3 Methods to Define & Build Awesome Products
Session 1 - 10 AM
Presenter: Mike Harding
http://re.vu/MikeHarding
follow: @mah1
Click here for the slides
Note Taker: Kyle Warneck (@KyleWarneck)
Standing room only - And tons of folks pouring out the door into the hallway.
Why are there so many bad products?
- Microsoft's BOB
- The ISmell (Smell the internet!)
- Xervac
- Chest hair toupee
- Edsel
- New coke
- color.com (great team- no actual product idea)
- Santa Dreidel (Facepalm!)
Serious thought, money and PM methodology went into these products
3 approaches for building products
Approach 1: Best imaginable product
- Peter Wilton (Haas lecturer)
- satisfied customers irrelevant. Loyal customers invaluable
- Start with a blank sheet of paper and imagine the best imaginable experience
- ex. Air travel for business
- trips suck
- jetBlue tries to address has emphasized in seat entertainment as a way to improve the experience But are they best imaginable???
- but what are travelers trying to accomplish? best imaginable experience is probably not to have to travel at all!
- ex. PowerPoint
- the tool is a big distraction (crashed on Mike last night)
- but the goal is communication and that's important
Approach 2: Design as a product
Book: Design is How It Works by Jay Green
recommended read by Mike
Example: Ace Hotel
- identified segment that is cost sensitive and community motivated
- heard people complain about the lack of options in downtown Seattle
- Came up with the feel for the hotel. Took photos of other hotels as inspiration and treated hotel as a movie
- each room is distinct and furnished with vintage stuff (lean!)
- room w/ bunk bed and no restroom for $75 - perfect for the kids
- put record player and records in room - customers loved it - began bidding up price of those rooms
But Ace had some failures too
- Ace bought a vintage work table and had a furniture maker mass produce replicas
- the result was not awesome- hugely expensive fail
- They scrapped all the tables and then reassembled tables from the scraps
Question from audience: Is this design driving or really knowing a demographic?
Mike's answer:
- yes, but they started with a purpose and then came up with the look/feel
- and they're pulling customers from outside their demographic
Question: what about apple? don't they do this? Answer: Highlighted apple brand loyalists in the room
Question: what was their process?
We don't know
Question: wasn't this really price point driven? Vintage is cheap?
- but got to price by going in a different direction
Ace outfit's hotel for $15,000 per room vs industry standard $40,000 per room
Question: but what about the labor cost of finding cool buildings and old vintage stuff?
- definite question about scalability
Audience member notes: NYC rooms start at $300 - $400
Mike says the Seattle one was <$100, but somewhat minimalist
Approach 3: Self as a customer
Mike left Juniper in 2011 and started looking for new gig
looking at his resume - thought the format felt archaic
Thought : As a hiring manager, what do I want to see?
- treat resumes as a chronological list of lies
- used only to disqualify people- not to pick who he wants
- looks for 3 things:
- skills
- passion
- fit w/ culture
and traditional resume doesn't answer those questions
Mike partners with a designer and makes a personal infographic and got a gig and lots of positive comments about the resume
met with Stephen Years to create a product to let anyone do this without a designer
Create re.vu
Feedback:
- Survey of HR pro's: "Yuck, breaks my tools! (but I'd contact anyway)"
- lots of feedback like this
- dis-intermediates HR - connects candidate with hiring manager
- Candidates: say "when can I get it"
- Hiring managers: " a breath of fresh air"
Milestones
- Entered 59 days of code comp- and they won!
- Launched Re.Vu in Sept 2011.
- tens of thousands of users today (in 6 months!)
- Between Jan 2012 - March 2012 increased users 2.5 times
More examples of self as customer:
- Mint.com
- Design as product approach
- 1/10th of quicken features - but Mint does the work for you
- Electric power production - internoch (sp?)
- Rewards clients for conservation- as if they were producing the power, but without having to build a plant
- Angie's list
- experiment to clean Salton sea
- used shrimp famring as test procedure
- became a successful shrimp farming business
- Jazzercise
- nest - thermostat
- honeywell explored years ago and decided not to pursue
- nest is selling like crazy
conclusion
- Escape from normal mode
- get perspective
- experiment
- Succeed - create awesome projects
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