Agile methodologies have quickly become central to the way we create and refine digital products. These rapid cycles of building, measuring, and learning are great for refining an already innovative product but these tools are being increasingly called upon to produce innovation itself and they suck at it.
In this high-level, philosophical talk, Scott draws from 25+ years of experience in digital product strategy and design to take a critical and sometimes controversial look at processes that claim to promote innovation but too often fail to deliver.
He also highlights some principles and practices that seem to promote real innovation and help it survive the perilous journey from the minds of innovators to the hands and hearts of users.
1. Innovation
in the Agile
Age.
Scott Neilson
This talk is 80% philosophical and 20% practical and it contains some controversial
ideas and opinions but it’s based on personal observations and insights from about 25
years of (mostly) successful digital product design.
2. Studied Design
Became a Designer
Microsoft, Amazon
Lots of Startups
Independent and FTE
UX Agency
Moved to Amsterdam
Independent Designer
Optimist
Progressive
Photographer
Athlete
Music Nerd
Atheist
Bon Vivant
ENTJ
~
30years
Who the hell are you?
So, who the hell am I?
3. Studied Design
Became a Designer
Microsoft, Amazon
Lots of Startups
Independent and FTE
UX Agency
Moved to Amsterdam
Independent Designer
Optimist
Progressive
Photographer
Athlete
Music Nerd
Atheist
Bon Vivant
ENTJ
~
30years
I’m Scott Neilson. I’m a UX Designer and Strategist.
My career began back in the
Bronze Age, right as computers were becoming practical design tools, enabling us to
put down the stone axes we’d been using up until then.
Initially, I was a graphic designer but when it started to look like this new internet thing
might take off, I began expanding my skillset. I worked with Microsoft and designed
several of their early MSN properties. Eventually, I left to become the first designer at a
little online bookstore startup called Amazon, perhaps you’ve heard of it. After my time
there, I got involved in a long series of startups in Seattle and San Francisco. About 6
years ago, a longtime friend and collaborator and I decided to start a little agency in
Seattle called UXanimal. And last spring, I moved here to Amsterdam with my partner,
Rachelle to start my current UX consultancy, TallScott.
In retrospect, I should have chosen another name because I’m only TallScott in the US.
Here, it seems, I’m just Scott.
4. This talk is divided into two parts – Issues and Advice.
In Issues, I’m going to practice Dutch directness and highlight how certain modern
practices for creating digital products can fail to deliver the efficiency and innovation
that they promise.
In Advice, I’ll offer a few high-level principles that are common to every organization
and product I’ve been involved with throughout my career, that has been deeply
innovative.
6. Processes are lovely.
We love our processes, and of course, we need a certain amount of process to
conceive and create digital products. Duh. And with each new book or blog post, the
array of processes available to us seems to increase.
7. But can we love them too much?
As we focus more attention on understanding and implementing these complex
processes, are we losing sight of our core values and crisp product vision?
A colleague of mine refers to this as “how-ism,” focusing on How something is being
created and losing sight of What it is being created, and even Why we are creating it.
It’s tempting to become a “howist” because seeing stuff get built is really satisfying.
Also, our “how” skills are relatively stable and portable. But often the “what” and
“why” tend to be pretty squishy.
8. Like this scene of the Ministry of Information from Terry Gilliam’s film, Brazil - they are
frantically focused on the how, without understanding what they are creating, let alone
why.
In simpler times, it was mostly large organizations that suffered from extreme “how-
ism.” This is what made them vulnerable to scrappy startups that wanted to step in and
eat their lunch.
In today’s more complex world, even the scrappy little startups are taking on a huge
amount of process overhead. The ballooning number of tools and services we use for
communication, scheduling, process management, development, testing, marketing,
etc. are distracting us from the vision we’re working to realize.
9. Yes, even agile. Blasphemy!
Agile processes promise to turn our organizations into lean, mean learning machines
that iterate their way to innovative products with lightning speed. And that’s working
perfectly, right? ;)
In my experience, they seldom live up to the hype. We’ll dig deeper into why in a
minute but this diagram gives us 3 clues:
1) Notice how many process-intensive activities this “lean” cycle contains.
2) Note that Ideas are given the same weight as Code and Data.
3) And finally, words that are at the heart of successful products like Vision,
Innovation, Design and Users are nowhere to be found, but note that the word
Faster appears 3 times.
10. User data is
awesome!
Agile is great for helping us know what users are actually doing and that can gives us
all kinds of valuable insights.
11. But it should
inform our
work, not
dictate it.
But too often, we let these insights short circuit our product vision (the What) or worse,
our values (the Why). Of course, we should listen to our users and of course their reality
should inform our decisions, but we need to stop short of letting data design our
products. That’s not user-centered, it’s messy and dangerous.
12. Split testing is kinda neat.
It’s cool that we can test multiple things at once and see which works better. Agile
organizations are running these tests more frequently and in more places throughout
their products. Eric Ries would be so proud!
13. But it doesn’t lead to innovation.
But split testing leads to at least two problems.
1: Used in a careful way, this incremental technique can slowly refine an already
innovative product. But some organizations have this upside down. They presume that
innovation will somehow emerge from this activity. This is like rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic - it may seem like you are doing something to make things better
but it won’t stop the ship from going down. No matter how rapidly we make changes to
a weak product, it will never compete with one built around a brilliant, innovative idea.
2: The second problem is that making frequent changes to a product, even incremental
“good” changes, undermines usability and trustworthiness for existing users. Update
fatigue and a/b dissonance are driving an epidemic of abandonment. Some smart
organizations are recognizing this and doing a lot more testing and refinement of their
design up front and less harmful in-flight testing of their products.
14. Design
systems are
handy.
What’s not to love about design systems?
Atomic design systems promise to free us from reinventing the wheel. They enable us
to focus on higher-level user flows while also speeding up development.
15. But they
often lead to
mediocre
product
experiences.
Of course, it’s generally good for users when we leverage familiar patterns in consistent
ways. However, too often products are rushed to market without the thoughtful details
that differentiate the experience or the brand.
16. The stock
photography
of UX.
A friend of mine called design systems “The stock photography of UX.” People know
when something is canned, rushed, or inauthentic and they tend not to be too
impressed by it.
19. Agile…
up to a
point.
In practice, Agile tends to be much more process heavy and less “agile” than many
people think.
20. Why & What
(Values & Vision)
How
(Process & Code)
Which one of these is leading in your organization? If you’re putting the cart before the
horse, you may have a hard time successfully moving forward.
24. “Computers let us
make more mistakes
faster than any other
invention except
possibly handguns
and tequila.
”– Mitch Ratcliffe
As Ratcliffe points out, placing too much importance on speed carries a high cost.
Decisions are made impulsively rather than thoughtfully.
26. Our MVP is live but nobody loves it. :(
…and consequently aren’t well received by the market.
27. Faster
horses
faster.
A well-known quote wrongly attributed to Henry Ford is “If I had asked people what
they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’” Agile processes are great at giving
us faster horses faster but they’ll never invent a car.
28. Wow, failing fast is really expensive!
It’s also worth mentioning that building digital products, even rapid MVPs, is crushingly
expensive.
29. How do I make
a small fortune
in software?
Start with a
large fortune.
Q:
A:
I heard a VC in silicon valley crack this joke and I think it’s relevant here.
30. Pivot! Oops.
In my experience, pivots too often happen in desperation after their MVP falls over and
the budget is in trouble. Some companies will put a positive spin on their “learnings”
and ask for more money. Others will water down their revised vision to something that
can be built with the scraps of their failure.
31. Seemingly safe. Perhaps not so brave.
These ways of working sound great on paper, especially to risk-averse investors and
impatient engineers. They appeal to our desire for predictability and our strong
inclination to jump right in and DO something.
But in practice, risk-aversion tends to promote timid product vision, and impatience
tends to yield weak expressions of that vision.
32. Now, I’m not advocating for a return to old-school waterfall processes.
33. Great for designing refining.
Despite the last 30 slides, I think agile methodologies have a lot to contribute… to the
careful, in-flight refinement of already innovative products.
They get us into trouble
when we mistakenly think all those feedback loops and rapid iterations will produce
innovation.
34. Equally valuable but at different times.
Design Build
Here’s a metaphor that I’ve found useful when thinking about (and communicating)
these ideas:
In chess, Knights and Bishops have the same value, three points. But Knights are
worth more early on, before the game has taken shape. Bishops are worth more later in
the game once the structure is in place and they have room to run.
Just like Knights and Bishops, design and development are equally valuable and can’t
win without working together - but we have to be strategic about when we use them to
win the game.
35. Coders gonna code.
Many agile organizations rush straight out with their “Build Bishops” only moving the
“Design Knights” grudgingly and often for damage control once the game/product is in
trouble.
This make sense because they usually have a lot of really smart (and expensive)
Builders and letting them just sit there while the Designers open up space isn’t an
option.
When I walk into a room full of engineers, I see concrete being poured on a
construction site. I’m always hopeful that everyone is working from a thorough blueprint
but that’s much less common than it should be.
36. “You can use an
eraser on the drafting
table or a sledge
hammer on the
construction site.
”– Frank Lloyd Wright
Never time to do it right. Always time to do it over.
38. Snap recently split tested a change to their information architecture aimed at helping
them better monetize content.
The test results were inconclusive (which never
happens, right?) but they didn’t seem negative so they rolled out the change.
The next morning, they woke up to a petition signed by about a million angry users,
then a key influencer erased almost 1 billion dollars of their valuation with a single
tweet.
39. I used to love Evernote. It began life as a really focused, innovative, must-have
product. Synchronized, searchable notes that could magically read images too.
After a few years of listening to users and letting feedback dictate the trajectory of their
product, Evernote became a bewildering mess of apps, features, services, plug-ins,
integrations, co-branded collaborations and more!
Many people including myself have seen Evernote’s usability and performance suffer
dramatically. I don’t have data but their abandonment rates must be extremely high
despite their users’ high switching costs.
41. “Having guts
always works out
for me.
”– Stefan Sagmeister
Bruce Mau said “Now that we can do anything, what shall we do?” We now have tools
that enable us to realize even the most ambitious product vision with incredible
efficiency. We have a huge amount of power.
Some wise organizations are beginning to boldly use that power, paradoxically, to slow
down and allow deeply innovative product vision to develop.
42. Don’t just do something, sit there.
“Don’t just do something, sit there.” is a funny saying from Vipassana or Mindfulness
meditation.
In my experience, innovative ideas seldom emerge in the frenetic “doing” culture found
in most organizations. More often, they emerge when we can relax and sit quietly with
the problems we’re trying to solve.
It takes serious guts to introduce this principle into an organization and even more to
tell investors, “Hey, relax, the fruit falls when it’s ripe.” The fact remains, however, that
innovation, like inspiration and relaxation, can’t be forced.
43. Give me six hours to chop down
a tree and I’ll spend the first four
sharpening the axe.
” – Abraham Lincoln
“
That’s not to say that we can’t use this time in a way that nervous stakeholders see as
“productive.” There are many low-risk activities that can help lay the groundwork for
the implementation of a vision that’s still waiting to be born. A few of those activities
even involve engineers, so having one or two of them around at this stage is a good
idea.
44. Find the places iteration can’t go.
Innovation can’t be forced but there are activities that tend to support it. Creatively
reframe the problem you’re trying to solve and encourage absurd ideas. Someone
thought “What if buggies didn’t need horses?” or “What if phones were also a little
general-purpose computers packed with sensors and big touch screens?”
But don’t just listen to me. Useful books about this include:
A Whack on the Side of the Head, and
Innovative Thinking Methods.
Oblique Strategies, and Ideo’s Method Cards
are also time-tested tools for promoting innovative problem solving.
45. Focus
A powerful skill that I’ve noticed many successful organizations share is a sharp focus
on the innovation or value proposition at the core of the product vision.
This is about being courageous and resisting the pressure - from internal stakeholders
and customers - to add features that may make sense but that ultimately add
complexity and dilute a crisp, confident vision.
46. Resources Features Quality=÷
I have a friend in Seattle who sells beautiful hi-fidelity music systems. Often, customers
come into his shop inquiring about surround sound systems. He gently discourages
them from this, because that would require spreading their budget across a 5 or 7
speaker system. He instead encourages them to focus that same budget on a much
higher quality 2-channel system. While it isn’t what the customer thought they wanted,
he guides them to a simpler and far superior listening experience.
47. Make every
move really
count.
Another example I like it the old TV show, Kung Fu. The main character, Caine, always
defeated his enemies with confidence, grace and a minimum of movement. He
masterfully did only what was required to get the job done while his frantic opponents
exhausted themselves throwing wild kicks and punches.
Inspirational companies tend to look like Caine. They realize that by calmly mastering
the right moves, they can beat just about anyone, no matter how fast or big they are or
how hard they work.
48. Artistry Science
Originally, digital technology was created by scientists, for scientists. Today, digital
products aren’t just for the people creating them, they are woven deeply into the lives
of ordinary people. Therefore, we have a responsibility to hold digital products to the
same high experiential and aesthetic standards that we have for the physical products
we use everyday.
The scientific agile culture is great at making products useful and usable but has a
tendency to shortcut or even skip the hard work required to make them desirable. The
best, most desirable physical products are a blend of artistry and technical prowess,
this should be equally true for the digital products we create.
49. To put this another way, the left and right brains of our technology culture are out of
balance…
50. …and if that balance were restored, we’d get more products people love to use.
51. I’m borrowing the Rockets vs. Cars metaphor from Mr. Ries here.
Yes, a car is much faster and cheaper to build and it comes with a steering wheel to
help us adjust course easily. Yes, the old waterfall (Rocket) model for creating digital
products was way too slow, expensive, and risky.
But the new agile (Car) model too
often fails to get our innovative visions off the ground without painful, or even fatal
compromises.
The good news is that the technologies we use to create digital products have matured
dramatically so we can now build rockets much more quickly and economically.
Visionary organizations have the guts to set their sights higher and light more rockets
rather than incrementally steering their cars toward a series of destinations that each
suck a little less.
52. Not a perfect image but I included it here because it involves a rocket, a car, and a
steering wheel… And it’s just insanely cool.
53. Sure, going after the larger rewards that real innovation can bring does require
additional risk but let’s be honest, these days, many investors are doing so well that it
would make Marie Antoinette blush. We know that many of them can afford to take on
that risk and we can afford to ask them to. As scary as this might be.
While bigger bets come with higher risk, they’re also a lot more exciting, making it
easier to motivate and rally people around the vision.
54. If the suits
aren’t nervous,
you’re probably
not really
innovating.
We all want to be clever, well-rounded innovators, and part of this is knowing how to
sell these bigger bets to business and product owners.
55. “The cost of
innovation is
irrelevant if you
can innovate.
”– Alan Cooper
This is a big overstatement but the point of innovation having massive value is valid.
56. Minimum
Viable Lovable
Product.
So, let’s stop disappointing so many people with minimum viable products and
cultivate the courage and patience to create minimum lovable products instead.
59. The Light phone is laser focused on a problem many of us are familiar with but few
have the guts to solve. The problem is the ever-increasing complexity, messy-ness, and
time-suck of these little computers that are taking more and more of our attention and
limited time.
Light envisioned a radically simple device that stays out of the way of core
communication tasks… and that’s it. It’s simple. They boiled away the cameras, the app
ecosystem, the sensors, services, gestures, and just about everything else we’ve come
to take for granted in a mobile device.
The result is a highly differentiated tool that helps people reclaim time and focus. It’s
also a sexy little badge that says “Think Different,”
61. Are.na made the deceptively simple innovation of providing a platform for… anything.
Unlike the zen focus of the Light Phone, Are.na’s big innovation was to be deliberately
UN-focused and enable users to provide all the conceptual structure.
62. On Pinterest, a search for “Spinoza” predictably returns images related to Spinoza.
63. On Are.na, the same search returns an interesting mix of community-curated images,
published works, audio, and more.
64. Tangent
I know I said this talk had two parts but here’s a bonus section that I think relates to the
topic.
76. Mr. Incredible’s failed escape attempt brings the feeling home pretty well too. As we
pile on processes, features, and changes and the route to users proves lossy, the
strength of the vision we started out with is diminished.
77. Values & vision You
I find it useful to think of us as smart, energetic shepherd dogs.
We are deeply loyal to our core values and the resulting product vision. We are rightly
troubled when our vision (here the sheep) fall prey to the hazards of product
development. But there’s no feeling better than safeguarding the flock all the way
through the process so it arrives home, to our users, healthy and intact.
