Product Management & Design At Startups

Product Management & Design at Startups

Dan Olsen
CEO, YourVersion
Feb 11, 2010 Copyright © 2010 YourVersion

My Background
Education
BS, Electrical Engineering, Northwestern
MS, Industrial Engineering, Virginia Tech
MBA, Stanford
UI design, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL
18 years of High‐tech Product Experience
Managed submarine design for 5 years
5 years at Intuit, led Quicken Product Management
Led Product Management at Friendster
Olsen Solutions LLC, PM consultant for startups
CEO & Founder of YourVersion, real‐time discovery startup
Speaker: Web 2.0 Expo, Startonomics, FB fund, Stanford

Will post slides to http://slideshare.net/dan_o
Copyright © 2010 YourVersion

What’s the Goal of a Startup?
Poll: raise your hand if you’re a…
PM, Designer, Developer
startup, mature company, agency
Deliver a product that:
Meets customers’ needs
Is better than other alternatives
Is easy to use
Has a good value/price
Acquire and retain customers
Generate enough revenue to cover costs

Whose Job Is It? (PM or Designer)
Understand customers’ needs
Research competitive products
Ensure our product is better than rest
Ensure our product is easy to use
Ensure our product is aesthetically pleasing
Define product strategy
Business success (revenue)
User acquisition (marketing)

Key Roles and Interactions
Prospective Existing
Customers Customers
External
Marketing
Listening to customers

Product UI
Interface Management Design Support

Engineering QA

Internal

The Design Gap at Most Startups
Level Define Design Code

1 Engineering

2 Product Mgmt big gap Engineering

3 Product Mgmt gap Engineering

Product Mgmt gap Engineering

4 PM Eng

UI
5 PM Eng


The UI Design Iceberg
What most
people see
and react to Visual
Design What good
PMs and
Designers
Interaction think about
Design

Information
Architecture

Conceptual
Design

Recommended reading: Jesse James Garrett’s
“Elements of User Experience” chart, free at www.jjg.net Copyright © 2010 YourVersion

Elements of User Interface Design
Information Architecture
Structure and layout at both site and page level
How site is structured (sitemap)
How site information is organized (site layout)
How each page is organized (page layout)
Interaction Design
How user and product interact with one another
User flows (e.g., navigation across multiple pages)
User input (e.g., controls and form design)
Visual Design
“How it looks” vs. “What it is”, often called “chrome”
Typography, colors, graphical elements
Usability testing (Ramen Usability: see my fbFund talk)

Product Management’s Job:
Understand customer Prioritize and plan
needs product ideas to
Ensure the product maximize ROI on
meets customer needs engineering resources
Ensure the product is Work with marketing
better than the rest on user acquisition
Work with team to Ensure the product is
design & build great meeting business
product objectives


Problem Space vs. Solution Space


Problem Space Solution Space
A customer problem, A specific
need, or benefit that the implementation to
product should address address the need or
A product requirement product requirement
Example:
Ability to write in space NASA: space pen
(zero gravity) ($1 M R&D cost)
Russians: pencil


Product Level
(user benefit) (product)

Pen and
Prepare paper
my taxes

TurboTax
File my
taxes
TaxCut

Feature Level
(user benefit) (feature)
Gmail
Make it easy importer
to share a
link with my
friends
Design Design Design
#1 #2 #3

Preview with User can edit
Allow me to Design checkboxes before import
reuse my
email #1 No No
contacts #2 Yes No
#3 Yes Yes

Picking a Product Vector & Iterating

Help user Help user
book travel plan travel

Mockups / Code

Feedback

PM=Problem Space,
Design=Solution Space
Product management’s primary job is to define the
problem space
“The user problem we’re trying to address is x”
“If we build a product that does y, people will pay us z dollars”
Design’s primary job is to explore the solution space
(before coding begins)
“Here are 3 different approaches to solving the problem”
Rapid wireframes/prototypes
Each can help the other
By working together, they try to identify the best
solution to the problem


What about Engineering?
Engineering’s primary job is also solution space
Design: specify how it should look & behave
Engineering: build it
Functionality to enable desired behavior
Implementation of visual design (HTML & CSS)
Database and architectural design
Engineering should be involved early (vs
throwing it over the fence)
Mockup cycles are cheaper than coding cycles


Which is More Valuable to a Startup?
Specialist or generalist?
Lots to do + limited resources = many hats
Many designers are specialized
Many product managers are generalists
If time demand < 1 FTE = project, not a job
For startups, have a broad skillset
Acquiring Copy Metrics Product Spec User Wireframes Mockups HTML Java‐
users writing planning writing research & flowcharts (visual & CSS script
(IA & ID) design)

Case Study: Rapid Product Validation
through PM/Designer Collaboration
My consulting client, CEO of TrustedID,
had an idea for a new product
Team: me, CEO, head of marketing, UI
design consultant
4 weeks from 1st meeting to validated
product concept
Paid prospective users $1,500 ($75 x 20)
1 round of iteration on product concept

Case Study: Product Validation
Developing Product Concept
Product Concept was a “marketing report” that
let consumers more directly control the direct
marketing mail that they receive
Concept was fuzzy with various components, so
we broke it into 2 different “flavors”:
#1 “Shield”: Service to reduce/stop junk mail
#2 “Saver”: Opt in to receive money‐saving offers
Within each concept, got feedback on modules that
mapped to a specific user benefit
Worked with UI designer created paper mockups
of pages for each concept (5 pages each)


Clustering Potential User Benefits to
Create Product Concepts
“Shield” Concept “Saver” Concept

Reduce Find out what Money Compare Social
Junk Mail “they” know Saving Yourself Networking
about you Offers to Others

Save Marketing
Trees Report

Marketing Marketing
Score Profile


Recruiting People
Telephone recruit of prospective customers
Wrote screener using intuition for psychographic
segmentation
Wanted users who work full‐time & use internet
Fit for opt‐in concept: use coupons, Costco membership
Fit for anti‐junk mail concept: use paper shredder, block
caller ID
Recruiters used screener to recruit
Scheduled 3 groups of 3 people to discuss each
concept for 90 minutes
Moderated each group through the paper
mockups to hear their feedback

Findings on Concepts &User Benefits
“Shield” Concept “Saver” Concept

Reduce Find out what Money Compare Social
Junk Mail “they” know Saving Yourself Networking
about you Offers to Others

Save Marketing
Trees Report

Legend
Marketing Marketing
Score Profile Strong appeal

Somewhat positive

Low appeal

Learnings from Research
Learned that “Shield” (anti‐junk mail) concept was
stronger than “Saver”
People didn’t like many of the “Saver” concept
components
Learned users’ concerns / questions about “Shield”
concept
Refined “Shield” concept:
Removed irrelevant components
Improved messaging to address user concerns / questions
Validated revised “Shield” concept with quick 2nd
round of tests
No customer concerns
Clear willingness to pay


Summary
4 weeks from 1st meeting to validated
product concept
Cost $1,500 to talk with 20 users ($75
each)
1 round of iteration on product concept
Identified winning concept that users are
willing to pay $10/month for
Trimmed away non‐valuable pieces
You can achieve similar results

PM & Design at Startups
Cheat Sheet
Adding a PM or Designer is beneficial, nice to have both
Mockup cycles are faster & cheaper than code
Product Manager:
Problem space: product strategy & requirements
Scoping, prioritization, business goals, marketing
Designer:
Solution space: wireframes, mockups, IA, ID, visual design
Both:
Listen to customers
Product Metrics
Help engineering build a product great that meets user needs,
is differentiated, and is easy to use
Startups value generalists more than specialists

PM & Design

The Dynamic Duo

@danolsen
dan@yourversion.com www.yourversion.com

Product Management & Design At Startups

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