Hallway Studio

Are you doing stuff or creating value?

Note: This was co-authored with Derek Tiffany and was originally posted on the 3Pillar Global site.  You can put a bunch of stickies on the wall, create tons of JIRA tickets and commit code, but are you creating value? Is the work you’ve done helping solve a problem for your customers or helping to acquire […]

Your methodology is holding you back

Agile, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Test Driven Development and whatever new and trendy thing out there are tools. They exist to help you to do something. They are supposed to help us be faster, make better products, be more people-centered, reduce waste or prevent errors. Too often we try to do these things with such […]

The problem with big bang design

It starts with a really fancy deck in your inbox. I’ve received these as both an internal head of UX and as a product consultant. The deck is lovely, comprehensive, well written and detailed. It makes be a bit jealous. The problem is that only about 15% of what’s in it will actually be implemented […]

10 books to help you make your company and product better

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses Eric Ries It’s a must read at my company and we’re not alone. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy Cindy Alvarez Cindy’s approach is simple and powerful. I’m such a fangirl that I have a signed copy. Inspired: […]

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 […]

If you want to run a good customer test, ask these quesitons

learn

When I’m planning a test with my teams these are the questions that we ask ourselves. It really helps us to focus our efforts in planning, recruiting and creating a a prototype or other artifact to test. What do we want to learn? This is the best place to start and should drive the answers […]

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 […]