Presentation I did at Hussian College of Art in Philly. Covers the use of story ideas in viewing product management and design as focusing on experiences, not products/features. Also has a bit at the end about my thoughts on mixing story and generative design (computational exploration) as the future of design.

1. Focus on Experiences,
not Products
Joel Eden

2. B.S. Computer Science, PhD Info Science/Human-Computer Interaction, Drexel
(before that…GED at 16, Camden County College)
Current: Senior User Experience Product Manager, Checkpoint Systems
Past:
Design Researcher, Google
Senior Interaction Designer, Disney Animation Studios (Frozen, Big Hero 6)
Director of User Experience, 21st
Century Insurance
…and many other User Experience jobs
Research Engineer, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs
My background

3. Provoke people to discover wonder
My Why
People don’t buy what you do,
they buy why you do it.
And what you do simply proves
what you believe.

4. Experiences vs Products
Testing Experiences (Value)
My Thoughts on (the Future of) Design
Topics

5. Let’s sketch…get out your paper and pencil

6. Let’s sketch …get out your paper and pencil
Draw: Your phone

7. Let’s sketch …get out your paper and pencil
Draw: Your phone
Draw: Your phone’s user interface

8. Let’s sketch …get out your paper and pencil
Draw: Your phone
Draw: Your phone’s user interface
Draw: Your phone’s user experience

9. This is a product

10. This is a product, not an experience

11. More interesting view of a product, still not an experience

12. This is an experience!

13. This is an experience from the user’s perspective

14. Art (designer’s perspective) vs. Design (problem’s perspective)
Interactions happen over time therefore Interaction Design
must consider the interaction aesthetics of use (not just
visual):
(all senses…sense of timing, sense of rhythm, sense of humor)

15. This is a product, not an experience

17. All touchpoints/moments are part of the experience
 the experience is the real product in many ways

18. Prototype fidelities vs Experience fidelities
Too often “prototype” is taken to mean “build”
“A prototype is a question rendered as an artifact”
–Scott Klemmer, PhD (teaches Coursera HCI course)
Typical Prototype fidelities
-Visual (pencil sketch…Photoshop mock)
-Interaction (paper prototype…real behavior)
-Data (lorem ipsum…real data)
Instead, think about Experience fidelity:
-How do we get people to have a target experience that we
want to test, regardless of, or with the cheapest of material
prototype fidelities?

19. So how can we represent experiences?

20. Representing Experiences – leverage story methods

21. Represent products/services as stories
After a long meeting, Anne pulls out her personal assistant to note
a couple of items she needs to follow up on, confirm the location of
her next meeting, and see if anything important has come up in the
last couple of hours.
The PA shows her the subject and location of her next
meeting, which is in 25 minutes. There’s also an indication that she
has three messages marked urgent (including one from her boss),
one message from a client whose messages she’s told the PA are
top priority, and a dozen others that can probably wait.
Narrative Scenarios
Storyboards
Product as a person

22. Hyper-real (Disney/Pixar trick)believable futures

23. Lean…lean startup, lean UX, agile UX
“A startup is a temporary organization used to search for
a repeatable and scalable business model.” –Steve Blank
“Lean Startup isn't about being cheap [but is about]
being less wasteful and still doing things that are big.” –
Eric Ries
“Lean is about continuously prioritizing and testing your
riskiest assumptions as fast and as cheap as possible…
always...not for a special week in a special room.” -Me

24. Lean (Startup) Build, Measure, Learn loop
But…
Goal is validated learning (loop around), as
fast as possible.

25. Lean Loop – But, need to go backwards to plan
experiments
1. What is my most
important/riskiest
hypothesis?
2. What would I need
to see happen to
(in)validate it?
3. What’s the fastest,
cheapest, least effort thing I
can make or do to test it
(learn)?

26. Need to go backwards to plan experiments
1. What is my most
important/riskiest
hypothesis?
2. What would I need
to see (data) to
validate it?
That’s what
MVP meant!!!!!
not “Build”
3. What’s the fastest,
cheapest, least effort thing I
can make or do to test it
(learn)?

27. Lean Canvas (1 page alternative to biz plan)
(Business Model Canvas  Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas  My
tweak)
Validate in numbered order

28. Defining experiments from hypotheses
Highest priority item gets tested
(place smaller bets, on smaller batches)
Turn assumptions  falsifiable hypotheses
www.slideshare.net/luxrco

29. Test what? Ash Maurya’s 3 stages of a
startup
Offer  MVP  Product
Instead of MVP at first:
Ash Maurya’s Offer: Unique Value Proposition, Demo of UVP, Exchange of

30. Lean Design
How can we test product and
service design ideas earlier, faster
and cheaper?

31. Test offers (value propositions) using stories
After a long meeting, Anne pulls out her personal assistant to note
a couple of items she needs to follow up on, confirm the location of
her next meeting, and see if anything important has come up in the
last couple of hours.
The PA shows her the subject and location of her next
meeting, which is in 25 minutes. There’s also an indication that she
has three messages marked urgent (including one from her boss),
one message from a client whose messages she’s told the PA are
top priority, and a dozen others that can probably wait.
Narrative Scenarios
Storyboards
Your goal is to create value, not software, hardware, etc…
so test value!
Your value proposition is the intersection of your
customer’s needs and your solution.

32. Pitching value
Should be analogous to feature film story artists, iterating
and pitching (value) stories:
-Our customers/users or the product/service are the heroes
of these stories.

33. Experience Mapping (customer journey map, service blueprint, etc)
These can be ok for communicating current state, bridging into
product/dev work, but not as good for exploring and testing value.

34. From Story to Building – Story Mapping
Story Mapping
-Donna Lichaw
User Story Mapping
-Jeff Patton

35. Value pipeline: from story to building
In feature animation, as scenes and shots are approved, they move
further down the production pipeline, towards final rendering.
-We can follow a similar process, keeping track of decisions and
dependencies.
Pipeline hierarchy:
•Discover Needs
•Story (scenarios of use)
•Interaction Framework
•Interaction design (+ Visual, Industrial, etc)
•Software engineering

36. Goal Directed Design (human centered design)
Goal Directed Design has valid, rigorous design
research and interaction design methods…
BUT, it’s a bit waterfallish, linear, ~dogmatic.
Personas Scenarios IxFrameworks, IxDesign

37. Lean Canvas (1 page alternative to biz plan)
(Business Model Canvas  Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas  My
tweak)
1st
4 boxes - Human Centered Design (same methods, but lean tweaks towards rapid
experimental mindset)

38. Human Centered Design “poured into” Lean loop…
= Non-linear, lean human centered design
(“pull” design efforts through as hypotheses require,
Now, there’s no difference
between design and research…it’s
all just experiments. Any act of
“making” (what looks like “design”)
is in the act of learning, so it’s both
research and design, intertwingled.

39. Future of design: Story + Generative design
Using computation to augment (and replace) humans in the process of
discovering and fulfilling needs (design)!
Wondertron
(if you’re interested…story(boarding), design fiction, generative
design, animation, augmented/virtual reality); Experimental Design

40. Some references: