#spring15sec02

[pfpsfieldguide]

We are working on an innovative new solution of how to most effectively price our products. We are almost 2 years in and have worked through countless iterations. Last week we brought all of the end users out to headquarters to test a prototype and use post-it notes to categorize all their ideas for likes and dislikes and put them into buckets. Watching all of the end users actually use the software was priceless as well as having the team together to brainstorm and idea generate.  

The week was great and I owe a lot of the success to the great tools I learned in PFPS!

Taylor Marsh

[pfpsfieldguide]

If you're tired of the typical sticky note methodology to generate your business model canvas, give Legos a shot.  Lego Serious Play is a creative thinking methodology and innovation tool that enables people to describe and build business metaphors and experiences with the freedom and playfulness of Legos.  Combined with business model canvasing, Legos can free the imagination and allow people to convey business model concepts that may have been previously too challenging or abstract.

-Adam Harbour

[pfpsfieldguide]

We saw in PFPS how kindergarten kids did better than most adults in the marshmallow challenge. Humara Bachpan, a campaign stared in India, has taken this learning very seriously by tapping into the creativity and empathy of kids living in the slums to sketch maps of the area and spark urban planning changes. Unaware of real life constraints, unafraid of failing and deeply curious,  children can come up with ideas that escape most adults!

- submitted by Amit Goel

[pfpsfieldguide]

Ethnography in Software Design

Ethnography is often confused with UX design research by product managers and user experience engineers, however, the two disciplines are really very different things.  A colleague of mine has a great quote on this common misconception:

"People often think that when we are using ethnography in software design we are studying how users interact with our software.  This is not entirely true.  In some cases we do study how people interact with our software as a part of our ethnographic research, however, the focus of our research is on how people solve problems.  This may or may not involve software and usually requires both interviews and observations.  We then extract the insights of how people go about solving these problems and design our software to facilitate that process.  Starting with the baseline of 'our software' limits our ability to truly understand how people holistically solve a problem."

[pfpsfieldguide]

There are many examples of organizations attempting to bring successful market-based innovations to the developing world. Without a PFPS-style approach to understanding the distinct customer needs in those locations, these can often fail to achieve any real traction and adoption among local users. SafeBoda could just be considered "Uber for Bodas", but it is so much more. The motorbike taxis known locally as "bodas" are widely popular in Kampala, but accidents are also the leading cause of death and head injury. Additionally, the young, educated, smartphone carrying population in Kampala is growing swiftly and are craving better solutions to daily life issues. With these observations and insights, SafeBoda uses the Uber model to provide on-demand boda drivers who are trained and bring helmets for their passengers, improving the ability to find a boda in a growing city as well as saving lives.

- Submitted by Jason Eaves

[pfpsfieldguide]

Simple Challenge, Professional Insights

Taking seasoned professionals, giving them a well defined challenge, and injecting some healthy competition can lead to surprising results.  This week our team's strategic leadership offsite I engaged my fellow Cisco supply chain professionals in the Marshmallow Challenge.  The theme of our offsite was integrating innovation into our team culture.  I chose the Marshmallow Challenge as the perfect icebreaker to get the team’s creative juices flowing. 

The experience went just as planned with both teams neck and neck until the final minutes when the teams placed the marshmallows on their crowning structure. One team had integrated the marshmallow into their design early on, and made adjustments as they went to ensure a successful structure.  The other team intricately built their tower in sections and only in the last moments gingerly placed an antenna like marshmallow and spaghetti rod on the top - to disastrous results.  One team ended with a 28” structure while the other’s collapsed.

The lesson from this simple exercise was well impressed upon the team. Every project has its own marshmallow - the unforeseen critical obstacle.  In our “big company” culture, we tend to lead by consensus and seek to develop the perfect solution before implementation.  The key is to take the time to plan early on, then to rapidly test solutions and iterate your design to avoid last minute failure when that seemingly inconsequential obstacle inevitably arises.

- Jason Silver

[pfpsfieldguide]

This article highlighted a classic case of how Apple needed to diverge from the whole ecosystem they had created with the iPhone and its social implications, and then converge towards a complementary product to solve the problems created by people using smart phones. PFPS teaches us the importance of tying in divergence with convergence.

[pfpsfieldguide]

            This article is a fantastic design thinking success story. In 2009, Airbnb was on the brink of failure. The company was hardly earning any revenue ($200/week) and needed to unveil solutions that would turn the financial state company around. After some reflection, the Airbnb founders identified that the quality of all of the listing photographs on their site was awful because the photos were taken using camera phones or taken from classified ads. In a last ditch effort, the founders decided to pursue an avenue that many would deem a non-scalable solution. They decided to rent a camera, spend time with the customers listing properties, and improve the inferior quality of the listing photographs to make them beautiful and attractive. They made this decision on a whim without any technical data. Luckily, it paid off in a very big way. Once they began posting higher quality images of the properties the company’s revenues began to increase for the first time in several months.

            Without question, Airbnb can attribute this pivotal business turning point to design thinking. Had the company continued to approach problems with the same narrow, technical frame of mind (read: through code), it never would have discovered this ingenious solution to increase users and subsequently revenues. By taking the time to have meaningful conversations with customers listing properties and form a better understanding of the user experience, Airbnb founders realized that users weren’t able to really view the properties that they were paying for. These conversations helped Airbnb founders identify the cause of the revenue slump and inspired them to seek out innovative, design-based solutions.  

            Today, Airbnb requires that all new hires take a trip (paid for by the company) the first 1-2 weeks of hire and then document the experience. This allows employees to get first hand user experience, which better equips them to identify creative solutions to improve the product. When it comes to problem solving, Airbnb encourages employees to start with creative, sometimes outlandish, non-scalable ideas as a way to spur innovation. Employees take small bets on these ideas to see if there is meaningful return on the bet and if there is, the company devotes more resources and manpower to pursue the ideas further. It is this way of design thinking that has led to many of the most innovative features of Airbnb as a company. Getting in the minds of users and thinking bigger (outside the world of tech oriented solutions) has yielded a sizeable payoff for Airbnb as revenues for 2014 are estimated at $1.35B. It is stories like these that inspire me to implement similar design thinking process into my own business experience. Thank you, Airbnb!