Hallway Studio

My favorite Jobs to be Done resources

Table with markers and sheets to draw on

Jobs to be Done is a very effective way to think about what drives purchase and onboarding behaviors. I’ve been doing some workshops on it with colleagues and at first they aren’t buying it. They don’t see the value of functional, social and emotional goals until the switch flips and once it does it’s pretty […]

How to avoid a $32M flop: Inside the Hertz-Accenture Lawsuit

Last week, Hertz sued former marketing partner Accenture LLP for failing to deliver a promised redesign of their website and mobile apps. While the complaint is still in dispute, companies can learn from what we know about this alleged breach of contract. Where does a big project like this go so wrong it ends up in a […]

What is an “outcome” and why does it matter?

Outcomes are the new hotness in product development and it’s pissing me off. I’ve been talking about them for years and now more prominent people are doing it so it looks like I’m following a trend. An outcome in this context is a result of something the team has done. Ideally the result is favorable […]

The product development leadership gap

A few weeks ago I met with the product and design team members from a big company. I asked them what they were driving towards. Their first answer was to say they need reduce the metric for the amount and effort a customer needed to put in to make a purchase. After doing some work […]

Don’t be afraid to have a vision

This is a slightly edited version of a message I sent to my team: Today a prospect told us his vision of digital transformation and asked what ours was. I don’t think that’s ever happened before and it threw us off. Luckily we’d talked about ideas on the train and I’ve spent a lot of […]

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 […]

How to design a successful workshop

Stickies

Note: This originally appeared on the 3Pillar website Workshops are a great way to get your team aligned and moving quickly. I design workshops to meet my client where they are and get them to their destination. I never want to be part of a workshop that doesn’t help teams achieve results. At the same […]

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 […]

Ask simple questions to drive change

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Who is our customer? What are we trying to accomplish? How did we get here? What did we learn? I like simple questions about important things. They strip away marketing speak. They force us to make choices. They expose misunderstanding and misalignment. They make it easy for people to understand take action. Asking simple questions can […]