Why We Learn by Making
This isn’t a radical idea in product design or software development. Making instead of analyzing isn’t new, nor is prototyping. But for us at Hudl, it felt like we were doing the right thing (prototyping) at the wrong time (too late).
We find ourselves making less and shipping our first idea too often when we wait to prototype. Shipping your first idea isn’t wrong or bad but we weren’t usually doing it for the right reasons. We wondered, what if we prototyped to understand the problem AND to solve it? Would we learn more? Would we feel more pride in our work?
We’re 1 year in and we’ve seen a few changes:
- We’re faster.
- We uncover important information earlier.
- We build a tighter connection with our customers.
- We have more pride in our work.
We’re faster and uncover important information earlier.
COVID-19 forced us to ask ourselves: How can athletes still get recruited when games aren’t played? We put one of our cross-functional teams on the challenge. Michael Hanson, Product Design Manager on the team, knew there were unique challenges from the recruiter and athlete side. He quickly made this prototype to understand if finding the right school was the biggest roadblock.
As leaders and designers, we’re used to seeing and making prototypes like this. It’s rough, the content fidelity is high and visuals are only applied where it matters. Thankfully our customers are also open and used to looking at quick sketches or wireframes.
These interviews happened right here in the process:
So what happened? Michael talked with parents, coaches and athletes. He learned finding a school isn’t the problem. Athletes don’t know if they’re attracting recruiters. They send video, their stats and academic information but they never know if the recruiter is looking at it. This heightened during COVID-19, too. Athletes couldn’t see if recruiters watched them play in person.
This artifact quickly got to the problem. People took one look at it and said, “No, that’s not what I need.” We’ve seen this over and over. We present artifacts that are never quite right and our customers tell us what’s really going on. Previously, we’d get to this type of conversation a few months into the process.
We build a tighter connection with our customers and we have more pride in our work.
Hudl isn’t ‘design-led’, ‘engineering-led’, ‘product-led’ or ‘sales-led’. We’re a customer-led organization. Prototyping can bring the focus to customers and users in a visceral way.
One of our teams is making analyzing a football game more efficient and data informed. The data isn’t easy to find in the current experience. Coaches have to put work into pulling it all together so they can uncover insights.
Craig Zheng, Principal Product Designer, involved the whole team in making prototypes early.
They meet weekly with coaches. They got it wrong in the beginning but our customers didn’t give up on us. They wanted to be even more involved after seeing our ambition to solve this problem. These coaches became regulars with the team. They saw how the understanding of their problem strengthened and visually progressed. Craig and Nate Patterson, Sr. Product Manager, created a pyramid of needs for football coaches as they understood more. This helped the team figure out what layer of problems we should focus on with each prototype.
In return, the team saw and heard how this experience was transformational for teams. With every prototype (usually multiple in a day), the team felt more pride.
So, Can every cross functional team pick this up and run with it?
Yes and no. Yes, prototyping is always in your toolkit. As designers, we wield it often to clarify and communicate. But where does this really succeed? This succeeds in teams with deep understanding of the problem, in teams that trust one another and in companies where it is really okay to fail.
These principles helped us:
Get buy-in from the team who will be learning by making. Let them try it out before committing to the process.
Set a cadence for testing with customers weekly. That’s the only way this works.
Ask people to play these roles because change is hard:
- someone who reminds everyone we do have permission to fail
- someone who tries first
- someone who creates space for the uncomfortableness
It is bittersweet, but this is my last week at Hudl. I love Hudl, the design team and our customers & users. However, it’s time for me to take an extended sabbatical to refresh. John Wirtz, CPO & Hudl co-founder, is hiring for my replacement. Come help make every moment in sports count.
