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Mission-Based Experience Strategy
The document outlines a mission-based experience design strategy focusing on the integration of business and design principles to enhance customer benefits for accountants and their clients. Key themes include a refreshed brand strategy, emphasizing a transition from products to platforms and a commitment to becoming a design-driven company by 2020. It highlights the challenges in executing this strategy, such as resource allocation and the importance of collaboration across business units.
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Mission-Based Experience Strategy
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- 6. Do not belongin silos
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- 12. Stock photo of “taxpreparation.” (Some tax professionals have begun using computers.)
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- 16. Brand strategy house ofbrands branded house
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- 18. “By 2020 Intuitwill be considered one of the most design-driven companies in the world.” https://hbr.org/2015/01/intuits-ceo-on-building-a-design-driven-company Brad Smith CEO, Intuit
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- 23. 1. Going global 2.Refreshed & realigned strategy 3. Brand strategy 4. Products to platforms 5. “Design-led by 2020” 6. 2-sided customer benefits 7. Working across business units
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- 25. Pro Tax GroupeXperience Design To scale - because everything is bigger in Texas, and Texas is bigger than everything
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- 29. Save Time Grow My Practice Make aDifference to Taxpayers
- 30. Sleep Tax Prep Life Jan help tax preparers SaveTime Feb Mar Apr Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Sleep Tax Prep Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life Sleep Tax Prep Life May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
- 31. help accountants “Grow MyPractice”
- 32. help accountants Make aDifference in their clients’ lives
- 33. Save Time Grow My Practice Make aDifference to Taxpayers
- 34. Pro Tax Vision: Bringthe power of time and money to accountants and their clients - so they may prosper
- 35.
- 36.
- 38. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n
- 39. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n
- 42. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n
- 43. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n
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- 50. Not enough designers 7interaction designers 2 visual designers
- 51. 7 interaction designers 2visual designers 54 project priorities
- 52. Missions and Products? Missionsvs. Products?
- 53. Intuit sells products,not missions. And missions come to fruition in our products.
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- 58. Speak the language ofbusiness
- 60. Apply the missions toevery customer Growth Market AccountantPremium Accountant Value Market Accountant
- 61. Premium Accountant Growth MarketAccountant Value Market Accountant Save Time Grow My Practice Make a Difference delegation firm management collecting client data file faster get paid sooner know what to do next advise clients maximize services higher retention more recommendations market myself build client base increase referrals provide clients insights advise best tax outcomes provide best value keep rates affordable deliver refunds faster maximize refunds reduce liability file faster get paid sooner know what to do next
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- 67. Track progress againstthe missions
- 68. Plan projects inpursuit of missions
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- 74. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n
- 75. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n Ship “MVP”
- 76. E x ec u t i o n ? what’s the plan? Ship “MVP”
- 77. S t ra t e g y E x e c u t i o n The Ambiguity Assassin
- 79. Do more with customerinsights
- 81. Customer insights insilos
- 83. XD at allaltitudes
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- 86. Winning together because youaren’t sick of Star Wars, everywhere, yet
- 87. Product Management and ExperienceDesign need to jointly solve for Discover, Define, and Design. This is not an XD only job, is the job of all of our roles. ” “
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- 91. Every designer isa strategist
- 92. 7 interaction designers 2visual designers
- 93. Train for strategicUX work
- 96. Every designer ownsthe Missions
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- 98. Execute the designprocess like you’re on a mission
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- 101. E x ec u t i o n ? what’s the plan? Ship “MVP”
- 102. Empathy for all (evenyour coworkers)
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- 104. Experiment with aunit of one
- 105. XD Missions =Business Strategy
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- 108. Products and featuresexist to deliver customer benefits
- 109. Reframe design workrequests
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- 113. CHANGE • Going global •Refreshed & realigned strategy • Brand strategy • Products to platforms • “Design-led by 2020” • 2-sided customer benefits • Working across business units MISSIONS • Save Time • Grow My Practice • Make a Difference to Taxpayers CHALLENGES • Agile product teams • Resourcing “Run the business” • Altitude • Not enough designers • Perspective • Ambiguity • Customer insights in silos • Winning together METHODS • Speak the language of business • Apply the missions to every customer • Learn the missions • Track progress against the missions • Plan projects in pursuit of missions • Commission mission captains • Design Week • Train for strategic UX work • Embrace ambiguity… then murder it • Experiment with a unit of one • Reframe design work requests • Publish case studies RESULTS • XD driving clarity • Do more with customer insights • XD at all altitudes • Happier, healthier designers • Product Managers advocate for holistic XD PRINCIPLES • Every designer is a strategist • Every designer owns the Missions • Execute the design process like you’re on a mission • Empathy for all (even your coworkers) • XD Missions = Business Strategy • Missions need metrics • Products and features exist to deliver customer benefits • Designers are storytellers • Silos suck! Break out!
Editor's Notes
- #3 Howdy, y’all I’m Ben Judy. I live in Texas now, but I grew up in…
- #4 Iowa. That’s where they grow all the corn.
- #5 Growing up surrounded by farms, I saw a lot of these. They’re called silos. What do you put in silos?
- #6 [:21] Grain. Corn, soybeans. What you’re not supposed to put in silos is…
- #7 experience designers. I’d like to share some reflections on that.
- #8 But more importantly, I’d like tell you the story of the experience design team within the Pro Tax Group at Intuit. This is about building a strategic capability with a newly formed team. Here’s my outline. I’ll begin by describing the environment of change we’re in as a team. I’ll explain what we call our missions, and the challenges we’re facing as we organize our design strategy around those missions. I’ll tell you about our methods and the results that we’re seeing. Finally, all of this will add up to a set of principles for employing what we call a “Mission-Based XD Strategy.” It’s an irresponsible amount of content for a 25 minute presentation. So I’m going move really fast.
- #9 If you catch nothing else, though, you’ll hear me talk about how we’re busting out of those dreaded silos. All right, let’s go.
- #10 [1:30] These are our missions. But before I explain them, first…
- #11 I need to begin with some context.
- #12 Intuit is a 32 year old software company with roughly 8,000 employees.
- #13 My friend Phil you just heard from 30 minutes ago is on the Consumer Tax side of Intuit, I work in the Pro Tax Group. We sell software to accounting firms and what the government calls “enrolled agents.” Professional tax preparers.
- #14 Now, to really set the context for our XD strategy, I want you to imagine you’re part of a new experience design team in a company undertaking changes in each of these areas.
- #15 [2:14] One: after more than 30 years as a U.S. based, U.S. centric software company, we’re going global.
- #16 A second change at Intuit is a major refresh of business strategy at all levels. These alignment triangles are a new paradigm Intuit adopted a couple years ago, and the content of all of these layers underneath the Mission have changed in just the last two or three years.
- #17 Also, our brand strategy is changing. We’re transitioning from a house of brands to a branded house.
- #18 More change! We’re also continuing to transition from a company that sells boxed software products off the shelf to building open platforms and interconnected software ecosystems in the cloud. For example Quickbooks desktop to Quickbooks Online as a third party app platform.
- #19 This is my favorite. Our CEO famously said, “By 2020 Intuit will be considered one of the most design-driven companies in the world.” Which, as a designer…
- #20 [3:30] … makes me do a little happy dance in my head.
- #21 But the reality is, we’re already a customer-first, design-led company. We serve small businesses, individual consumers, and the accounting professionals who serve both of those groups. The Pro Tax Group has historically focused on those [click to build] accountants who serve clients. [click to build] But now we’re focusing a lot of attention on the relationships between our customers and their clients, the taxpayers.
- #22 Which means Pro Tax is learning how to design and deliver two-sided customer benefits. This is awesome, but it’s more change.
- #23 And it means we have to work together with the rest of the company. To operate as One Intuit, all of our businesses and departments need to collaborate and coordinate more closely than they have in the past.
- #24 So, all that to say, the times — they are a changin’ at Intuit. And that’s far from a complete list of changes.
- #25 [4:34] In the midst of all of this strategic change, in February of 2014 I joined this business unit of about 800 employees — and, including myself, we had three experience designers.
- #26 But, in the last year and a half, we’ve grown a new team. We now have seven interaction designers (including yours truly), two visual designers, a research recruiter and some strong leadership. We’re in four locations.
- #27 And as our team comes together, we’re developing an identity and a strategic approach aimed at helping us reach our full potential.
- #28 Rather than being a loose group of individual designers who are isolated within software product teams…
- #29 we’re a single, mission-based team that designs for the entire ecosystem of Pro Tax products. Our focus on three primary customer benefits is allowing us to break out of those silos.
- #30 [5:32] So I’ll tell you about our missions. Now of course yours will be different, but these are ours.
- #31 Saving Time is first. Tax preparers work insane hours during tax season. They can’t take on more work. If we can help them optimize their workflows, then we can help them grow.
- #32 That’s the second mission, help accountants Grow their Practice. Sometimes growth means adding more clients, but also it could mean growing the value they provide to existing clients or growing revenue from adjacent professional services.
- #33 And those two missions help accountants do the thing that led them to their profession in the first place: Make a difference in their clients’ lives. This is the heart, the most emotional of the three missions.
- #34 Now, experience design didn’t come up these missions ourselves. Veteran Pro Tax employees have known for a long time why these things are important customer benefits.
- #35 [6:30] In fact, our business unit vision statement incorporates all three of these ideas. This is very important: the missions are enduring strategic goals that XD shares with the business. So, great! We’re all singing the same song. What could possibly go wrong? Well…
- #36 As a new design team within a relatively old software company, we’ve faced many challenges.
- #37 One challenge is simply working with multiple, Agile product teams. And this is not going to become a discussion about Agile or Lean UX. But I do hope to articulate how our mission-based strategy has helped us cope with some process and resourcing issues around product development and delivery.
- #38 Initially, we aligned our designers individually to Scrum product teams, but without an overarching design strategy for our product ecosystem. We had no UX strategy. None of us were looking at the whole farm.
- #39 Now, this will be familiar to most of you. The double-diamond model of experience design with four phases: Discover, Define, Design, Deliver. What I noticed right away as I started working in Pro Tax is, we have methods that provide for the beginning and the end of this process but things were getting hazy in the middle.
- #40 [7:53] We have a strong focus on Discovery. Just two of the ways we Discover are Unite and Design for Delight.
- #41 We do these Unite events, where our employees get out of the office and spend the day with our customers to discover surprising insights and to build empathy.
- #42 Also, Intuit has this awesome program called Design for Delight, D4D. There’s a heavy emphasis on going broad, brainstorming. Ideation. Discovery.
- #43 When it comes to delivery, most of our product teams practice development methods like Scrum, which provide lots of rigor around how we Deliver software.
- #44 But, even though we talk a lot about measuring customer benefits, I don’t see us always defining them at the project level. There’s a lot of ambiguity about what the design process should be and where we’re at with any given project. As a consequence, our approach to solution design, that third D, is also too fuzzy.
- #45 [9:00] So our XD strategy has to fix that problem. I know it might seem kinda weird to say that design strategy is somehow responsible for fixing design process at the project level. But I really believe they’re connected.
- #46 Here’s this little world I use to try to visualize placement of design work in a large software company. You have execution down here. A bunch of agile product teams iterating constantly. And those loops — their headlights only go out about two weeks maybe a month. They can’t see very far from ground level. And there’s this concept of horizon planning, the H1, H2, and H3 way up there. And really it just asks the question: is your company innovating, or stagnating?
- #47 Horizon 3 at the top would be taking moonshots. Big, bold, ambitious moves that can transform a company, and maybe transform an industry.
- #48 Well, another challenge we have in Pro Tax is that three quarters of our software development time as a business unit is spent running the business. Not even extending our core business, just maintaining and running what we already have.
- #49 So let’s place our double diamond model here. Our design projects, where do they go? When UX designers live down in those silos of Scrum product teams in this environment, notice what happened. Our diamonds, if they exist at all, get sucked down into executional, run-the-business, just-in-time, MVP, you name it, it’s anything but strategic. We’re not going out, and we’re definitely not going up.
- #50 [10:45] So our challenge is one of altitude. We need to be operating on a higher level, but being a new team with minimal resources, we struggle to climb up out of those silos, where the developers and product management say they want us to be.
- #51 Understand, another challenge: our product managers outnumber designers roughly 2 to 1. Don’t tell them I said this, but I call that a mathematical formula for bureaucracy.
- #52 Peter talked about prioritization. Product management recently gave us this list of 54 projects, most of them due to be completed in the next four months. Did I mention we have seven interaction designers? As I get into our methods and principles in just a minute, you’ll see how a mission-based strategy helps us deal with this.
- #53 But not yet, let’s keep piling on the challenges. Perspective. We hear comments like this:
- #54 “Intuit sells products, not missions. And missions come to fruition in our products.” And this is said as a sort of rebuttal. It’s typical of the mindset of a product manager who wants to see designers stay fully dedicated only to his or her product.
- #55 [12:08] But here’s why we know this perspective is too narrow. Last year we added electronic signature capability in our pro tax products. The customer benefit here is saving time. Clients get their returns filed faster, accountants get paid faster.
- #56 We had three different Agile product teams in the same building, delivering this set of features separately. Engineering built a common data service. But we didn’t design strategically for a common experience. It was a lost opportunity for re-use of design patterns, for collaboration, sharing insights, ecosystem thinking, and efficiency in XD resourcing. Because we designers were trapped with each product team in their respective silos.
- #57 Again, it’s a question of altitude. Where is your UX team spending its time? Down here? Or up here, overlooking the entire business and all of your customers — now and into the future?
- #58 So here are some methods we’ve used to elevate — to organize our young team around what we know to be the greatest needs of our customers, which allows us to design for the whole farm, so to speak.
- #59 First, we’re learning to talk about these missions the way the business does.
- #60 [13:38] In our case, that means we designers have to get comfortable with those alignment triangles. Pay attention to corporate strategy, be inquisitive, and contribute to it.
- #61 We’re also making sure these missions are expressed in ways that are applicable to all of our customers.
- #62 [13:32] We do the research to figure out how the missions solve specific problems for each of our market segments such as: Premium, Growth Markets, and Value Market Accountants.
- #63 We had an awesome summer intern this year who built these amazing “Firmona Boxes.” Not personas, but “firmonas.” Each box represents the different market segments of accounting firms.
- #64 Inside each box is a game; a group activity designed to help us build specific customer empathy, such as what it feels like to be a Value Market tax preparer working through hundreds of returns in a matter of weeks.
- #65 This is a customer benefit focused, mission-based activity. Not something an Agile product team would ask us to do.
- #66 [14:52] More than feelings though, starting out, we also had to learn how to think about the missions. We had to train our brains.
- #67 I created a set of digital flash cards so we could drill ourselves on the missions and other points of business strategy. It’s a nice thing to pull out when you’re sitting in a meeting about the minutae of running the business. Get your mind back on what really matters.
- #68 We started gathering as a team each morning in front of these mission boards to review our projects and task status, in context of fulfilling each of the three missions. Never before had our design work been framed this way.
- #69 And now we’re experimenting with project management software to help us plan and track our design work through a mission-based strategy lens.
- #70 We assigned ourselves roles that we call Mission Captains. We act as accountability partners to make sure that we’re focused on customer benefits across all of the product design and discovery work that we’re doing.
- #71 [16:05] And this summer we hosted an event we called Design Week. We invited the entire business to come for five days of guest speakers, inspiration, design activities, and all throughout, we had a strong emphasis on those missions.
- #72 Now, we’re very much at the beginning of this journey. But let’s talk about some early results that we’re seeing.
- #73 One result, internally, is greater clarity around our priorities as we drive a stronger commitment to the missions.
- #74 Another challenge we’re facing: we’re often told to “embrace ambiguity.”
- #75 And boy do we have ambiguity. Especially around our design process. I’ve had PM’s tell me, “Oh yeah, double diamond, we already do that.” And others have said, “Oh, we used to do that, but we do Agile now instead.” Total confusion and ambiguity.
- #76 [17:05] Timing is critically important. There’s a time for embracing ambiguity (going broad) and time for clarity (narrowing.) But at an organizational level, when the strategic purpose of experience design is ambiguous, the entire design process is unclear.
- #77 This is what you end up with. I swear to you, this is an accurate picture of a project I was trying to rescue just last week. We’re adding some client data collection and communication features to one of our desktop products. For months, this project didn’t really have any design leadership in regard to process. And it finally got to the point where all anybody knew is that engineering had a ship date and it was like, now. Otherwise, seemingly everything about this project was totally ambiguous. So what do we do? [click to build] Schedule some research. No! It’s too late!
- #78 So that’s why I call myself the “ambiguity assassin.” If I’m on the project, I make sure I know when we’re supposed to be narrowing, and that’s when I start driving conversations that eliminate ambiguity.
- #79 Let me bring it back to strategy, now. A focus on customer benefit missions allows me to do this, because my role is no longer merely about sitting with the developers and delivering incremental product improvements rapidly. The whole end-to-end experience design process is how we deliver those customer benefits, and that’s my domain. I get to climb up the mountain.
- #80 Another result of mission-based design strategy is doing more with what we learn about our customers.
- #81 [19:10] I love that Intuit is a very customer-centric company. Even our CEO spends at least 60 hours each year doing ‘follow me home’ or ‘follow me to the office’ visits. But — even in such an environment — you need experience designers acting as champions of a customer-first approach. Why?
- #82 Because we have this other challenge: while our employees go out in small teams to engage with customers — and that’s great — when they come back, they take the knowledge and empathy they gained back into their silos. Farmer Brown here doesn’t know what’s in each silo. And neither do I.
- #83 Mission Based Strategy is XD’s way of solving for this. As this cheesy artwork clearly illustrates, we can categorize insights using the missions. That centralizes knowledge and customer empathy, informing our entire ecosystem of products and platforms.
- #84 And then we can help the company do better horizon planning. Say we learned X about how accountants want to make a difference to their clients. That might indicate incremental improvement Y to product Z. Or it might indicate an impossibly big problem we should seek to solve with a moonshot. That kind of analysis is how experience design people can influence corporate strategy with customer insights. By the way, we do all our own research. We a small team, we’re all full time researchers on top of our day jobs.
- #85 Another result of mission-based strategy: designers are happier and more effective because we’re working together.
- #86 [21:09] We’re collaborative beings. We learn from each other and challenge each other. You can’t do that in product silos.
- #87 One last challenge I’ll highlight, as an intro to my final result. Winning together. XD strategy can’t be XD versus the Evil Empire: product management, development, marketing, whoever. We have to win together or we don’t win at all.
- #88 Recently one of our PM’s said: “Product Management and Experience Design need to jointly solve for Discover, Define, and Design. This is not an XD only job, is the job of all of our roles.”
- #89 This made me do another happy dance.
- #90 That’s how we start winning together: by recognizing that an holistic approach to XD work is all of our jobs. The light bulb went on for at least one product manager. I call that a result.
- #91 [22:09] Well, what have we learned? Here are some broad principles for Mission-Based Experience Design. As I go through these, I’ll weave in some more methods, too, so you can see more of how we’re applying these.
- #92 First, on a relatively new team, every designer needs to at least have some capability to think and operate strategically.
- #93 Now, it changes at scale. If we had 40 designers like the bigger business units do, we could have an XD strategy group. But we’re all we’ve got.
- #94 The application of this principle — the method — is to train our designers to think and work like strategists, even if that isn’t their greatest skill set or passion in life.
- #95 It’s easier than you might think. Go to Paul’s UX Strat Masterclass workshop. How’s that for kissing up to the conference organizer? Back in February, four of us from Pro Tax did this. And Paul, I just have to thank you because…
- #96 [23:27] You inspired me. I spent the next month gathering every strategy document I could get my hands on from across Intuit and tacked them up on these black foam boards. That kickstarted a lot of what I’m talking about here. Just one day of the right kind of training can do a lot for a team.
- #97 Second, every design team member has to own the missions and communicate them consistently.
- #98 People in other departments started asking, “what are these missions I’m hearing about?” When one of us would say, “I dunno. It’s some new thing our boss is talking about but I don’t get it.” That introduces ambiguity. Get all the designers together and sell it to yourselves first.
- #99 The next principle is about attitude: Execute your design process like you’re on a mission.
- #100 The method is, yes, embrace ambiguity …
- #101 [24:22] … and then murder it. Sorry if I just ruined the innocence of gummy bears for you. It’s just business. Nothing personal.
- #102 Strategy demands that you kill the ambiguity, get everybody aligned on the process and where you are. Designers need to manage the design process for the organization. Don’t let this happen.
- #103 Principle: practice empathy for other departments. For us in XD, moving to Mission Based Strategy has been freeing. But for others, it’s been unnerving. They're worried that we're going to abandon the product teams.
- #104 We’ve had to do a lot of soft skills work to build understanding and trust. XD has to model empathetic behavior so that others reciprocate and try to see things from our perspective, too.
- #105 I recommend you experiment with a unit of one. I’ve been the canary in the coal mine. I was the first team member to pull out from a product team. We didn’t just yank everybody out. That would have been a disaster. In a political, corporate environment, proceed with caution.
- #106 [25:49] Principle: Connecting the Missions with Business strategy is critical. In our case, we drew our missions from the business strategy. Now, we could do that because we’re in a customer-centric organization to begin with. That’s quite an advantage.
- #107 But this is why we draw these pictures that put design process in context of business strategy. This is also why we explain the missions in terms of the impact to our customer market segments. Business leaders think in these terms.
- #108 They also like numbers. Missions need metrics. So we have KPI’s. We’re figuring out exactly how to measure Saving Time, Grow My Practice, and Making a Difference. We conduct baseline measurements of user experiences and compare new designs to that data.
- #109 Principle: Products and features exist to deliver customer benefits. Can I get an amen? Product managers and software developers are often incentivized to think product revenue first. I’m glad they are: I like it when my company makes money and our stock value goes up.
- #110 But when we get requests for design work, we use Project Briefs to ensure that everything we do is mission-based, and that we keep our eyes on the whole ecosystem at every step of the process.
- #111 Principle: We believe designers are storytellers and the best stories we can tell are about the success we’re having accomplishing these missions on behalf of our customers.
- #112 Case Studies are a nice method. We want to be the storytellers, not just for design, but for the whole organization, of how we won together and delighted customers. And folks, I know that I've been light on details. What I've shared today is the high level case study of our team as we grow a strategic capability. Next year I'd love to share with you one of our project case studies that shows exactly how all of this is both benefiting our customers and driving business success.
- #113 To sum it all up, it’s about busting out of those silos. Strategically organizing our team around customer benefit missions has allowed experience design to become more effective partners with the business in innovating at all altitudes, always keeping our customers at the center of our designs.
- #114 [28:20] So that’s the story so far. There’s a lot in there. I know I had to rush through all of these things. But I’m happy to take a question or two.