The Confluence of Core Three Frameworks for Building Data Products
Companies like Apple, Google, Spotify and Netflix are great examples of successful product design and development execution. They are at the tip of the iceberg. Most of us are not Apple, Google, Spotify or Netflix. We struggled. We failed. Momentarily, we thrived, however fail again to gain that needed traction or breakthrough.
These are challenges of our times — for most of us who are working in the data products domain. Why is that the case for most of us?
We tried to stamp out complexity instead of harnessing it.
We are seduced by the conveniently availability information (often times wrong information) rather than responses to those truths.
We wrestle our product into shape.
It is true that not all of us have the wherewithal of Apple or Netflix — with thousands of engineers, designer, and product managers working in unison (and often times, lucky enough have the deep pocket to fail often (isn’t this a great slogan for them). We will need to recognize the fact we are not them. However, we can reengineer our way out to prepare and prosper.
This is the second part of our series on building data products. In this article, we will explore and go deeper on the confluence of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development.
Go Behind The Scene
We would like to take you around the block, and go behind the scene. That’s right, rather than going straight into explaining The Better Science Team Way of Work (WoW), we do rather give you a sneak peek into the way we discover and design forward The Better Science Team WoW.
We started off whiteboarding — using our minds and hands to figure out and mapped out diverse thinking patterns. For us, this is a kind of cyclical analytic induction — [1] state what we know, [2] modify the hypothesis or the definitions in light of new information, and [3] reformulating the hypothesis is continued until a universal relationship is established. We are pleased with our mindmap so far.
Together with others, and what we have interacted over many years while building this mindmap, we had experienced a massive spike in feelings of optimism and confidence. We intend to stay in the beta mode with this mindmap. We will expand and update this mindmap as we continue to learn and re-learn. We are in a permanent beta state — we welcome new information, and bend towards it.
Today there are start-ups, Fortune 500, and local small businesses all asking the same kind of questions:
What’s the value of our upcoming service to our current (or potential) customers?
What’s our Lifetime Customer Value in the next 3 years?
What do our customers spending this month tell us about where to apply more attention and resources?
Who might be at risk of churning?
If you are able to answer some of the questions above, these kind of insights are basically magic in fast-changing, ever-changing customer-first world. We got to flip the script. We got to move beyond thinking about customer as standing still. We will need to widen our lens (looking at customer collectively) and narrowing our lens (finding ways to personalize our product).
Once we accept and move on to greater plasticity, the way we see our customers will becoming unstuck. This is pretty exciting.
In Part 1 of this series, we have started to introduce The Better Science Team WoW, as the New Geometry of Building Data Products. In this Part 2, we would like to elaborate further.
The Better Science Team Way of Work (WoW) creates a new space to think, discuss, and act. Based on the confluence of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development, it will change the way you think, and re-think about product design and development.
Now, we have the flexibility to shift to the left (more space to think) or right (more space to act) depending on whether …
We need more thinking time to find the right character for your product.
We need more discussion with others to build concerted effort as One Team.
We need to act now to understand the market, and pivot quickly if needed.
A Case Study: The Witty Travel Magazine
In this hypothetical case study — The Witty Travel Magazine has been smart to take advantage of pivoting their subscription strategy i.e. in the case of being able to pivot fast when a big event break. The Witty Travel Magazine knew they will be a surge of traffic of next 3 weeks due to new movie in New Zealand about the Middle Earth, and they have the full inside, exclusive scope. So what can they do? They dropped the pay wall (and worked on a few backend engine upgrade to cater for the increase server load), and allow potential subscribers to read and get a sense of the value they can get. As a result, they get a 300 percent surge in their digital subscription.
This is truly leaning towards acting fast. The iterative, increment Agile Development works well because engineering and marketing team can work together in rapid cycle of prioritize feature-build-test-deploy to get to the targeted outcome.
What if The Witty Travel Magazine wanting to do more than just dropping the paywall temporary. What if they want to continue Growth Hacking their way to increase lifetime value of their customers, and build stronger sense of community among their ever diverse members around the world (increasing coming from the booming Asia countries)
These are hard questions.
It will be harder if they know only one way to act: prioritize feature-build-test-deploy.
What if The Witty Travel Magazine teams use the confluence of Design Sprint and Agile Development i.e. Problem-Solution Iteration, and Product Development Increment and Iteration. A case in point, prior to prioritizing product feature, the teams can shift-left to work in the problem-solution space to discuss different ways to tackle their problem in hand.
Now what if The Witty Travel Magazine teams want to widen their lens to connect the unconnected potential customers (you know those customers wanting to read this amazing magazine!). This is where the team can shift to the left further to connect to the human side of their. A case in point, The Witty Travel Magazine teams can run a Design Thinking exercise covering human behavioral research, and run human-centred design of a new service for movie-theme travel.
In this article, we have challenge ourselves to create new space to think, discuss, and act. We expand our horizon. We expand our plasticity to shift to left or right within The Better Science Team WoW.
We all been there before. We are stuck, unable to breakthrough of our current mindset or resolve a problem. The confluence of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development help us to re-formulate what’s possible. It transformed and renewed us.
We are taking a pit-stop here. This is necessary in order to give you the space to think, and reflect on what you have read through so far. In the next article of this series, we will delve into the confluence of Data and Social Science, and why there are necessary good for us in this century of hyper-globally connected citizen, and yet at the same time, hyper-personalized towards the atomic individuals.
If you want your product design and development to be relevant and stay grounded — try to build and deepen your understanding of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development. Let us know how it went. Do you have your own thoughts about this, or advice to share? Write to us in the comment section, we shall meet you again in the final article of this series!
