Last night I watched Morning Glory, a cute movie about a plucky, underdog tv producer who makes her dreams come true. All in all, it is not a terrible metaphor for innovating new products. She succeeds by applying creative thinking, willingness to take risks, good management, metrics-driven feedback loops, and sheer hard work. However, she… Continue reading
Date Archives December 2011
Experiments (what are MVPs?)
I recently gave a talk to LUXr New York about MVPs, or really about running experiments. Instead of using the term “MVP”, I find myself using the word experiment for a few different reasons: less jargon; a clearer connotation of lightweight, learning, and not necessarily tied to digital product, and a clearer signal that this… Continue reading
Business Assumptions Exercise
I recently updated my “startup assumptions” deck to the below version (link), and took the team involved with my current project through the exercise. It was a great way to get hypotheses on the table and see if people are on the same page. The next phase is prioritizing the assumptions and starting to run… Continue reading
Excuses, Excuses, Excuses (on customer development)
For our last Lean Ignite here in New York, I decided to have a little fun and rant about all the excuses I hear from teams as to why they are *not* doing customer development. Below is the 5-minute video for those who are interested (link). And yes, now I finally understand why people tell… Continue reading
Strategic UX vs Tactical UX
There are strategic UX leaders, and then there are tactical UX implementers. To be a strategic leader, one needs to broaden thinking beyond design and usability, and start thinking holistically about critical business goals and risks. As the broader UX profession moves from being artifact-based to results-based, this is going to be critical. However, I… Continue reading