Hallway Studio

Building a Research Flywheel: A Helpful Guide for Product Managers & Their Teams

airline machinery

Product Management Today Webinar – March 2022 You’ve heard of Amazon and Vanguard, two of the most successful customer-focused businesses in the world, but have you heard Jim Collins’ Flywheel Effect? You might be surprised to learn that neither of these businesses would be where they are today without it. Every step of the product […]

My favorite resources on customer and user psychology

Last weekend I taught a workshop at DC Web Women‘s Code(Her) Conference and I mentioned a couple of my favorite books or resources on customer and user psychology. These have helped me and I hope they do the same for you. Please share your favorite in the comments. Product Psychology Some of the top talent […]

My favorite posts of 2016

2016 was a big year for me. I was asked to lead and transform the Product Consulting team at 3Pillar. It’s been great to bring such a talented, adaptable and fun group of people together and learn from them. Here are a few of my favorite posts from this year: Determining the First Release The […]

Conducting great customer interviews (Take 3 podcast)

Interviewing customers is one of my favorite things to do. I like learning about them, their lives and discovering how my clients can help them. Even if that means that what I learn is not what I wanted to. I recently sat down with my colleague Vidhya Sriram to share our interviewing tips. I’ve also […]

How to run a customer test in 10 minutes

Swirl

I mentor with 1776, a DC area incubator, and in a recent conversation the member was asking about feedback. He told me that he was sending links out to a prototype and hoping to receive good stuff back. I told him I was concerned with this approach because he was : Missing the gut reaction […]

My favorite posts from 2015

2015

Happy New Year! I wish you and yours all the best. Here are a couple of my favorite posts from the last year: Getting to Meaningful Feedback How I do customer development interviews Getting the Most out of Prototyping How to deal with a bad idea How I use canvas exercises to understand, align and […]

Getting to Meaningful Feedback

arc

I’ve spent this year getting feedback from small business owners, high school students, doctors, entrepreneurs and bankers. Every few months I start working with a new group of customers and every few months I have experiment and learn how to get meaningful feedback. When you are just getting started the feedback you get might not be that […]

How I prepare for customer development interviews

BlueRidgePwayDrops

When I’m doing a customer development interview my goal is to have an open and meaningful conversation that helps me really understand my subject’s pain, behaviors, needs, goals and how I can help them. My preparation process starts with asking two questions. What do I want to learn? Most customer development experts say to start […]

Agile alone is not the solution to your product development problem

DangerousCurrent

I think of an agile team like a swimmer in open water. They can have a very effective stroke that carries them far each time but if they don’t look up and adjust for currents or obstacles they aren’t going to make it to their destination. You can reliably produce great software with every sprint or […]