Product Momentum Podcast

The common understanding is that to be successful in today’s digital environment designers need to solve problems while building products that people want and need to use. While that may be the core of it, it’s only the core. There’s so much more to it these days, Tim Wood explains. When we talk about interaction design, today’s rapidly emerging next-gen experiences, and the future of product design, designers now need to think about what it means to learn, to adapt, and to change. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Tim Wood, a designer with over 20 years of experience in the software and electronics spaces. Tim wears a couple of hats, one being a Professor of Industrial Design and Interactive Design at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and the other as Design and User Experience Innovation Lead at Corning Inc. Playing in both sandboxes gives Tim the opportunity to engage in the private sector while peering beyond the horizon, to the future of product design, through the lens of higher education. His ability to draw conclusions relating to design from a variety of fields sets him apart, and you are sure to learn a lot from him in this episode. Read our blog post here The post 14 / Taking Design Beyond Today’s Conventions appeared first on ITX Corp..

Product people possess the creative and ethical wherewithal to persuade users to behave in ways that materially improve their lives – using our powers for good. The secret is to understand that, if we want to connect our product’s use to a repetitive consumer habit, we must identify the internal trigger that drives consumer behavior. Understanding this crucial piece can explain how software products become so habit forming, Nir Eyal explains. In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Nir Eyal, a keynote speaker at ITX’s Product Momentum: Beyond the Features product conference (June 19-21), whose work on Behavioral Design has brought him and us to the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The goal of his work is to help product people design the products and services that consumers want to use and that drive positive, habit-forming behaviors. Nir combines a gift for observation with an uncanny awareness to convert life experiences into problem statements that ultimately lead to research, learning, and discovery. Listen to this episode to hear more from Nir about: The rationale behind his two books, Hooked and Indistractable How human tendencies play into habit and distraction How to ensure your product is creating a positive impact in the world Read our blog post here The post 13 / Product Design Driving Positive Behaviors appeared first on ITX Corp..

When you’re building software products, do you think only about adding features? Or do you think in terms of hiring your software products to solve a problem you have? Context is critical. Product managers should consider new products – and their features – in the same way they would new employees, Mike Belsito says. What problems am I hiring them to solve? What will be my return on investment? In this episode, Sean and Joe chat with Mike Belsito, a startup product and business developer with a rich background in creating big, important things out of nothing. In 2014, Mike co-founded Product Collective, now a 20,000-member community of like-minded product people. He conceived the idea to help folks like himself navigate this untamed wilderness called product management. Out of this product community, Mike spawned INDUSTRY a conference in just its fifth year and it’s already one of the largest product management summits anywhere in the world. Mike describes how him and his team, as product people, have grown and improved Product Collective and INDUSTRY. Listen to hear how they apply product management processes like the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, qualitative feedback, and metrics to their community and conference. Read our blog post here The post 12 / Treating Your Product Community Like a Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

Design sprints introduce experimentation and the scientific method to the world of digital product development. Like experimentation, the process is not about success or failure. It’s really about validation, getting quickly to the point of success or failure with considerably less investment of time, resources, and money, and Jonathan Courtney knows this from experience. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe catch up with Jonathan Courtney, co-founder and CEO of AJ&Smart. AJ&Smart is a 21-person product studio in Berlin, Germany that has facilitated more than 200 design sprints since 2016, with Jonathan being involved in about 100 of these. A product designer by training and trade, he commands attention through the engaging, humorous, and impassioned way he talks about using the design sprint process to help companies that struggle with defining their product goals. In fact, sometimes a design sprint is about deciding that the product shouldn’t go to market, and that’s okay. Listen to this episode to hear from Jonathan about: Exercises you can add to your sprints to make them run more efficiently How to identify what does – and doesn’t – warrant a design sprint Differences between the North American and European product and design landscapes Read our blog post here The post 11 / Validating Products Through Design Sprints appeared first on ITX Corp..

The product manager role has been around for decades, but its contributions have been generally overlooked and misunderstood.  No longer is that the case, according to the 2019 State of Product Leadership report, prepared by Pendo + Product Collective. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe speak with Pendo Chief Marketing Officer Jake Sorofman about the recent report and the continuing evolution of the product manager role. Product management is a “role on the rise,” Jake Sorofman says, “but also one in a state of transition. It’s only in the last 10 years that product management has really come into focus as a very strategic part of the business.”  Product management is becoming a more in-demand role in the business space, with product managers coming from a variety of backgrounds from design to computer science to marketing. And this is to be expected as products are becoming more complex and the experience becomes more important, Jake says. He shares what he thinks makes a great product manager: Empathy – relating to the customer’s pains and joys Getting others on your team to care as much as you do Balancing the vision-focused and tactics-focused elements of your job Listen to the full episode to hear more from Jake Sorofman of Pendo, and read the 2019 State of Product Leadership report here. Read our blog post here The post 10 / Evolution of the Product Manager Role appeared first on ITX Corp..

How do we know our work is working? In other words, how do product designers know their work product is solving the problem it was intended to solve? These are the kinds of questions that keep us, and Kate Rutter, up at night. “It’s an insidious question,” says Kate, designer, tech junkie, artist, and Principal at Intelleto. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, hosts Sean and Joe chat with Kate Rutter about metrics, but not just those that only measure performance. Kate says the true power comes from our teams’ alignment around metrics as a very tangible element that people can get behind. “It gets really exciting when you…start to see metrics as human behaviors with your products stated in numerical terms,” she says. Metrics are important for everyone from business executives to designers. Kate mentions Joshua Porter’s quote that, “your metrics will be as unique as your business.” It’s not only tracking data, but tracking the correct data, that will tell you if your work is working. Listen to hear some specific tools and examples you can use to measure the success of your product, as well as tips from Lean thinking. Read our blog post here The post 09 / Finding the Right Metrics appeared first on ITX Corp..

Have you ever wondered what exactly it takes to create great software products? Those who spend even a little time in this space learn quickly that there is no wizard behind the curtain. It’s not magic, Rohini Pandhi says in today’s episode of Product Momentum. There is no special sauce or magic potion that leads to success in this space. But roadmaps can help you along the way. In this episode, hosts Sean and Joe speak with Rohini Pandhi, currently on the product team at Square, about her experiences developing and implementing product roadmaps. Product roadmaps are high-level plans made up of paths that connect a customer’s problems with a solution that drives business forward. Although Rohini shares a lot of tactical tips and strategies from her team at Square in this episode, including: Getting the whole team involved in creating and working through backlogs, and using “t-shirt sizing” as part of this Collaboration between teams of different disciplines How to motivate the team through customer conversations All in all, great software products are made when a combination of talented, creative, hard-working people grind through priorities. Using product roadmaps helps to make sure you never lose sight of the customers’ destination along the journey. Read our blog post here The post 08 / Planning & Prioritizing Product Roadmaps appeared first on ITX Corp..

“Why, daddy,” says the curious toddler. “Why?” No parent has yet found a way to escape this exasperating line of questioning. We should be grateful. For as frustrating as the interrogation becomes, its purity of purpose cannot be denied. Focus on the why, the root explanation of the thing you are examining. This honest, unrelenting desire to understand requires us to rethink, reconsider, and clarify motives. In a similar way, UX designers and product managers can employ this technique to resist the impacts of “experience rot,” Jared Spool explains on today’s episode of the Product Momentum Podcast. Today on the Product Momentum Podcast, hosts Sean and Joe speak with UX design authority Jared Spool of Center Centre about the experience rot paradox. Experience rot is a phenomenon that arises when product owners perceive new features in a way that reinforces the “if one is good, more is better” philosophy. Jared shares several strategies to resist experience rot when building products: Focus on user problems without immediately jumping to the solutions Use data to inform features and problems, and collect this data before you need it Refine and redefine company culture to make the best product possible Read our blog post here The post 07 / Resisting Experience Rot appeared first on ITX Corp..

Time, technology, and innovative thinkers have revolutionized what the healthcare system stands for today. Regardless of these achievements, though, the entire system remains very health-centric, focusing only on what happens when something goes wrong and a patient must seek out help. Imagine a framework that flipped this concept on its head, putting the patient’s wellness at the center versus the health event. Imagine a system that gives users the tools and resources they need to create a healthy lifestyle that’s based on their wellness needs, motivations, and interests. Ultimately, a healthcare system that’s not just approachable, but promotes a better, more healthy existence for the entire population. This is what Renu Singh and Brian Harrington at the University of Rochester are working to achieve. In this episode, we sit down with University of Rochester’s School of Nursing team, Renu Singh and Brian Harrington, to get a behind-the-scenes look at a cutting-edge healthcare product they brought to market for University of Rochester employees, YoURHealth. Our hosts Sean and Joe not only look at how this power team brought this beautiful concept to life over almost 15 years, but also their process for continuously innovating the framework to provide care to the ever-changing needs of the different organizations it now serves. Listen to hear more from Renu and Brian, including: How they measure success for a healthcare product The importance of security in dealing with personal data How they involved the clinical team in building and deploying their product Read our blog post here The post 06 / Launching a Healthcare Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

As companies implement more technology and automation into their products and services, it’s all too common to shift their focus towards the numbers and forget that customers and users are human beings with problems, frustrations, and joys. In this episode, Sean and Joe talk with Kate O’Neill, Fortune 500 tech guru and adviser, about her experiences with the internet and how she uses human-centered design to improve an individual’s experiences with products. We should always be thinking of the human side of technology and software, considering how our users feel, think, and how to best communicate with them, to give us an advantage in how to better serve them, Kate O’Neill says. In the end, what we’re really selling is experiences. She calls this shift in focus in tech towards solving human problems the “digital technological disruption.” Kate does this work every day and shares a number of tactics for introducing more human-focused experiences into the software products you work on. She says, “if you want to go broader, probably the better option is to think about going deeper. How can you add more value to the people that are already your customers?” Sean, Joe, and Kate also discuss:  Methods for measuring success in building human-centric products Building trust, loyalty, and advocacy within a capitalistic system Brands that are succeeding at conveying meaningful strategy …and more in this episode of Product Momentum. Read our blog post here The post 05 / Human Experience in Products appeared first on ITX Corp..