Michael Margolis: uncertainty

Transcript context

…over and over. I understand. Let's move on and do something different, change the customer, change the prototypes, whatever." So qualitative interviews in small clumps, and then we compare prototypes. And so this kind of comes from that time I had at Walmart where I sort of see the whole world as a shopping process. And so there's something very valuable, just the way any of you have shopped for anything, right? You don't look at just one thing. If I showed you just one thing, you'd have some feedback and you'd have an opinion about it, like, "Let's shop for a couch. I like the color. The cushions are uncomfortable. I like the fabric," or not. And that's helpful and that's interesting to hear, but as you start looking at two or three, then you start having this different reference points. And when you're testing with customers, it's not up to them to come up with these different possibilities of what could be, and so if I'm presenting those, they're like, "Oh, that's interesting. I like the way this one has cushions that are made out of down, but this other one is really interesting because they deliver it. Oh, but I like this because it's a style that I like and they actually take away my old couch." So then I can compare and contrast across these different possibilities, these different distinct value propositions. And I'm not looking for a winner but this comparison. The other big benefit of having multiple prototypes is it helps teams avoid getting too wed to one specific idea. So you can get a little over-committed. There's a risk that you get over-committed to one idea, you're polishing that, you're working on it, you're too committed to that. And this pushes teams to think of new, different possibilities, and you can be a little bit more neutral and a little bit more objective if you're not all so bought into one thing. So comparing prototypes becomes very powerful. And then the other thing is making this a team sport. The watch parties are a key example of this. And I'm livestreaming it, so the whole team is all watching it these days. Typically, people are pretty distributed, so I'm doing it over Zoom and they're watching the livestream independently. And then one of my partners, so Kate Aronowitz or Vanessa Cho, got amazing design partners I get to work with, are often facilitating that back room. And so what they're doing is they're helping the team... We have a structured process for taking notes, and then in between each interview, they're debriefing. So I have this spreadsheet that I use that's like, "These are the key things we wanted to get out of this." And so they're going through and just capturing that, like, "What just happened in this interview? Let's make sure we have the high level." And at the end of the day, we have a way to all capture, like, "What were our big takeaways? What happened?" But the magic of all watching it and processing it and discussing it and debating it through the course of the day is that everybody is aligned. We've all seen it. I don't write a report. I haven't written a report in, I don't know, 10 years, because at the end, when we capture those big takeaways, the team has captured it. erybody is aligned. We've all seen it. I don't write a report. I haven't written a report in, I don't know, 10 years, because at the end, when we capture those big takeaways, the team has captured it. We do it through Google Form, it shows up in the spreadsheet, and we kind of discuss it. And then everybody's just raring to go do the next thing. Everybody's aligned, and there's this incredible amount of momentum from the team after that. They're like, "Let's go do the next thing." It's clear what we need to do and what we learned. And sometimes the next thing is do this again and adjust so we can build more confidence. But the make it a team sport has been this very powerful tool for building consensus, building alignment. Especially as teams are growing and people are going to start up running in different directions, it's like a chance to come together and make sure, like, "Oh, where are we? What are we doing?" Awesome. That was really helpful. So just to summarize the key elements of this approach, there's a bullseye customer concept of just a very narrow people wedge, almost, of who would most want this thing, and we'll talk more about that, making it qualitative versus surveys or things like that, comparing prototypes, and making it a team sport. Okay. So we're going to actually go into more detail of each of these steps just so folks can... Basically, what I'm hoping to do is they... Folks listening to this can do this tomorrow or next week. There's a little prep time. Before we get into each step, when do you recommend people do this? When in the stage of a journey? Can you do it many times? Any just context there before we dive in?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.