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