My Approach.
Throughout my career of “making internet,” I’ve collected a few catch phrases which help to sum up my approach.
“How stuff works is interesting.”
It’s really important to ask “why?” I read a great article that sums up this point nicely. It suggests that not asking “why?” was one of the key indicators that an employee has lost interest in their work.
The most amazing part of been a Product Owner or Designer is that you get to learn everything about a business, its products and customers.
This deep level of discovery and inquiry helps keep me interested and motivated.
“Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.”
Testing is all about risk. The commercial reality of user testing is that it’s a process to mitigate mistakes. The testing process can take a lot of shapes, but each process must be designed to weed out opinion, and centre the outcome around the customer.
The key thing is that when you test, you should allow yourself to be wrong and that you learn from every test you do.
“Shawshank Syndrome.”
Test before you’re institutionalised. I can’t stress enough how useful it is to start any new role with research and user testing. Testing early not only helps me better understand the customer’s needs, or form a product roadmap. It helps me to challenge the organisation’s existing processes.
Also the reality is, you will be asked to make decisions without best practise testing processes.
“Always be adding value.”
Vend has a “culture add, not culture fit” approach to hiring, they didn’t look for people that fitted the current team, they always looked for someone that could add value.
It created an environment of people that constantly looked to add value to everything they did. Feedback was never “No we can’t,” it was “That’s cool. How could we make it cooler?”
“And make it look good.”
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates also have great quotes on “making it look good”. I don’t wish to overly simplify all the elements that go into making a great product, but it has been an incredible advantage in my career having the ability to “make it look good”.