No two projects are the same and there is no secret one fit all solution. Having worked with business critical product design for both some of the biggest and smalles companies in the world,  I know a thing about tailoring my process and toolkit to the problem and context.

These are some of the things I help companies with

PRODUCT AND SERVICE STRATEGY

A good service strategy is a prerequisite for delivering good customer experiences. Most companies have a business strategy or business ambitions, but it is rarely clear how these manifest into tangible value propositions for their end users.

This is what a service strategy is all about. It is making it crystal clear what the company’s customer promise is and what change and impact it wants to make in the customers’ lives.

Every service and offering should be fuelled by this purpose.

A service strategy of course needs to be founded in insights. Sometimes these insights already exist in the organisation and sometimes they need to be supported by additional research. The strategy work is therefore often coupled with a general research phase.

Creating clarity around the service strategy often happens through a series of workshops where we work to create clarity around:

– The product and service mission

– The fundamental human needs we’re solving for

– The opportunity space that the business has

– The product and service value proposition

– Idea generation and mapping

– Product and service roadmap

CONCEPT

Potential concept outcomes

– Interactive prototypes

– Low fidelity concept drawings

DESIGN EXECUTION

There are two sides to creating great services and products. One is designing the right thing and then secondly designing it right. This phase is all about designing the thing right.

Depending on your organisational setup I can embed fully into your design and development team and help execute on the vision, or I can work as a more remote sparring partner. Regardless of the amount of involvement needed I prefer to continue the collaboration in some capacity throughout the execution phase to ensure the best possible customer experience possible.

RESEARCH AND TESTING

It all starts with a fundamental understanding about needs, desires and behaviours. Making decisions about what to design and how to design is impossible without the right understanding of the users.

An understanding of customers can come from many sides and I’m not dogmatic about how the insights are found. Sometimes it’s already packaged in powerpoints, sometimes it can be dug up through analytics and customer service documentation – but most project will call for some additional research activity.

Research methods I often use

– Customer interviews

– Observations

– User testing

– Analysis of existing Analytics data

– Review of Customer support documentation (calls, emails, chats)

Examples of concept outcomes

– Service touchpoint mapping

– Personas

– Experience principles

– Customer journey ambition

PRODUCT OWNERSHIP

The product owner is both the high level guardian of the vision and the low level facilitator of the execution of that vision. This is a critical role that understands every aspect of the customer experience from a business, design and technical perspective and can take decision on the sequence and priority of all aspects of the experience.

I often take this role for companies that are relatively new to building digital products and services and who need help in orchestrating the implementation process and ensuring they get the most value from either their internal development team or their external development contractor.

MENTORING AND TRAINING

More and more companies are becoming products companies. This transformation means that the capability to build, maintain, and expand the service offering is too business critical to be outsourced to agencies and partners. As part of my work I therefore often seek to infuse as much of my knowledge and methods into the organisation, so that some or all of what I have helped with, can be driven internally as the company moves to the next problems to solve.