Ux Australia 2016

@amir_ansari @dius_au #UXAustralia
A journey from building products
right to building the right products
(Aug 2016)

dius com au careers
We’re hiring!
(Senior UXer - Sydney )

Preface
Some context

WHY?
Build the right product!

“There is surely nothing quite so useless
as doing with great efficiency what
should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker (1963) - Managing for Business Effectiveness

9093 Kettle | Alessi

9093 Kettle | Alessi
It doesn’t pour until you take the bird out — which you can’t
because hot steam is bubbling out of the spout.
ft.com

OXO Good Grip Measuring cup

Are you currently working on
a product? (n=134)UX Aus 2016 Live Poll

Is your product the right
product for your users / customers? (n=119)UX Aus 2016 Live Poll

Doing agile before agile was popular
“ Since you helped
us release, we’ve
had 100% uptime!
“
Quality baked in
“Goal is to always reduce waste
“
Supplementing existing teams
“The ‘Good guys’ promoting agile by doing
“
Made teams hum
“

CI | CD | TDD | XP | Microservices

Build products right!

We just trusted that the client
knew the product they wanted
was the right product
“ Didn’t really go
looking for
customer / user
insight
“
We were being
lead as opposed
to leading
“Got the brief, but didn’t
ask the why questions“
Designers - give us
the magic, we need
something to build
“Photoshop files would be
thrown over the fence“
Didn’t engage
with end users“

Didn’t always build the right products

Chapter 1
Building a foundation

Chapter 2
Growth and experimentation

… one year passess by

Challenges
● Not brought in early enough
● HCD included after the idea was set
● Not ‘really’ building the right product
● No formal integrated approach

INWARDOUTWARD
Inductions
Sales team
One on ones
Brown bags
Billable
Overservice
Blogs
Client
brown bags
Meetups
Conference
talks
Sponsorships
Rebrand
Consult
Thought
leadership
Brand
awareness
Cred / trust
Coach /
upskill
Process
Pairing
Pre-sales
Increased
demand
Hire Use within
Grow!!!

Kao’s wants to engage its employees,
customers and all stakeholders to form brand
advocacy through training and education, to
aid in the increase of sales.

Kao’s wants to engage its employees,
customers and all stakeholders to form brand
advocacy through training and education, to
aid in the increase of sales.
We want a training
platform please!

Research

Technology won’t solve your problem.
Consider experimenting with a tweak in your business model.
We recommended ourselves out of a gig!
Our recommendation

Would you also like a UXer?

Would you like help with...

ConsultantClient engagement Client
Q. Q.

Chapter 3
Setting a framework

… another year passess

● Agreed vision
● Value proposition
● Understanding of or access to customer
● UX baked in and co-leads inception
Non-negotiables

What (non UX / UCD) tools or techniques do you
use to help you build the right products? (n=116)UX Aus 2016 Live Poll

The ideal engagement!
Client
● Early stage of product lifecycle
● Appetite to be challenged
● Trust and want to reduce waste
Team structure
● Product champion
● Co-located and X-functional
● We lead or co-lead with client
Business problem
● Not sure what the problem is
● Not sure what product to build

Lifting the bar re what it means to
have UX baked in, for everyone“ We start with
understanding the
business and
customers
“
Gettings better, say no to client's
briefs or push back“
Asking the questions upfront and
early as not to waste the client's
time or money
“Spending more time upfront getting the
product / market fit right“
Pushing for a
product mindset,
not project!
“

Starting to build the right products!

Ongoing
challenges
● Post engagement
● Poor client analytics
● We don’t all question the product
● Product Ownership
● Client ‘project’ mindset
● Don’t tell me my baby’s ugly! (the IKEA effect)

● No plan? That’s OK!
● Growing a capability is easy… if…
● The right team, right mindset, right time
● Clients need help with value prop and vision
● Outcomes sell, not roles
Learnings

● No plan? That’s OK!
● Growing a capability is easy… if…
● The right team, right mindset, right time
● Clients need help with value prop and vision
● Outcomes sell, not roles
Learnings
It’s about products, not projects

Can I have one of
your front end devs
for 3 months to build
this dashboard.

No! First, you need one
of our consultants to
understand your
customers’ needs and
validate the idea!

THANK YOU
@amir_ansari
@dius_au
#UXAustralia
In every industry we see endless
stories of failed launches,
ill-conceived projects, and
large-batch death spirals. I
consider this misuse of people’s
time a criminally negligent
waste of human creativity and
potential.
Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

Questions Net Votes
How do you schedule ux process into Sprint timeframes? 10
Do you have designers embedded in sprints or do separate design sprints 10
How do you manage stakeholders that believe they have the answers? 9
How do you put a monetary value on your "ux"? 8
What makes a good product owner? 7
What's your most awkward moment when telling a lucrative client that what they are looking you to build is just
the wrong thing!
7
How do you deal with clients that already have that idea in mind? 7
How can we convince sales people to stop upselling French fries? 6
Questions?
UX Aus 2016 Live Poll

Questions Net Votes
How did you get people to understand the value of ux design in addition to ba's 6
Would you do anything differently if you were within an organisation as opposed to a consultancy? 5
How do you get senior leadership to care about this type of approach in a developer driven environment? 4
How do you deal with client teams who are smarter/more experienced than your team? 4
How do you get client to pause development until the problem/solution has been UXed 4
How many internal battles did you have to fight to get this approach adopted? 4
What was the biggest challenge during change? 4
Part of building the right product is coming up with the right solution from the research; can you tell us a bit about
your ideation process after research synthesis?
3
Questions?

Questions Net Votes
Do you guys only build soft products? Or physical prods too? 3
How do you get your consultants on the ground to advocate your design philosophy and ask the right questions? 2
Do you get to follow through on on projects with user testing to release/implementation? 2
What effect did the Kao business model tweak have? 2
Instead of building products, what about killing features in bloat-ware? 2
What would you have done differently? 2
Questions?

Ux Australia 2016

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Ux Australia 2016