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Testing your ideas against reality can be challenging. Not everything will go as planned. Itβs about keeping an open mind, having a clear hypothesis and running multiple tests to see if you have enough directional evidence to keep going.
This is the How I Tested That Podcast, where David J Bland connects with entrepreneurs and innovators who had the courage to test their ideas with real people, in the market, with sometimes surprising results.
Join us as we explore the ups and downs of experimentation⦠together.
David J Bland (0:1.198)
Welcome to the Podcast, J-L--
JL Heather (0:3.089)
Awesome, thanks David, I'm really excited to be here.
David J Bland (0:5.838)
Let me say to have you, you have such a great background as far as testing and helping companies test and with Agile and design sprints and all that, I would love for people to learn a little bit about you before we jump into some of your testing stories.
JL Heather (0:20.998)
yeah, this is probably the thing I'm the worst talking about is about myself, but I'll give it my best shot. β maybe the first thing to know about me is I grew up thinking, β I shouldn't say thinking I grew up as like a hardcore introvert. β computers made sense to me. People didn't. It wasn't really until you know, I entered the professional world, maybe a little bit in high school when I did debate, but I started to kind of figure people out.
And that led me down this path from β software engineering to β running projects to helping organizations figure out better ways to work that maybe weren't quite so hard on their people, β which that's where I kind of fell in love with lean, agile, human centered design thinking type of practices. β And then I spent like 15 years in the agency world where I worked with like Walmart, Wendy's, Pfizer, β Sprint.
which is now T-Mobile. mean, the list goes on. could list all the big companies β and I could just kind of figure it out that at some point β you have a decision to make. You either keep doing what other people are asking you to do or you decide to go out and do the thing you really want to do. So about a year and a half ago when VMNL and I parted ways, β me and my business partner kind of dove into centered, which had been a side business and made it our real business. And we decided to...
The best thing we could do is to help organizations find ways to make innovation not an event, but a culture, not a meeting, but part of their DNA. β And we've been having a blast since.
David J Bland (2:4.206)
That's such an interesting journey. think I could share the introvert part of that. Yeah, I definitely kind of stick to myself, which people would find surprising because when you're on stage talking to thousands of people, they're like, oh, you must be an extrovert. I was like, no, no, that's very...
JL Heather (2:10.255)
I think a lot of people can, β
JL Heather (2:22.824)
My cup is empty by the end of that. β
David J Bland (2:24.462)
Yes, yes. I remember my first keynote. think I just went back to my hotel and just laid across my bed and just stared at the hotel ceiling and just like, what am I doing? Like, why did I do that? Why do I keep doing this to myself? So I can definitely relate to that. And I mean, I like that blending of how do we make things stick with different methodologies? Maybe talk a little bit about how you approach things. What do you?
What kind of challenges you see when you go into organizations and you're trying to get them to go beyond just, β yeah, that workshop was great. And let's go back to exactly how we were working before.
JL Heather (3:1.694)
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things you're talking about there. one is that how do you make it stick? β Which I think actually comes a little bit later. So you're obviously you have the workshop, the event, the thing you do, and you want it to have impact and value. And then when it does, that's great. But then there's a few time horizons after that that you really kind of have to think about. And maybe the first one that's really important is the maybe two to four week momentum drop.
So great workshop happens, innovation goes on, everyone's super excited. Two weeks after that, it's kind of crickets. β And I think if you want to get to the part where you can make some changes stick on the cultural level or the organizational level, the first hurdle you have to β get over is that momentum hurdle. β And I think that's really where marketing comes in. And I don't mean marketing to your customers, I mean marketing internally.
How do you take what you did and turn it into a story that people care about, that people want to be involved in, and that matters enough that someone with decision-making power is going to say, if they haven't already, we're going to put money where our mouth is on this, β and we're going to actually change the way we do things a little bit to make this happen. And then if you can do that, you have that next step of proving it. So like what we end up doing, you know, we'll run a design sprint. We'll help market that.
And hopefully we turn that into something where there's a team that can execute on the results of that design sprint and start iterating and testing as we go. That's the next proof point. And that's the thing that you can start pulling in like, Hey, look, here's the culture thing. Here's what you can do. Here's how you might make this work with other teams. So I think if you can jump that, that momentum gap in the two to four week range, you can really start looking at how can we actually start affecting culture? Because now we have sustained attention. have sustained dollars.
β And once you're there, there's a lot of different things you can do in terms of like bringing in stakeholders, you making sure that you cycle through some extra people to understand kind of what's going on. Again, marketing, what you're doing, all these different things, but jump the momentum gap, demonstrate some success in execution and show that the innovation didn't stop with the one big event, but that it's actually part of the way that team executes.
David J Bland (5:25.973)
I like how you frame that. think β so much we hear about like create a sense of urgency, know, urgency, urgency, urgency. And I think in where I'm leaning towards now is like you said, momentum, you know, like everything, if everything's urgent, nothing's urgent. So sometimes it can be really hard to create a sense of urgency, but if you can create momentum, then that is something you can build upon. And I think, you know, one of my first big clients at San Francisco, β
JL Heather (5:31.262)
Right.
David J Bland (5:51.150)
I don't know if they were completely transparent from a leadership level of what was going on when I was in there because I remember doing a sprint and about halfway through the team looks at us and they say, we're not going to get back to working the way we used to, are we?
JL Heather (6:6.706)
Yeah. β
David J Bland (6:7.853)
β And I was kind of like, no, you're not. I wish that was communicated better to you at the time. β And my co-author, Alex Osterwalder, he sees that sometimes where they'll bring him in and β the team at some point will be like, wait, are we not working like we used to β before? β And so I do think β maybe β it's a situation where leaders feel like they're just being repetitive or β
You know, they don't want to keep repeating the message over and over again. But I do think there is something about the repetition of leadership explaining the why and no, this is going to be different going forward. And I don't know. Do you experience that as well where where leaders almost have a hard time communicating to their teams that β things are going to change and we are going to try to do things differently beyond the workshop?
JL Heather (7:4.756)
β So one, you mentioned some of what you're talking about in terms of like, wait, we have to go back to the old way of working. β Just real quick on that, like one of our first design sprints we did with HP, β a number of months ago now, when we came out of that, we were hearing things like, this is the most impactful workshop we've done. Some of them were saying like in our career, it went really, really well. β And β we heard a lot of that. now at the end of it, like, wait a minute, now we have to go back. So I do think that is a common.
Refrain and it points to a whole different problem that we can probably discuss later. But it is interesting to me to hear people once they're exposed to some a different way of working a different way of looking at a problem. How that becomes compelling enough that they want to do more. I mean how often do you see people at work go man I want to go to another meeting like that. β That doesn't seem to happen very often but with these it kind of does. β In terms of leadership.
I think one of the, β to go back to something I said earlier about marketing.
A good idea is not enough. β Data and testing is not enough. If you can't tell a compelling story, β no matter what β else you do, β you're not gonna go very far in a large organization especially. And one of the best things you can start training people on β is, β the overarching term is market internally, but really like help arm their leadership with
the information they need to tell the story, whether it's about the thing you built or the process you followed. So β again, like HP, we're working within their Insights to Innovation program, which is, I think, something that's owned by Wayante San Martin β and her team. But the idea there is, at every point, they want to show how the training, the process has made a difference.
JL Heather (9:6.622)
So when we did that first design sprint that went really well with them, not only did that lead to a really great product discussion, but all of a sudden now that Insights Innovation program could market that success of a way of working. And I think when you're looking to really drive change within an organization, you have to be able to market that success. You have to be able to explain to kind of steal a little bit from Simon Sinek. You have to explain the why. You have to start with the why. β
maybe that's where the next mistake leaders make comes in. β The why they think is singular and it's not. The why, β there's a hundred of them. There's an infinite number of why's. There's the why for that leader. There's the why for that organization. There's the why for department X and team Y and this individual and that individual. So what you have to arm the leaders with β is some ways to cast a very broad net of why that's backed up
by success β and momentum so they can actually talk the talk. If all you do is give them the results, sure that sounds great, it looks good, the needles on some of their KPIs move, but if they aren't talking about the why, it's not gonna stick, it's gonna go back into business as usual because what you're doing is you're feeding business as usual. So you gotta find a way to create a narrative that is a little bit outside that business as usual concept.
David J Bland (10:36.000)
Yeah, we had Aaron Schlesinger from HP β on earlier and I've done some work with HP in the past and I do think β they're a pretty innovative company, know, in general of how they approach things. β think β any way they can get out and talk more about that β is needed because there's a lot of cool stuff going on inside HP. So I'm glad you're a part of that. The β aspect here of leadership, β I do think I keep coming back to it because I notice
JL Heather (10:46.644)
Yeah.
JL Heather (10:55.572)
Thank you.
David J Bland (11:5.548)
The teams figure this stuff out. Yes, they could always use some more thinking tools and new ways of working and new experiments to run that they've maybe not experienced before or aren't well versed in. I see a lot of teams stick with interviews and surveys and they don't do any kind of paper prototyping or clickable prototypes depending on the industry and all that.
And yet it all does come back to leadership in the sense of if they're not on board, if they're not supporting this, giving space for this, making sure that the teams understand how this is connected to where they're going as a company and why this is important. β It'll plateau and fizzle out. β I think I.
I made some sort of meme on LinkedIn β a while back where I drew these J curves and the J's just kept going down. β It's like a J curve. And then the next curve starts in the middle of that dip of the J and goes down again and down again, down again. β And so I do think there's an element of β bringing on leadership as well. And I'm wondering from your perspective when you're talking about β experimentation and such and assumptions. β
JL Heather (11:53.746)
Yeah. β
Right.
David J Bland (12:12.812)
How are these conversations with leadership? Are you using those words? Are you using other words that they're more used to? β How does your brain work when you go into that conversation?
JL Heather (12:23.624)
No, I love that question. think we love to talk about experiments because that is just, it's a really useful word. Cause if you say something like, we're going to try people like, no, no, no, we don't try. We just do, you know, that doesn't seem to work. β when you start talking about, know, β there's a risk of failure. People are no, no, no, we don't fail. Right? Like that, that's a bad word in a lot of big organizations. β When you, when you start saying like, we're going to look into this.
Well, what's the timeframe? But when you say we're gonna run an experiment, it starts to talk about something where there's learning at its heart, because by definition, you don't run an experiment unless you wanna learn something. It's typically time bound. So if you're gonna try something, who knows? But if you're gonna run an experiment, you're gonna do something and you're gonna check the results, so it feels time bound. β And then it also feels different enough from the way businesses usually talk about how they work that it starts to stand out a little bit. β
So I really love the word experiment because of all those reasons. And at the heart of a design sprint, that's really what a design sprint is. You come in with a hypothesis that you typically represent as a how might we statement of some kind. And then you can run your experiment and then you can have your results. So if that's all you do, that by itself is valuable. So when we talk to leaders about it, you we do talk about experiments.
Sometimes we will talk about a hypothesis, but more often than not, we frame it as a challenge statement or an opportunity statement. think hypothesis somehow just kind of crosses the line into not relatable enough for some reason. But when you start talking about a challenge statement, that sounds interesting, right? Or an opportunity or something. We even kind of move away from how might we outside of the meeting, like with leadership, because how might we feels too vague.
But challenge or opportunity like that's what they want. got to solve this challenge or we got to realize this opportunity. And then in terms of results, β once we run it, we kind of not to harp on it too much, but we really do turn it into a marketing exercise at the end. β But what we try and tell them is look.
JL Heather (14:39.548)
No one ever created anything amazing with just one experiment. If you truly want to disrupt, which everyone wants to disrupt, or if you want to do something that is game changing, it's going to take multiple experiments. So a lot of times what we say upfront is before you even start talking about the experiment you want to run, let's talk about kind of, β man, I wonder how to expand the metaphor from experiment, but let's talk about the realm β of
of possible for this group. And typically the goal is to come up with three to five experiments that they'd like to try. And I think the reason we do that, and we do that at the very beginning, is because it really starts to instill the mindset that this isn't about one and done. This is about creating a iterative cycle of experimentation that continually elevates the team and the product.
So while experiment works, β hypothesis not as much, like that's a great conversation to have. I think the first conversation you have to have is about the process, the lab that they're going into. that's something new we're talking about is our breakthrough lab. The idea is not just one thing, but it's a lab where you continue to experiment to develop something really awesome. β And I feel like now I've gotten myself far enough away from your question that I can't remember exactly what it was.
But I do love the word experiment. We stay a little bit away from hypothesis. Outside of that, we really try and adopt the language β of the organization. That way we're not trying to swim upstream.
David J Bland (16:18.397)
I think you answered the question really well. I think the words matter. β I get asked a lot, because I use this little two by two for framing risk and it's called assumptions mapping. And people are like, why don't you call that hypothesis mapping? And I said, because it doesn't sound as good. β That's one of the reasons I don't call it that. β And I also realize that sometimes people are more open to talk about assumptions. But even that is tough conversation. β
JL Heather (16:21.789)
Absolutely, yeah.
JL Heather (16:32.658)
Yeah.
David J Bland (16:45.597)
layer on too much of the scientific jargon on top of people β unless they have a really strong base in scientific method. Like sometimes I'm working with people that are like Nobel laureates and they have, you know, β all these patents and they're very steeped in scientific method that I can use that language with them because they get it. β
JL Heather (17:5.876)
Well, that's their lexicon already, right? So you're, yeah. Yep.
David J Bland (17:10.071)
So I can use that with them and say, we're just using this in different context. β Like when I'm working with Toyota, it's like, you're already great at lean manufacturing, but we're gonna do this thing like lean startup. It's kind of the same principles, but we're doing it in a very different context. β So β it's still hard, but they can understand the words. But when I'm talking about assumptions, β I can say, what would have to be true for this to work? What are these big assumptions we're making? And what I'm loving right now in the industry, I don't know if you're seeing this as well, but.
You know, I keep using this framing of desirable viable feasible, which I picked up in design thinking, but β I use it to frame risk and it's so. Refreshing to see you know someone in the C suite stand up in front of their team or stand up in front of the company and use those words β of these are the kinds of things that we need to care about β and we can't just focus on feasibility because you know if the needs not there or they won't pay enough still fail β and so.
I really like that framing. β Do you see that framing used in your work or what kind of words are leaders using when they're talking about risk β in your world?
JL Heather (18:19.060)
Man, that varies wildly. One, I'm a huge fan of desirable, viable, and feasible. I think it maps so well to so many things. Risk, there's a lot of overlap between that and agile. For instance, one of the things we do a lot when we talk about roles in agile, as we say, you have roles specific to what's viable, what's desirable, and what's feasible. Your technology team is in the feasible camp. Your viable.
undesirable or like your PO and your analyst and some things like that and the goal is to create some tension between all three of those areas so you kind of land in a healthy middle. So I think that that conversation is really interesting and I think when you look at it from a risk perspective I haven't ever tried to apply that to risk. I think when I hear people talk about risk the concept that comes up most often
is some form of jobs to be done. like Tony Olwick, who we had a conversation with a while back, really great guy, you know, this idea of
Where are we missing the mark with the humans that buy our product? β What jobs do they have that they're trying to accomplish that they can't because that's where our risk lies β and how well our competitors meeting those needs, fulfilling those jobs compared to how we do it. β And it's really, that's a really oversimplification of the whole process because you can get into all the emotional, social.
Functional jobs and all those different things that kind of go with it, but it becomes a really powerful way to evaluate risk There's a tendency for people who are Really big jobs to be done fans to apply it only to their customers their external customers But you can just as easily do it internally as well. You can do it from a business perspective. You can treat other organizations as customers and
JL Heather (20:24.082)
It's just a really powerful way to shift mindsets around risk that I think becomes really healthy and it humanizes the risk to some extent. β I don't know how many people I hear doing that before we talk to them. I think a lot of times what you see in organizations is risk gets β watered down in a lot of ways β and β is based on a lot of assumptions β rather than data.
And it's funny that you talk about assumptions. think assumptions are a close cousin of biases, biases, biases, however you say that word, which makes them really hard to deal with sometimes because people don't realize the assumptions they're making when they talk about risk. You know, whatever that risk ends up being, I was going to try and come up with a really clever example. And, you know, that's not happening right at the moment. But I do think when people look at risk, like say,
risk from competition like market share risk. That tends to be more fear based and things that you heard that you haven't even realized are affecting your decisions or your view of the risk. And when you can come up with something like jobs to be done theory to actually start breaking that down and making it something you can wrap your head around rather than just a feeling. That's a way to make those assumptions take a step back or at least bring them out into the light.
So I guess that's probably my biggest way to look at it. Let's look at the human aspect here. Let's talk about the jobs, whether they're internal, external, between us and another competitor, β vendor, whatever. And let's break that down and let's talk about the risks associated with those jobs not being met.
David J Bland (22:8.106)
Yeah, there's an interesting way to think of jobs to be done. And I know there are different camps of jobs to be done. I'm a fan of Tony's work and β others. think β using it in very practical way, I think sometimes we get too caught up in the tools themselves. β sometimes we lose the practicality of it all. And how do we apply it day to day? So I like you tying it back to something people care about. risk, of course. β I know we're talking. Go ahead.
JL Heather (22:13.137)
yeah.
JL Heather (22:31.848)
Well, and β think we have this problem with tools. So whether it's agile jobs to be done, design thinking, we tend to only apply them in a narrow band. So I was taught to use jobs to be done to talk about products. was taught to use design thinking to design products and services. β I was taught to use agile to deliver. But the reality is like the best leaders are the ones that pick and choose.
and say, you know what, this is a really good opportunity, regardless of what's happening to apply some jobs to be done theory. So I think when organizations are looking for β new leaders, they're looking for support. One of the things they should look for β is people with a wide breadth of experience β in the space rather than depth. Don't go and hire a highly accredited scrum master to run your team. Hire someone with some breadth of knowledge who can help you pick and choose the right tools.
the right processes to apply in that moment β because there's a lot of value outside of the narrow bands where some of these tools are talked about.
David J Bland (23:38.475)
I think most of the time I end up using a new tool. It's because what I'm using is not working and I got pulled into it. So we talked a lot about leadership and I do think that's a good topic to explore. I also want to talk a little bit about some experiments. So we often interview people about, how do you test something fun? And we've had everything on here from, you know, upcycle barley to dog showers to...
JL Heather (23:44.010)
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
David J Bland (24:7.090)
AI compliance products. We really don't stick in a specific sector. And I know you don't stick in a specific sector either because you work with so many different types of companies. Are there any fun experiments you can share with us where you thought, we were trying to prototype something and test it and β anything fun that you can share with our listeners?
JL Heather (24:25.598)
So, β
JL Heather (24:29.652)
I won't say the company name and I'll try and keep this a little bit vague because it was fun. But what we were trying to do is figure out how we could remotely get measurements of someone's face to basically help produce.
product that they would wear. β So in the design sprint, what we ended up doing was we just went out and said, you know what? There's gotta be something with our phone that we can just scan faces β and get like a 3D map of it. And sure enough, there was. And it was one of the more fun afternoons, because we spent an hour just scanning every single person's face we could get to, β with our phone wondering around and then loading that into CAD, which is one of a...
We had β a person there from a local university who was an AI expert because you can't have a design sprint these days without an AI expert there. β It's a new requirement. But β he was loading these maps up and we were placing the eyeballs behind there and all this other stuff and trying to see how accurate could we actually be. β And it was really enlightening to show something that β at first when we talked about it felt.
very complex, like how do you measure remotely someone's face to like a very small degree of error for fit? Like how do you do that? To going to, well, you know what, we don't have to, we could potentially use some of these as other tools to prove the concept. And in the course of like two hours, we had a working concept where we could say, look, just here in this room, β we can now do this with a.
high degree of accuracy. not quite to where we need to be for manufacturing, but we're pretty darn close. That probably means that once we leave this room, the team that runs with this is going to be able to close that gap without a huge amount of work. β And the number of times something like that happens is encouraging. β it gives me a little faith in the human race to some extent that when we come together in a cross-functional, like diverse β
JL Heather (26:44.616)
background diverse ways of thinking like group We can almost always surprise ourselves By finding an easier way to solve a problem. β I Somewhere I still have a 3d map of I think it's my face Maybe it was someone else's I don't remember with like the eyeballs behind it and everything. It's a little bit creepy, but β It's really interesting just to see what's possible when you are more concerned about the outcome than who built it
David J Bland (27:15.637)
I love that story. Our first episode we actually had, I was case studying the book, was remote β face measurement for glasses. And β they did a lot of different testing to figure out β how to β solve for that. Also, they had a lot of desirability risk because people had glasses that didn't fit, and they didn't know why they didn't fit and all that. So that was a fun first episode for us. But β I agree. β I'm always really interested in tapping into people's creativity in this kind of work.
Because I feel like it drives me nuts when I'm talking to people inside of a company and they're like, well, we don't have any creative people. It's like, wait, do they have space to be creative? Like, do we have any?
β they have any opportunities to be creative because β so often I'll have an idea of an experiment in the back of my head and I was like, okay, I'm not gonna bias this team yet. I wanna see what they come up with. If they can't come up with anything, I can give numerous examples for other companies I've worked with and different ways to approach this. And I think it's one of the reasons people bring me in because I've seen so many different types of experiments. β And yet the teams sometimes come up with things like, wow, I never would have dreamed of doing it that way.
JL Heather (28:14.121)
Right.
JL Heather (28:19.017)
Yeah.
David J Bland (28:20.541)
But I want to go try that and see what we can learn from this. Like, what's the outcome? know, not so much the output. Usually our experiments are going to scale. Like, even if we're doing something that's hacked together, it's never going to scale. But if we can learn what we need to learn from doing this. β
I think it's very exciting. so I β sort of, light up a little bit, you know, β cause people, they're like, I'm a coach, right? So I don't get too high or too low. And people are just sort of like, my gosh, like you, you, you, β you don't let us get too depressed when it doesn't work. don't let us get too high when it does and let us invest millions of dollars into it. But it's really fun to see the teams use their creativity β in that type of β realm where they're trying to do an experiment and
you know, they finally find this really creative way to learn what they need to learn.
JL Heather (29:4.660)
β Well, in the number of times so we almost always talk with leadership after a design sprint to kind of give them an evaluation of the team like here's how they did. We saw this person really stepped up. This person was way more creative than maybe you thought, but the number of times we hear leaders go, β my God, I never knew β David was so creative. Like where did that come from? Like it always seems to be a surprise. So your your point about did you actually give them space to be creative like that's that's really.
you know, a good point to make, how often our organizations, space may even be the wrong word, how often are organizations giving people permission to be creative? β And I think that comes in a lot of forums. β One of the reasons I think people should always hire an experienced facilitator for a design sprint or something similar, like some sort of design thinking workshop is
we're going to do a lot of things from icebreakers to little points in the room to the way the room structured to help make sure everyone can be creative. And I think that's where that surprise comes from. They've never created β the environment and given the permission for that person to be creative. And when they did, they realized they have way more to contribute than they ever thought. So I think bringing someone who knows how to do that is really powerful. And it's a great way to not only train people,
but to demonstrate what's possible. β The other part of it is we always say, bring in a facilitator because nine times out of 10, you want to participate, not facilitate. And β it's really hard to do both. β And what we've also seen is a lot of people who are in β the design world, the strategy world, who run these workshops within the organizations, we come in and we run one and that person participates and all of a sudden the level of contribution spikes.
And it's another surprise. It's like, wow, they've been running these workshops for so long. I didn't realize how much they had to contribute. It's like, well, yeah, because it's really hard to run a workshop and also contribute. And typically the people you have in your organization running the workshop are some of your most creative and some of your most motivated. So it's probably a good idea to give them a little bit of a break and a chance and space to participate rather than facilitate.
David J Bland (31:25.545)
I agree with that. I also think if β people report up to you and you're facilitating that also, depending on the culture of a company, could β change things.
JL Heather (31:30.578)
Yeah, it's it's problem some yeah. β I would say regardless of the culture of the company like there's a natural human instinct to some extent that if. Your boss is running the meeting. Your perspective shifts. You can't help it, I don't think.
David J Bland (31:48.019)
So I wanna talk about design sprints a little bit before we wrap up. β So I think β I don't get ratioed often online, β I do β for someone named Bland, I have a lot of spicy takes. β And one of my spicy takes was β if you do a design sprint without the customer, then you just did an art sprint β and it didn't go over well. β And I understand why. And I think I knew what I was doing when I typed that out. β
What is your take on design sprints and including the customer? I think people view design sprints as almost like a, this is a silver bullet to solve for everything. We'll just do a design sprint our way through all this. Like what's your take on design sprints at current time? Like when you're working with a team and you're trying to understand the value and explain the value that design sprint can deliver, like how do you approach that?
JL Heather (32:37.644)
β well, β my non bland take on that would be, β if there's no customer involved, it's not a design sprint period. I don't know what it is. It could be any number of things, but it's not a design sprint. β like if you go back to, to, β I'm blanking on their names. The guys from Google ventures that wrote the book sprint. β yeah, there you go. Yeah. β
David J Bland (33:0.430)
yeah, Jake Knapp. β I forget. Yes, I do, I do. I'm aware of that book, yeah.
JL Heather (33:6.460)
Yeah, I would be amazed if you weren't. β You go back to that, like that is the core of the design sprint, right? The insights from the customers at the beginning and the testing with the customers at the end. I think your design, your customers that you interview help you understand your constraints β better than you ever could otherwise. If you don't talk to the customers, the only constraints you're really considering end up being business constraints, not customer constraints.
And then, you know, empathy building, like if you haven't talked to the customer and heard them talk about the problem they're having, the pain it causes and the value of a solution to them. You will always struggle to build empathy with that customer. And then if you flip to the end of that design sprint where you're testing a prototype with your customers, that is an experience everyone should have because.
The best facial expressions you will ever see, probably I should caveat that some, is watching a team β watch a customer try and use their prototype without direction. You will see confusion, you will see outrage, you will see shock, you will see the full range of human emotion as that customer tries to figure out what they're supposed to do and how. β And it's hilarious from a facilitator standpoint.
But from a participant standpoint, I think that may be one of the most valuable lessons they walk away from a design sprint with, that they went into those prototype testing moments β sure that they had designed something intuitive, easy to use. And they walk out of it realizing that's a lot harder than anyone thought. β So if you don't have the customer there, the value of a design sprint is like,
20 % of what it could be because the value is in the feedback. The value is in the input β and otherwise it's an echo chamber rather than a feedback cycle. yeah, β I would say. β Anytime I talk to an organization like yeah, we do a lot of design thinking stuff. I'm like, OK, how often does the team talk to customers? Well, no, no, we have the survey over here or this one person did the interviews and then we brought them in and like. β Then you're.
JL Heather (35:25.554)
You missed the point, right? The point is to connect the team to the customer. One of my favorite things to do β is not only have the customer interviews and the customer testing at the end, but to find an influential customer to bring in and participate in the design sprint with the team. That is the most powerful thing ever. It tells such a great story. And if you pick the right customer, β it sets you up for success before you have anything built. So. β
Anyone who tells me that they don't want to involve customers, at that point I kind of know that it's probably not really worth our time because we're not going to get the value that we should. And there's someone else out there that's willing to bring a customer in that we can knock it out to the park with.
David J Bland (36:12.263)
Yeah, I appreciate your take on that. I think some of the good workshops I've experienced where we literally design them in a way where the customers are coming in at lunch. obviously there's some work to be done there because you to pre-screen and you have to line up. Sometimes I just throw people out on the street if they can get to customers that way, but not every, especially my B2B clients. So I do think that's, you shorten that feedback loop of,
JL Heather (36:23.656)
Yeah. β
JL Heather (36:31.624)
Yeah, depends on the product. Yeah.
David J Bland (36:40.903)
β Yeah, we've already fallen in love with our solution by lunchtime, but then our dreams get crushed over lunch. β And therefore, β we can iterate through after that.
JL Heather (36:47.644)
Yeah! β
JL Heather (36:52.136)
Well, I mean, that's so we always tell our clients you need a team that can run with the product or the solution as soon as the design sprint is done. And the reason is because that moment of watching customers test the prototype is so information rich. That if you wait a couple weeks, you lose a lot, no matter how good of notes you take, you lose so much of the insight and so much of the value before you have a chance to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, whatever it is. β
It's just critical and that goes back to what I was saying earlier about momentum, right? If you lose the momentum. So much falls off that it's hard to get back.
David J Bland (37:32.242)
Yeah, I agree. It's coming back to momentum and leadership and β can we β use words that the customers understand or our customers understand even inside the company understand? I loved your approach to marketing. You know, we do have to do some marketing inside the companies to β help people understand the value of what we're doing in storytelling. β And I can even remember recently, you know, I gave this keynote and there was this great slide at the end and I was showing it to people and I thought I'm going to show the slide to people and they're going to be blown away and
people were just overwhelmed by the slide. I had to tell a story on top of that for people to really understand the narrative. So I just want to thank you so much for hanging out with us, talking about design sprints and innovation, how you include leadership into your work and make sure that they're on board and they're reinforcing these principles and values with the teams. If people want to reach out to you and they heard something that they need help with and they want to invite you in or just talk with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?
JL Heather (38:58.288)
There's two really good ways one is linkedin JL Heather that I was an early adopter of linkedin and Got my name pretty much as is so that helps a lot. So JL Heather on linkedin and then the other is our website centered dot work so Cnt are edi dot work We'd love to talk to you. β The best way to do it is to schedule a strategy session, you know a quick call we β
One of our big goals is to never do a hard sell. we, with every client, we start off with a one to three hour workshop that's for free, that lets us decide, know, hey, is this something where there's potential? Is this a right fit for us? β Is this a right fit for the organization that has contacted us? And if the answer is yes to all of that, that's when we move forward. And we think it's really important to have that upfront kind of workshop time, just to make sure everyone's on board and everyone understands where we're going. So.
There's no pressure. β We try and invest in our partnerships before they become official. And we'd love to talk to people.
David J Bland (40:5.927)
Well, if you are listening and you want to reach out to JL, go through LinkedIn or thecenter.work. We will β put those on our detail page as well so people can find those. Thanks so much for hanging out with us. I really appreciate the conversation and geeking out over how to make innovation stick. β I really appreciate you coming on.
JL Heather (40:20.884)
Heck yeah. No, it's been a blast.