Developing a product vision. An approach to workshops and stakeholder engagement.
Role: Product Design Lead
The Context
As a way forward, I proposed facilitating a Product Vision process to align everyone and make this product start taking shape.
The client, a technology developer, had a bespoke technology solution that utilises blockchain to help business customers solve challenges around the verifiability of data.
They were confident about the solution but needed help developing it as a product they could market to a specific customer type. On this occasion, they were partnering with a consultancy on the environmental sector to help with challenges around carbon reporting and were looking to focus on this sector.
They were also looking to develop a front-end user experience, as the solution was purely back-end based.
As the Product Design Lead, I was in charge of facilitating the creation of the front-end user experience. To begin, we struggled to develop a solution amidst the disparity of stakeholders' ideas, agendas and different levels of expertise. As a way forward, I proposed facilitating a Product Vision process to align everyone and make this product start taking shape.
Goals and Tasks
The first thing was to set a delivery goal, which was already on the client's schedule.
A pilot version of the platform was to be delivered in a few months, and our first goal as a team was to define what that pilot would look like, not only as a solution for the client but also as a validation for our product idea.
Learnin goal
- Learn as much as possible about the customer type to allow us to create a value proposition for them
Outcome goal
- Come up with a product value proposition and validate it with the end customer
Output goal
- Deliver the first pilot of the solution in three months
Actions
1 - An approach to workshops and stakeholder management
We were starting without any knowledge of the customer or their business. We needed to understand the user's tasks, needs, pain points, and who they were in the company. This customer type was the energy companies' quality, health, safety and environmental officers.
The first step was creating a user journey map, the product's value proposition, and how these two fit together.
Conducting the research first and mapping later would have been my preferred method. Still, in this case, the stakeholders and users were challenging to reach and unwilling to spend time in a workshop. From there, my approach was to book a rapid mapping session involving the consultants with expertise in the subject matter and those with expertise in the technology. I also designed other exercises around it, such as an empathy map, to get closer to the product's value proposition fit with the user's tasks and needs.
This approach also proved difficult because I couldn't get the participation of all the stakeholders I needed for the exercise. No one available had deep user knowledge, and we still needed to fill in gaps in our understanding.
Finally, we decided to go for the map in the middle approach. We gathered as much information as possible from every source we could find, and we processed that into a user journey. Once we had that, we could present our map to the stakeholders, get feedback, and fill in the gaps.
In this case, mapping in the middle and presenting something pre-digested to the stakeholders allowed us to show progress and engage them in the conversation. In this way, we reduced the overwhelm of busy stakeholders having to dedicate long hours to collaborate in the UX research.
2 - Designing a product vision
I designed a product vision workshop divided into three main sections. I used resources from Google Venture's Jake Knapp's brand workshop and design sprint, Strategyzer's "Value Proposition Design" and "Business Model Generation", and commonly used UX journey mapping templates.
Section one is a group of exercises designed to articulate the company's why, mission and values and how the new product would fit in an imagined long-term timeline.
The second part is about mapping out the value proposition, assessing how it fits against the customer needs, pain points and desires, and how the solution fits in the market and the competitor landscape.
The third section includes a user journey as it is for the customer type at the moment, technology agnostic, and how we want it to be when they experience our solution.
3 - A company’s “why”, timeline and values
Simon Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do but why you do it".
Starting with this exercise in any new product situation is essential. Later in the development, every UI screen we design will have a reason to be in the company's "why, how and what" framework.
Also, considering an ambitious timeline helps us prioritise what to do now and what can wait. For example, a company focusing on the environmental sector will translate their vision differently than one focusing on blockchain solutions for the environmental sector now but wants to help different industries in the longer term. A timeline allows us to create a roadmap and prioritise what to build based on company goals. In this case, a pilot with a selected number of customers in the short term is the first step to becoming a world leader in the sector in 20 years.
The company's values translate into product attributes.
Values such as "trust" and "security" will give a clue into what's essential to build, for example, regarding features orientated to data validity and security.
4 - Value proposition and customer fit
The client had an idea of the value proposition but needed help with some aspects of the solution. Usually, their service would include a one-off solution tailored to a specific client. Still, they were looking for a product that would solve a problem for a variety of customers, expanding their business outcomes. Also, they wanted to have an easy-to-use front end as, at the moment, the solution included only a backend plugged into the customers' systems.
To help with that, I focused the conversations on the aspects that would help us clarify this, using resources from Strategyzer's "Value Proposition Design" and "Business Model Generation".
Questions we answered in the workshop included:
How is this solution different from the competitors'? Why would customers choose us?
Is this a technology pull or a market pull? Are we trying to find a solution for a customer's problems or a problem to fit our solution?
Who is the customer? What are their jobs, pains and gains? Are we answering these with our product's value proposition?
How robust is our business model? How easy is it for customers to leave us for a competitor?
We asked an expert in environmental consultancy to help us fill the gaps to create a customer profile with our best knowledge of the customer's jobs, pains and gains and committed to validating customer feedback with the help of our vision prototype.
At first glance, we could see a good fit between the product's value proposition and the customer profile. This exercise also allowed us to identify what gains we could offer the customer beyond covering their compliance and security pain points. These were around forecasting, setting goals and easy reporting, which could be less of an immediate need but could massively help to fulfil the customer's jobs.
5 - User journeys/solution map
The last step included a user journey as is and a solution map for the short term. These two steps would feed into a product roadmap for delivery.
For the user journey as is, we worked with an expert to identify the steps a customer goes through when reporting carbon. We considered tasks including digital tools and any other tool and process currently used. The goal was to understand the customer's experience in a technology-agnostic way and to find which tasks we could translate into our product on a more granular level. For example, how the customer currently scopes data, who they work with at any step, which tasks they delegate, and what documents they need for auditing.
The final solution map corresponds to the customer's first experience with the product. This map is the first version we'll build. We start to map this experience at the end, with the short-term outcome and work backwards to the first interaction from each actor's perspective, whether it's the customer, the developer, the consultancy or the designer.
6 - UI work
The next step after we had a solution map was to create the interface for the user. Working on the first wireframes was a collaborative effort between me, the tech lead and the consultants.
We started with UI flows and quickly sketched some screens in Miro. I then developed a UI style based on the product's existing brand guidelines and recreated the revised wireframes on the new style. Reusable Figma components followed.
In addition, we collaboratively created a roadmap for the exploration/development of the new features.
Results
As a result of this product vision kick-off, the project's development continued on a cohesive growth track instead of a sum of scattered efforts.
Aligning stakeholders is challenging. Most of the time, more than a workshop is needed to align everyone, and the key to success is in a continuous discovery process paired with agile delivery.
Designers only have some things under control. But the designer's role as a facilitator is critical for collaboration. Design artefacts created in the process brought the team and stakeholders together. We would have been working in complete silos otherwise.
The team used these design artefacts, user journeys and roadmaps throughout the development and after my involvement in the project. That was the best outcome this exercise could have from my perspective.
"Designers don’t have good ideas, they have good methods"
Don Norman
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lautecce@gmail.com