On Saturday, May 18, I gave a workshop to the SVPMA – the Silicon Valley Product Management Association – on how to use customers’ human needs to design better products and craft marketing stories. That’s how you humanize and align product with marketing! Stories don’t just happen after a product is designed. Stories about customers drive the design itself. Attached are the slides from my session. Enjoy.
Kathy Klotz-Guest
kathy(at)keepingithuman(dot)com
Great marketing IS storytelling, and it is the essence of connecting with your audience. So why aren’t there more storytellers in product – especially in high-tech?
Many companies gather customer requirements, build in a few of the most important needs, create a prototype, and collect beta-test feedback. Then, after fixing a few things, marketing creates “messages” to promote the product to customers. Far too often, storytelling begins after the product is built.
Yet, the most important storytelling happens before and while the product is being built. Story drives the product into being – it’s what inspires the best design. From Pixar to LEGO to SAP, some of the savviest designers know that telling the story of your customer and their human challenges first is necessary into order to design a product that fits into a customer’s world. Your customer has a story and the only story a great product can tell is how it fits into a larger human narrative. Unfortunately, too many companies create a story as after-thought or as extension of their corporate product strategy narrative and force that onto the customer. That is bass-ackwards, as the saying goes!
Forget “Features!” Story-Driven Products Win
Why? The best products work with the flow of human behavior rather than against it. Product adoption that depends on customers to change their human behavior – thus, asking them to change their daily narrative to center around some product – often stalls. Granted, disruptive technology works this way; however, most human-centered innovations are evolutionary, small breakthroughs that yield big results because they don’t ask customers to change their story – they offer a solution to a common problem, and work with the grain of customers’ daily routine.
When product designers work this way, the “story” behind the product’s value is already well understood before any product is completely designed and built. The value story behind great products isn’t created by marketing as an afterthought; it’s the forethought that gives design its inspiration. A value proposition makes the ‘case’ to a customer why he or she should bring a feature-driven product into his or her existing world. That’s backwards. In story-driven development, a customer’s world shapes how a product should be designed.
At SAP for example, a VP of Product told me his team tells stories about the customers with the customers present, and they tell stories about what the product can do to help the customer as the product is being created. This is the central focus of “design thinking” as practiced. Stories provide an important roadmap – a vision to help products stay on target and stay customer-focused.
“Human” Need, Not Product, Drives Narrative
A great example of fitting a product into an existing need and narrative is in the area of catheters – a major source of hospital infections. Though not particularly exciting as a product, it exemplifies how design thinking works with the flow of human behavior. A company recently came up with a catheter cleaning mechanism (with a disinfecting dispenser and cleaning head that operates at the push of a button). This company looked at the entire process of “human” events that lead to contamination and built a solution to the entire process. For example, nurses putting catheters in their pockets for later use. That very act contaminates the catheter. Now nurses can disinfect right before insertion, without having to change their daily routine in a major way! A small tweak in design that understands the entire human chain of events can have a huge health impact.
Nest Labs is another great example. Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest also created the iPod. The company designed a learning thermostat to reduce costs of home cooling and heating. It is a simple, elegant design that solves a real need without requiring people to master a steep learning curve. Nest Labs’ product “learns” peoples’ preferences and works with their needs, desires, and narrative. Nest fits into human habit; rather than asking people to change their story to integrate a new product into their world. Nest understood the story of energy consumption and that many thermostat systems were too complicated and inefficient. That story and the need for energy savings inspired the design of the product. It is that simple. It’s not feature-rich; it doesn’t have to be. It is a story-driven, not a features-driven, product.
Stories Are a Precursor to Marketing, Not the Byproduct of it
Storytellers are critical in product development and marketing. All great marketing is storytelling. Products designed and inspired by stories of human need are easier to market because they fit into the customer’s existing narrative, rather than asking customers to change their stories.
If done right, product stories are never an after-thought; they a core part of the inspiration behind the product and a driving force for innovation, not after it. By building customer narrative into the product, human-centered design strengthens the marketing message and gives it credibility. That’s the difference between human-centered marketing and advertising.
So, companies, please bring the best storytellers back to product strategy. Your customers are waiting!
KKG (Kathy Klotz-Guest): Other than Apple, when we look at Silicon Valley – who is creating really innovative products?
MH (Mike Harding): I would say Nest Labs. Tony Fadell, the founder, created the iPod. He came up with a non-obvious answer to a problem people didn’t know they had. Almost 50% of energy in homes goes to cooling; he wanted to apply technology to the problem to reduce energy consumption. He developed a “learning” thermostat. And he wanted it to have a cool design, too, which it does.
There was a huge design element and the product costs about $250, and pays for itself in a few years. So there is a great return on sophisticated technology made simple. That’ the ‘a-ha!’ It meets all the criteria of great innovation – simple, important, solves a key problem people didn’t always articulate, and so the value is clear. This product is about great design, it’s easy to use, and it is based on awesome sophisticated technology that the user doesn’t have to understand to be able to benefit from. Honeywell has patents around those kinds of things and came to the conclusion that there was no market and didn’t go into that space. Honeywell is now coming after them. Facebook is making attempts but their product is not the ‘best imaginable’ product. Intel is trying to innovate into new areas, too.
KKG: I think healthcare is rife for big shifts and we already see some examples. IDEO helped Kaiser Permanente to rethink the entire patient experience by imagining it as a whole product – from sitting in the waiting room to wearing those horrible gowns (talk about exposed!..) <laughs!>. Now in healthcare we’re talking about technology shifts such as electronic medical records, and ways to improve actual hospital care.
KKG: Another example of small things that make a huge difference in healthcare is in the area of catheters – a major source of hospital infections. A company recently came up with a catheter cleaning mechanism (with a disinfecting dispenser and cleaning head that operates at the push of a button). This company looked at the entire process of “human” events that lead to contamination and built a solution to the entire process. For example, nurses putting catheters in their pockets for later use. That very act contaminates the catheter. Now nurses can disinfect right before insertion! A small tweak in design that understands the entire human chain of events can have a huge health impact! It also fits all the criteria of “best imaginable product” by applying human-centered design element to solving a significant “human” need.
MH: Wow. That’s right.
KKG: You talk about creating the “best imaginable product.” How do you get there?
MH: UC Berkeley Professor – Dr. Peter Wilton – did work in this area, so I have to give credit here. The ‘best imaginable product’ happens long before your product development process. First, suspend all disbelief about what you think you know. Second, approach innovation as if it is a problem you have never seen before. Ask yourself ‘why?’ Get to the core reason of why. Make it so simple, and take big requirements off the table. Try to explain what you are doing to a young child. If you can’t get to the simple explanation of why you need a product, you don’t know what you are doing.
KKG: Absolutely. You have to knock people off the status quo of their own assumptions. That’s hard.
MH: Yes. You can mentally trick people! Take them down a path where the answer to what you ask is obvious. Then, flip it so that the answer seems totally wrong. Here is a great story to illustrate. There was this great painter in Ohio once upon a time. He painted people as he *saw* people. One day a woman drives up in fancy car and she asked him to paint her. The one catch, she says, is to do it naked. So he talks to his wife. He comes back and says, OK, I’ll do it. But only if I can keep *my* socks on. It’s a miscommunication. It’s a challenge of assumption. You saw that coming!
KKG: Absolutely. Comedy – like great marketing – is about upending expectations. Same mindset!
MH: Yes! Cutomers lie. People lie. It’s not malicious – but we lie to ourselves. We don’t mean to. It’s part of the human condition. Sometimes we don’t know what we want, and we don’t know how to ask for it. Sometimes customers aren’t sure. You have to keep going back to the question about the most basic assumptions and ask, “Why do you think that? What makes you sure? Are there other possibilities?”
KKG: True. So many great areas to explore in a future blogs. Any final thoughts on the topic?
MH: There is no silver bullet here. Challenge assumptions; yet don’t dump your product design process – just know how to use it at the right time. Don’t be arrogant. Be smart enough to know the difference. You have to use the right tool for the right job. Innovation isn’t about throwing out the traditional stuff; it’s knowing when to veer from tradition because it yields the same stuff. Critics criticize; creators create. Where do you want to be?
KKG: Thanks, Mike!
Follow Kathy: @kathyklotzguest Follow Mike: @mah1
I recently chatted with Mike Harding, innovator and developer, about creating awesome new products and services. I met Mike when we both presented product and service innovation sessions at The 2012 Silicon Valley Product Camp at eBay in March. He has worked with numerous startups ranging from fruit and produce wholesaling to Java application servers. Mike worked to bring software and developers into the networking world at Juniper Networks. His current startup is re.vu, a personal landing page for your professional brand. When not working, Mike loves to spend time with his family on the California coast.
Kathy Klotz-Guest (KKG): Why do companies often get ‘new’ products and services wrong?
Mike Harding (MH): We are brilliant individually and stupid together. <Laughs!>
That gets magnified with the size of an organization. Take the size of the human brain and apply that to the number of relationships people can maintain with fidelity. Somewhere after about 100 or so people get involved, you break into multiple tribes. Then you get ‘drag’ applied and ideas stall.
We are pack animals. Humans want to be part of a pack and improve their positions in the pack. Products are a symptom of that human condition. I am working on a product now and they (the client) are faced with a huge “innovator’s dilemma.” The investment to do this would be less than $10MM. So the question is do we do the same old thing or really break with the past and dare to do something different?
KKG: How much does risk-aversion tie our hands creatively when it comes to innovation?
MH: It’s huge, as we both know!
KKG: We build in the wrong incentives and reward the wrong behavior.
MH: Yes. You never see anyone publicly celebrate failure or give positive attention to those who champion failures. Failure is an important teacher!
KKG: Some companies do. Like Intuit. It’s the ‘fail fast and fail forward’ mentality.
MH: Wish there were more companies doing that. I was reading about one of the founders of Pinterest…and Pinterest was a pivot. Big companies don’t like having to pivot. It’s too uncertain. And pivoting – they don’t say failing – is often critical to success. Knowing when to do that is tricky and vital. I asked one of my big company clients how much risk they were willing to take on. There is smart risk and dumb risk. If you don’t understand the risk, maybe it’s a dumb risk. There is a certain amount of risk you can’t plan away; you do have to understand what you are dealing with.
KKG: How can organizations of all sizes go beyond the ‘obvious’ product and service extensions – meaning from mere upgrades to products that push boundaries forward?
MH: Get out from behind your computer. Experience the world without preconceived notions. Go smell a flower. Build paper airplanes and see if they work. Play games. Go bowling. How does the path of the ball change down the lane? Go for a walk. Unplug.
Don’t be so tethered to your email. This notion that we are increasingly connected; we are abusing it. The most rare thing today isn’t time – it’s our attention. Too much multi-tasking hurts our ability to be inspired and concentrate well on just a few things. Remember that creation is a holistic process. You need to engage in some creative process physically and that helps the mental agility. Doing mindless task frees us to have insights. Frequently breakthroughs happen when you do something out of character enough to get your subconscious to work. It’s the ping pong table effect, and that is why it’s there in so many break rooms, or used to be.
KKG: You also have to get past this ‘I don’t want to fail…I don’t want to look stupid’ mentality.
MH: No question. I am an introvert, and I can do it! You have to be OK with “pivoting.”
KKG: You quote the great tech pioneer Alan Kay: A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Of course, that can happen in either direction <laughs!> What are some ways companies can change their perspectives in order to create awesome products?
MH: Be genuine about what you know and what you don’t know. Be humble. What you think the market is may not be the market. Companies lose this notion that they have personal responsibility to think about growth. You have to revisit some basic assumptions. And you can’t know what you don’t know. Losing 80 IQ points …that’s usually about analysis paralysis, and a lack of conviction. Some people hope to change their perspective with more data. We often hide behind process, data and data tools….humans do hide behind tools. Unlike metal, these things don’t bend that way. Enlist the power of the story, as you describe it, Kathy. Encourage smart-risk taking. That’s how you change perspective.
END PART 1
