I think on its own is running with this kind of separation of real AI versus pseudo AI, like you mentioned. Because when two, three years ago when it was at its peak, in terms of hype lots of startups actually were trying to raise funding using and saying that we have AI. I did some due diligence work at that time with with a bunch of VCs and this was one of the things to identify.

How can you see this start-up really having the IP that they claim they have, they’re actually using the technology that they’re using? And yeah, because VCs are meeting so many startups day in and day out, you can’t always go deep into the product to really do the validation. So there are some of the things that you can look at, like basically what type of problem they are solving, as an example, if they are solving a computer vision based problem that relies on identifying an object or a moving object, then you know that this is not going to be easily possible through software engineering and there’s something real there.

Whereas if you look into a use case like personalisation, which has been around for two decades now, and that can take many forms. In that case, you have to look into the process for the implementation and the training data being used. And that can tell you like how they are arriving at the personalisation, because you can write a simple ‘if then’ statement and say, ‘if someone clicks here, show them there’ kind of personalisation, where you kind of have to look into the process and implementation. And then training data itself becomes a big differentiator.

Most of the products that I’ve worked in, and this has been quite a big surprise for me that unlike software engineering, software products, where what you

kind of plan to design and build, they’re almost guaranteed that whatever you are saying that will happen in the real environment. Whereas AI products are completely opposite in this regard. So it’s like the hardest part of building AI products is deploying and productionising it in the real environment with real data coming in. It’s almost like taming the dragon in my view. You can try to tame the dragon by having it inside your own chambers, but once you kind of lose it and release it, it can cause havoc. So there’s a lot more work that is needed to maintain and build AI products in production environment.

Danny Bluestone

Yeah. And obviously things like AI ethics are huge today, aren’t they?

Harpal Singh

I think so, and because of this technical difficulty around maintaining AI products in-production there is a state of impact on the ethics for that. Because we don’t know how it will behave in the real environment always. And there can be so many use cases. So when we kind of build this product, we accept this as a fact that, okay, we will never be able to kind of tackle the use cases. So the processes that you design are more around, how are we going to adapt and react to it?

But of course, you’re trying to utilise the ethics frameworks or strong principles . As an example, when you’re looking at the training data, like all the data source where it’s coming from, what kind of biases can the data have?

So I think this is also where the value of product managers and designers shine in a way. Because I think it may lead again about solving the problems and understanding the end users and customers. And you’re utilising these like ethics frameworks and you see or put everything in context of the end users and customers.

So we are not even talking about building staff or analysing data. We are talking about asking the right questions throughout the process so we can come up with with the right solutions at the end.

Danny Bluestone

Brilliant. So in terms of your book , the Elusive Art and Science of Finding a Product and Market Fit, there’s a number of things that I really liked.

First of all, you’ve published it on your website, in a HTML kind of format, which I think is amazing.

And I really like your website. I think it’s really clear and legible, and I love the fact that you can just scroll through your book really quickly. It’s very concise.

So I’d recommend to anyone listening have a look at Harpel Singh’s book. It’s absolutely fantastic.

What I’m particularly interested is where and how an MVP becomes market validated and what steps you recommend. I know there’s a lot in your book but if you could just pick an industry and give us examples of where an MVP has become market validated and what sort of steps somebody normally takes to do that.

Harpal Singh

I think I’ll just cover this a bit because understanding of MVP and the stage of MVP can differ as well. So if we are talking about an early stage idea MVP, where you are almost like starting out, then I think how people are generally kind of going about testing various ideas by building as less as possible, they’ll stumble upon something that kind of works so they can start the real work after.

If you’re talking about MVP at a slightly later stage where, what I would classify as if you have problem solution fit, you have a product already out there.

And if it’s a B2B product, you have probably like 10, 15 customers, some paying, some free.

Then if you’re a B2C you have like a few thousand users.

Which means that there is something there in the product, still an MVP or a version one or a beta. And it’s being useful. It’s useful for some users, but you still need to figure out where is the opportunity? What is the real product? What’s the long-term thing.

So I think that part also requires like multiple variations based on MVP. And in terms of like one or two things that applies to almost every startup;

One I would say is, what I classify as a hair on fire problem. And basically the idea here is that you want to build something that a small group of users, very clearly defined group of users, absolutely love. Over a large group of users who like it a little bit.

I think what happens is, to attract that type of audience for whom you are really solving the problem, that problem is a hair on fire problem where the product works so well for them that they will be willing to give the money to become your advocates or become your ambassadors right away.

So I think that is like one big thing around like focusing on a hair on fire problem for a niche audience.

Then within the PMF book, I have something, what I call is a PMF flywheel, a product market fit fly wheel. Although you can solve a hair on fire problem for a niche set of audience really well, that doesn’t mean that you’re on the path to PMF.

So what we have to also look for is how we are going to continuously acquire those users and look is the market big enough for those types of users. And then there kind of becomes a flywheel because it’s not just a one-time thing. Hey, if we have we’re solving a problem, let’s run ads. Let’s get some users. That’s not how it looks. You have to figure out the right distribution channel. At the same time, almost as finding the right solution for the problems you are solving for that niche audience.

Danny Bluestone

That’s fascinating. And obviously one of the things that I like in your book, you can see your UX roots in there, where you’re talking about user interviews. And kind of using user interviews to validate ideas.

Can you tell me a bit more about the importance of qualitative research and interviewing a small amount of users versus more of a quantitative approach as well.

Harpal Singh

Yeah. I would say there is, first of all, no size fits all type of thing here.

The way I have been looking into the customer research or the user research within the last few years is how can we democratise the research within the product teams? So it’s no more about that individual researcher. Who’s trying to go out and do the interviews and gain all that knowledge.

It’s more about how do you build this muscle within the business, where they are constantly engaging with their end users and customers, which means that there can be very broad number of use cases or cases where they would have to engage with the end users. Whether they are designing an interface, testing, a prototype or validating new ideas through discussions or community building.

So there are kind of lots of ways. I mean I want to kind of give it like, this is when it’s good to do qualitative versus quantitative, but it’s more around what are the objectives of the the research that we’re trying to achieve? And what are the right questions based on those objectives that we need to find the answers to?

And we then figure out what’s the right methodology for that.

Because in some cases it could be diary studies. In other cases, it could be one-to-one interviews. Something I’ve seen, like a mistake that happened that lots of teams make is they get really excited about the user interviews and gaining information, gathering insights from the end users, but they don’t really figure out what to do with it internally. So how are they going to gather that how are, how is it going to be implemented and utilised?

I think that is almost as important as going out and speaking to users.

A slightly newer thing that I have noticed at least with the B2B enterprise businesses is to almost like create a community of their users and prospects once they get into the a couple of hundred.

So if you are a start-up, a B2B start-up , usually you would sell to an executive within a larger business. And it will be a top-down approach where your sales will first go into kind of selling the benefits there.

Earlier I mentioned about the product-led growth, where it is all about focusing on the end user. Because, first of all, their expectations are getting higher and higher because of the consumer products that they use in their own personal life. When we focus on the end users, which means that it’s no more about those ‘a hundred executives’ that you’re talking about — who are making your client base because you were selling to them. Now you’re talking about maybe a thousand users who are working in those larger companies and these start-ups are utilising or inviting those end-users into a community on Slack or other channels like that. So they can engage with each other. And I think what ends up happening is that it’s by osmosis, through their discussions, you can learn so much and you don’t even have to conduct the interview. So it’s like a really neat way of engaging with their customers, like providing them value and then getting something in return as well.

Danny Bluestone

Yeah. It’s almost like ethnography, isn’t it to such an extent where you’re you’re just observing conversations?

Harpal Singh

Yeah, absolutely.

Danny Bluestone

Amazing. That’s a really fascinating insight. So thanks for sharing that.

And just finally , with all of your wealth of knowledge and your amazing career history what would you tell your young self, if you were to go back, 15, 20 years, what are the three tips that you would give yourself?

And not just yourself, but other aspiring product designers who were either looking to get into UX, AI and the future of design.

Harpal Singh

That’s a good question. I recently gave a short talk at a university addressing design students that graduate. So I have something from there which I can share.

I think one thing that I would highly emphasis is that don’t be shy of the full process. So many times designers get attracted to the field with with fancy prototyping and meeting customers. But you’re, as a designer, your success is in making the customer successful or end user successful, not by just creating a fancy product or a fancy website that no one uses.

So I think to my younger self, I would have absolutely done a lot more of that earlier. I should have. I wish I had.

Then the second thing is , the more you learn, the more you realise how much you don’t know and how much more there is to learn. I think it’s like a classic imposter syndrome.

And one way that to get out of that and not fall for that next shiny thing, because the market is evolving so fast, things are changing so fast, is to keep honing your basics.

I think you asked the question around the UX and how it has helped me. I think , I may not remember the exact methodologies, but what I do know is that these are the fundamentals and the basics of design.

You put how information is grouped together. How people perceive this information. Very simple basics about using devices about how people behave.

I think that kind of will really help anyone’s career. I would say, not just designers. And thinking from first principles is almost like part of it as well that you boil down the problems to its core basics and the core fundamental truths and kind of start from there.

I think working within AI field has definitely pushed me to go back to first principles a lot now. You’re not just building a website with a CMS and your job is done. So the impact of the work is much broader, which means that at least from what I’ve seen, rather than getting overwhelmed with all of this information and change happening so fast, you kind of go back to basics and go to the real thing. And that kind of helps.

The third thing I would say is simplification , simplify, simplifying. Again, I have made this mistake a million times myself and with the designers that have managed. We are creators by definition and we love to create and put things out there. But we also forget that it is again about solving problems and to keep things simple.

I think it is still the best designers out there are able to address the needs of the customers in the most simplistic way. And that requires honing your craft that requires so much extra effort. It’s really easy to create designs, create templates based on what exists out there, but really getting back to the basics and simplifying it is still quite hard, I would say.

Danny Bluestone

Fantastic. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you today I, really enjoyed it. And yeah, I guess we’ll stay in touch and I’ll continue to follow all of your exciting projects and any kind of updates on the book.

Thanks a lot.

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