There is a need for a new space to think, discuss, and act. This need are being felt by the majority of AI / ML / Data Product Managers out there. They are exhausted by the ever increasing data volume, velocity, variety, variability, and veracity. This has created a sense of loss touch — what we are building is no longer grounded on what is needed or desired.
This is what we called, and hope to further discuss in this article — the experiential gap.
This experiential gap often separates the product developers who are building products from the people who are using them. The current ways of closing this experiential gap are through a few common product management toolkits such as:
- User Research: User research are mostly focus on gathering information through understanding users needs, behaviors, aspirations, and jobs-to-be -done. The ultimate outcome of user research is to find that magical sweetspot of where and when users open up their wallet, and purchase / subscribe to our service.
- HEART Framework: The original framework comes from Google product teams. This framework helps them to define quality user experience, and product goals. From each category — imagine this in rows; there are five categories i.e. happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success. And, we will need to run through across — imagine this in columns; there are goals, signal, and metrics process.
- Product Roadmap: A typical product roadmap communicates the Why and What of the product teams in the next 3–12 months (and sometimes longer). Most of the time, it is a live document, updated whenever there is executive directional changes, reaction to competitive moves, or more often by conscious design and hard work in making the roadmap.
- User Journey Exercise: A user journey exercise is an illustration of user interaction with the product / service in key moments and touch-points. For product teams, it is considered as an useful tool to empathize user’s point of view. From here, product teams can better design forward experience to fulfill customer needs, pain points or jobs to be done.
The above toolkits are useful in its own rights, and they have proven to be successfully applied in large organizations, and start-ups as well. Over the past three years, we have been researching, and cobbling through a couple data product development side gigs with a few passionate product managers — what we realized is quite startling. The experiential gap continues to widen as users becoming more demanding, ever-changing, and re-thinking their relationships with the companies who are selling them products or services.
What can we do about it?
There is a way we can experiment forward. Surprisingly, it is hidden in plain sight to many of us who have been in the crazy start-ups world, in the demanding product management, and in the rapid software development cycle.
This is the New Geometry of Building Data Products — it is built on the confluence of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development.
We are still learning as we go — as we attempt to close this experiential gap between the product developers and users. We attempt to find that right balance. We believe the confluence power of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development will help us pivoting into a new space to think, discuss, and act.
A new space to think means we are taking time to delve into the real problems, challenges, and potential resolutions.
A new space to discuss means we have a dedicated, respectful workspace or forum where interactions are encouraged and challenged.
A new space to act means we are ready to prototype and ask for validation and feedback from the users, and response to their feedback.
The next few paragraphs will serve as a short tribute, and what we think about Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development.
Design Thinking helps us to move beyond the monologue of corporate research; it is about moving further towards into customer insights gained from real-world experiments to meet unmet needs of the customers. It is about deep interest of the people for whom we are designing these products. There are 7 Design Thinking Principles that have served us well:
- Being human-centered in the way we re-imagined and build product.
- We empathize to understand the world around us.
- Expansive & connective thinking.
- We iterative to pivot forward.
- A bit of creative playfulness helps.
- Experimentation.
- Prototype-driven.
Design Sprinting is fast and get ideas through real customer testing without large investment of time and money. It is time-bounded process for answering critical customer and business questions. There are 7 Design Sprinting Principles that have served us well:
1. Be focused.
2. Be smart in managing energy & time.
3. Be ready to swing between problem-solution space.
4. Jumping for fun.
5. Build for test
6. Be perfect at 80%
7. Log data furiously
Agile Development is an iterative, incremental approach to deliver value to customers. The 4 core values of Agile Development that have served us well: 1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
4. Responding to change over following a plan
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 start to join the imaginary dots of Design Thinking, Design Sprinting, and Agile Development that leads to The Better Science Team Way of Work (WoW).
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 next article of this series!
