How To Deliver A Better User Experience
Validate Aspects of Your Business Case
How many times have you had to validate aspects of your business case or your go to market plan, or confirm the context of a user story for a product before it’s released? It’s not always so easy – customers aren’t readily available and insights get missed.
As we’ve learned at Sequent Learning Networks, when product managers and marketers scurry around to get “just in time insights,” the business is exposed to undue risks. As the need for speed and agility continues, product managers need to make high-velocity decisions that move faster than the speed of the market. At the same time, products must achieve competitive advantage through the delivery of a compelling value proposition and a rewarding customer experience.
Avoid Common Mistakes
The other day, I was delivering one of our Product Management workshops in a hotel and found that many items were missing (like the food!) and some audio-visual gear and I was left with a room full of people with no food and a late start. Bad experience. Or, have you experienced what happened to me? I tried to use an app on my TV to watch something on-demand, and the functionality didn’t work properly.
You all know the story, but as product managers, you can’t afford to make mistakes, so here are a few ideas to consider:
- Use storyboards to depict the day in the life of the customer. Not all customers are using apps (as in the hotel, or in the retail environment).
- Take the storyboard and create “interactive” prototypes that can be used to portray that experience. A prototype can be digital or a real-life situation. Have you ever seen how a restaurant has a “soft opening?” While it’s beyond the prototype, they want to get everything right – or customers will vote with their feet!
- Break down the story into small enough pieces that still can be viewed holistically so that you can track the customer or user journey, from start to finish.
All of this must be done quickly and efficiently – and faster than the speed of your market – so that you can build a better value proposition and get ahead of your competition. If you want to learn more about this topic, and others, subscribe to the Masters of Product Management podcast on Apple Podcasts. Whether you are in our training program or just a product manager in the trenches, we want you to succeed and hope to provide tools to help you do so!