Custom Made

This is episode #51 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with technologist, musician and public speaker - Christopher O’Donnell, Senior Vice President of Product at Hubspot. HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software - plus the methodology, resources, and support - to help businesses grow better. Christopher has built dozens of web and mobile products ranging from language learning for the US military to the most popular free CRM product in the world, recorded dozens of albums across a variety of musical genres, and spoken to audiences of over 10,000 people. His role as SVP of Product at Hubspot, a public tech company, makes him a staple in the product management community and frequent lecturer at MIT Sloan and major corporations. Outside of his day job, Christopher spends his time as songwriter and guitarist for the band The Providers who release music on a regular music basis - be sure to check them out a www.theproviders.com. During this weeks episode, Christopher and I are discussing the challenges that come with scaling a company from a startup to a large enterprise organization - from managing multiple product offerings, to integrating acquisitions, to cultural shifts that need to be planned for. We go into detail on how Hubspot grew from $50MM in revenue to 10X that amount, and how it has continued to incubate new product offerings and successfully integrate them back into the core business services. Another key aspect of Hubspot growth has been the following and loyalty it has built around its brand. A big catalyst for this is the annual Inbound conference that is hosted in Boston. We explore the importance of this, and the impact it has on product development, and product communication. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #50 of Custom Made, and this week I’m excited to be sitting down with Jonah Staw, President of Ultimate Ears, a disruptive new business group at Logitech. Ultimate Ears is an organization that pushes the boundaries of what premium, custom-fit earphones can do. Jonah has had an amazing career from consulting to start-up entrepreneur to board member to intraprenuer. A globally recognized executive, innovator and entrepreneur, here are just a few of his career highlights. In addition to his role at Logitech, which we talk about in more detail in today’s episode, Jonah serves on the Board of Directors of Lands' End and is the Chairman of S.E.E., an advisory group focused on disruptive strategies, product innovation, brand development, marketing, business launch, and multi-channel retailing. Prior to Logitech, Jonah was acting as a Business Unit President at Sears Holdings, where he led and started a variety of businesses inside the company. He launched brands with notable talent including Adam Levine and Nicki Minaj, as well as ran the footwear business for the corporation. In 2003, Jonah decided to convince the world that the unthinkable was possible and built a tween-focused apparel brand based on the notion that socks don’t have to match. Jonah co-founded LittleMissMatched and directed the company as Chairman and CEO for seven years of extraordinary growth. And before all of this, Jonah was a Director & Strategist at frog design, developing disruptive strategies for Fortune 500 companies including Disney, Yahoo, Nextel, Target and Chrysler. Jonah has been profiled in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, USA Today, Fortune Small Business, CNN, and numerous other media outlets. In 2009 he was named to Crain’s New York Business’ 40 under Forty. During this weeks episode, we dig deeper into Jonah’s entrepreneurial beginnings and how he became the ultimate insider, disrupting industries from the inside by bringing both an entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial mindset. We discuss the challenges/opportunities that come with product innovation from within large organizations, how to build successful teams, and what leaders need to do within large organizations who are wanting to foster product innovation and to bring these products to market. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa

This is episode #49 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Rachit Gupta, vice president at integrated power company Vistra Energy. Based in Irving, Texas, Vistra Energy combines an innovative, customer-centric approach to retail with a focus on safe, reliable, and efficient power generation. Through its retail and generation businesses which include TXU Energy, Homefield Energy, Dynegy, and Luminant, Vistra operates in 12 states and six of the seven competitive markets in the U.S. Vistra’s retail brands serve approximately 2.9 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers across five top retail states, and its generation fleet totals approximately 41,000 megawatts of highly efficient generation capacity, with a diverse portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, coal, and solar facilities. At Vistra Energy, Rachit Gupta is a transformative people leader building high performance teams that leverage technology to increase employee productivity, and enterprise revenue and profitability with a focus on cost optimization. I In prior roles, Rachit was a Senior Director of corporate & enterprise applications at Energy Future Holdings Corporation and before that he served as a Director of architecture strategy & transformation at EFH. During this weeks episode, Rachit is digging deep into the trends that are affecting the energy and utility space including the changing US power generation mix across fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewables such as solar and wind. As well as storage technology, microgrids and the prosumer energy market. In addition to the changes to the energy industry we also discuss the technology trends (such as IoT, ML/AI, 5G and Blockchain technology) that are transforming and disrupting this space, and how this technology integration is creating the “Utility of the Future”. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #48 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Dr Lyndsey Harper, Founder and CEO of Rosy, the latest company to come out of Dialexa Labs. Dialexa Labs is the internal innovation and development engine here at Dialexa. Whilst the vast majority of our day-to-day work is focused on providing technology and product development services for our clients, Dialexa Labs provides a channel for creativity and ideas from within our organization. For those ideas that we see have high potential, we use our own resources, team, and The Dialexa Method we apply to our clients' business challenges, to create unique product offerings and spin out new companies. Other the past few years Dialexa Labs has produced a number of successful companies. This includes connected car platform and the first Dialexa Labs company - Vinli - who just recently closed a $13.5 million Series B round of funding. You can hear all about Vinli and their amazing journey to date in one of my earlier episodes of Custom Made with founder and CEO Mark Haidar. Also, for those that are interested in another of our Dialexa Labs company, Robin Autopilot, you can listen to founder and CEO Justin Crandall discuss the opportunities robots bring to disrupting the lawn care industry. I’ve included links to both of these in the show notes at Dialexa.com. And now to our latest company - Rosy. Rosy is empowering women across the US with resources for their sexual wellness. Currently 38% of women in the US are suffering from low sexual desire. Today Rosy provides these 31 million women with hope, community, and real solutions. Rosy has created the first of its kind mobile application with physicians and psychologists that connects women who have low sexual desire with evidence-based resources for improvement. You can find more information about Rosy at meetrosy.com. During this weeks episode, Rosy founder and CEO, Dr Lyndsey Harper, shares her journey to becoming the founder of a technology company and launching a new product that addresses the massive deficit of resources and solutions for woman who were suffering with low libido and sexual dysfunction. Dr Harper talks about how she continues to dedicated her career to bringing awareness, education, and resources to both physicians and patients about these very common but rarely discussed issues that can often leave women feeling isolated and ashamed.

Welcome to our second year of Custom Made. If this is your first time listening, make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to get our latest episodes as they are released every Sunday. And be sure to check out our episodes from last year once you are finished with this one. This is episode #47 of Custom Made, and this week I’m sitting down with Charlene Schwindt, Global Product Owner Manager at Hilti. Charlene is a product management professional with strong marketing emphasis. Her career has allowed her to have direct experience across industries such as healthcare, financial services, higher education, and technology. And Hilti is a global leader in providing technology-leading products, systems and services to the worldwide construction industry. In her role at Hilti, Charlene has built up a team of software product owners to manage global digital, SaaS, desktop, and mobile applications - twenty-three at last count. Charlene has worked across these teams to implement product owner best practices and scrum team reporting standards. This also includes leading agile transformation, coaching global product managers on software product management best practices, and getting scrum teams to predictable velocity. During this weeks episode, Charlene is discussing the challenges that come with building successful product teams within enterprise organizations, and bringing in new methods such Agile and Design Thinking to an IT organization and product business. To achieve this, Charlene breaks down the Product Management and Product Ownership roles, and how these roles and responsibilities are typically handled in both smaller and larger organizations. We also discuss the different types of tasks that are handled by Product Manager vs. Product Owner, the advantages and disadvantages of splitting these roles, and the challenges in hiring the right candidates for these different roles. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are into our second year of Custom Made, and a big THANK YOU to all of our regular listeners. This is episode #46. For our first episode of 2019, I’m sitting down with Alex Jacoby, Head of Operations at imbrex. Alex is an accomplished business operations driver, with an unusually broad base of experience developing and improving business processes. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, Alex is immersed in the world cryptoeconomics and democratizing data. At imbrex, Alex and the team are syndicating real estate data into a new kind of a globally accessible network, where data is locally sourced, validated and secured via the Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and cryptoeconomics. During this week’s episode we are discussing how organizations can go about unlocking the opportunities that blockchain technology presents, and how this technology is very much in the “Is there/doing that” stage, rather than “been there/done that”. We will be answering questions such as: - What is it really like to move your company to adopt blockchain technology? - How can an organization be comfortable with not knowing what is going to happen next? - How do you define who is going to build “what” to make blockchain scalable? Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #45 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Justin Marshall, Sr. Product Designer at Pandora. Throughout his career Justin has driven effective product design at various tech companies; including Shutterstock, Thomson Reuters, and most recently Pandora. At Pandora Justin has helped to create high performing, cross-functional product teams that are highly collaborative, empathetic, and agile. Justin is a pragmatic designer, employing various user-centric and data-driven methodologies to help his teams solve tough problems and deliver value to users. During our conversation Justin is sharing how as a Sr Product Designer at Pandora, he is constantly designing with data in mind. The most important thing in designing with data is both understanding your user/customer needs and the problems they need you to solve, and understanding the data that you have available in order to design the right display of that data for your users. This requires both designers and data engineers developing capabilities in each others field to be able to better understand the opportunities and limitations each team has within your organization. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1j25uRqaEZg5nQXW5MHsbX Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #44 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Adam Paulisick, Chief Product Officer at MAYA - A Boston Consulting Group company. Adam brings more than a decade of digital transformation, product design, and data-driven marketing and sales experience. His experience includes senior leadership positions at Nielsen Catalina Solutions, U.S. and European based roles at The Nielsen Company, and Commerce Signals where he worked with hundreds of global manufacturers, financial institutions, leading media agencies and publishers, in addition to data-enabling technology platforms. In his role as Chief Product Officer at MAYA, Adam helps to create the Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable (which is what the name MAYA stands for) products and services in a user-centered world. Adam’s focus is on helping companies assess what platforms, people, and products they already have and using those building blocks with today's best technology and techniques to design and build working prototypes that more often than not integrate back into legacy systems. Working in an agile manner, the design-build-test approach continues to prove that human-centered organizations return better for shareholders and create cultures that deliver value instead of simply managing it. During this week’s episode of Custom Made, Adam is discussing these aspects of building successful products, what makes a great product and why delightful products don’t always make successful products, and how to manage existing infrastructure and systems when building new products and capabilities. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #43 of Custom Made and this week I’m sitting down with Dialexa founder and CEO, Scott Harper. Earlier this week we hosted a panel event at our Dialexa offices on the topic of Business Impact Innovation. Right after the event, I grabbed Scott and we recorded some of the key themes that were discussed by the panelists and the attendees. Real quick, when we talk about Business Impact Innovation we mean bringing innovative thinking to solve real business problems and needs, that is measurable and impactful to the current state of the organization. Not exploring emerging technologies with no direct link or impact on your business today or in the next couple of years. With the notable closures of innovation labs for organizations such as Nordstrom and The New York Times, you could argue that “innovation” can mean putting a target on your back. But, we saw the importance of having an event on this topic with innovation leaders who are putting in place the right process to solving problems, people to drive the change, and yes in some cases new technology to solve their organization needs. Two reports have also been recently published that reinforce the need for this to be a topic that should be discussed across enterprise organizations. The first is from Forrester on CIO Predictions for 2019. Their predictions for CIOs next year include the need to embrace tech-led innovation revenue and speed metrics. How will what you are doing impact the growth of the company and the speed in which you drive change and roll out new offerings. Also, that Forrester full expects a tech moonshot meltdown to happen that will cause many organizations to refocus their efforts on the business needs of today and near-term, not the future. IBM’s Watson seems to be firmly in the cross-hairs of that conversation. What was also interesting was that they expect 20% of top-performing firms will be looking for new CIOs in 2019, which if you are in that role today looking for partners like Dialexa to support in accelerating projects and initiatives seems more important than ever. The second report we discussed at our event was a State of Innovation report that has been recently released from CB Insights. A couple of the takeaways from this included: - Corporate innovation is slow: 60% of companies said it takes a year or longer to create new products. Corporate propensity for building over partnering or buying slows down innovation. - Companies lack confidence in their ability to innovate: The companies CB Insights spoke with found evidence that innovation becomes progressively more difficult as ideas move into development and then into commercialization. I’ll include links to both of these in the show notes for this episode at Dialexa.com. Be sure to tweet me @dougplatts with your thoughts on this episode and your thoughts on the business impact innovation. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #42 of Custom Made and this week is the second part of my conversation with Jordan Bergtraum, a Product Management Executive and Enterprise SaaS Expert. Jordan joined me last week where we discussed the role of Product Manager. For many organizations, the Product Manager role is being defined and redefined as companies and their products mature. With that in mind, Jordan and I wanted to bring clarity to this role, and have a very honest discussion about what parts of Product Management should get more attention. And just as important, what functions require less attention. The end game is to help PMs deliver better products. For part one of our conversation we broke down the current state of product management, and detailed five things to spend less time on (or completely stop), to make room for higher value activities. During the rest of our conversation, Jordan is detailing the five things product managers should start doing (or do more of) to continue their evolution toward product hero. Be sure to tweet me @dougplatts with your thoughts on these episodes and your thoughts on the responsibilities of a product manager. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #41 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Jordan Bergtraum, a Product Management Executive and Enterprise SaaS Expert. For over a decade Jordan has been growing B2B Enterprise SaaS product revenue while mastering retention via needle moving roadmaps, value-based product messaging, and high functioning PM teams. He has expertise in two-sided marketplaces, wildly complex business logic & configuration, and business intelligence products. As the head of product management for a range B2B SaaS companies, Jordan has grown flagship products from $75M to $130M+ over 3 years and $10M to $30M in just 2.5 years. Jordan brings experience from the pharmaceutical, legal, higher education and facilities management verticals. This week is the start of a two-part conversation with Jordan on the role of Product Manager. For many organizations, the Product Manager role is being defined and redefined as companies and their products mature. With that in mind, Jordan and I wanted to bring clarity to this role, and have a very honest discussion about what parts of Product Management should get more attention. And just as important, what functions require less attention. The end game is to help PMs deliver better products. For part one of our conversation we are breaking down the current state of product management, and detailing five things to spend less time on (or completely stop), to make room for higher value activities. Be sure to check out next week's episode where we will detail five things product managers should start doing (or do more of) to continue their evolution toward product hero. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #40 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Chris Curran, Chief Technologist and CTO New Ventures, PwC. At PwC Chris is responsible for technology strategy and innovation. In his role at PwC Chris works closely with senior client management on their most complex and strategic technology issues, helping to evaluate emerging technologies, define the business and technology transformation agenda, and organize the work to get it done. Chris also serves as the CTO for the firm's New Ventures group focused on identifying and growing new digital products. Chris has global experience in designing and leading the implementation of high-value technology organizations and initiatives that create tangible value for his clients, most recently in the consumer products, internet banking, property and casualty insurance and health insurance industries. This week I am talking with Chris Curran on why PwC saw the business opportunity for creating the New Ventures group, and how they are taking an enterprise view on productizing ideas. During our conversation, we discuss how as an organization moves from being a service driven business to a product company there is a need to taking a longer view to potential products. Just because an idea or application worked for a particular project or client need, that does not mean it will be a successful product when scaled to a larger audience. It is a data point, but the idea should be validated further by gaining the potential customer’s perspective rather than solely relying on internal opinions. Also, during this episode we discuss how an organization talks about digital is important to how it transforms, is it top-down or bottom-up, is it the whole organization or a small "Special Forces" team that is driving the technology change. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #39 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by Swamy Vasudevan, Vice President of Strategy at Ericsson and Russell Villemez, Sr Partner and Head of Technology Strategy here at Dialexa. For our regular listeners, you will remember that Swamy joined me previously on episode #35 of Custom Made where he did a deep dive into the telecom, discussing the perfect storm that is hitting that industry. And Russell who has a background in telecommunications, is a former CTO at HP, and currently a Feld Group affiliate and sr. partner here at Dialexa, has spoken here on topics including enterprise data architecture, and digital transformation. I couldn’t think of two better guests to discuss today’s topic. This week I wanted to bring together both Swamy and Russell to discuss a new technology that is going to impact everyone and every business - 5G Do a search on 5G and you will see news on a daily basis about this new technology and partnerships being put in place. Ericsson is at the forefront of a lot of these conversations and partnerships, and so who better to join Russell and I than Ericsson’s VP Strategy, Swamy. During this episode we discuss the 5G landscape, what Ericsson is doing in this space, we get technical about this new technology and explore the impact that it will have on our lives and our companies. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #38 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by James Utley, Senior Manager and Product Designer here at Dialexa. James is an experienced designer skilled in Information Design, Logo Design, User Experience, Branding & Identity, and Typography with a history of working in the information technology and services industry. James has joined me on previous episodes of Custom Made where he was discussing how to scale design across hundreds of products with Design Systems, how to navigate the politics of user research, and how to use lead design research to get to the “why” of your product. Be sure to check out those episodes once you have finished this one. Last week on Custom Made, I had Rowdy Howell on the show sharing some of the major themes that were being discussed at Strata Data Conference which he recently attended in New York. This week James had just returned from Barcelona where he attended the Service Design Days conference, and I managed to grab some time with him to hear some of the main topics being discussed there. During this weeks episode, we explore a range of topics such as: - How service design brings humanity back into the products and services we create - Design that ignores the ecosystem is doomed to fail - Service designers need to have the ability to both zoom in and out of the experience, and how sometimes you need to go slow to move fast - And how our work should shape the tools we utilize, rather than letting the tools shape the work Be sure to check out the show notes at dialexa.com for this episode where I will include links to details on the Service Design Days conference. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Hey, everybody, this is Doug Platts and welcome to Custom Made. If you this is your first time listening be sure to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, and everywhere else you listen to Custom Made to get our latest episodes every Sunday. This is episode #37 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by Rowdy Howell, Senior Data Engineer here at Dialexa. Rowdy has joined me previously on Custom Made where he was discussing the various challenges enterprise organizations have when it comes to data. When you have finished with this episode, be sure to check out episode #34 to hear more about draining your organization’s data swamp. As a Senior Data Engineer here at Dialexa, Rowdy has helped solve complicated problems using machine learning models, designed and deployed data streaming architectures, and pushed the capabilities of the data team here. This week Rowdy and myself are discussing some of the major trends being discussed at the Strata Data Conference which Rowdy recently attended in New York. Presented by O’Reilly and Cloudera, the Strata Data Conference brings together big data, cutting-edge data science, and new business fundamentals into a three-day conference that offers a deep dive into emerging techniques and technologies. During this weeks episode, we are exploring five major themes that were being discussed during this conference: 1) Decision makers playing an increasingly important role in data 2) Your data science team is fundamentally different than your agile solutions team 3) Many businesses scenarios can’t accept black box models - interpretability on the rise 4) More and more companies looking towards fast data as technology integration improves 5) AI ethics becoming a hot topic now to prevent murky waters when the tech arrives Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode where I will include links to details on the Strata Data Conference and some of the keynotes we discuss on today’s episode. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Hey, everybody, this is Doug Platts and you are listening to the Custom Made podcast. Each week I talk with digital transformation leaders within enterprise organizations, and thought-leaders within the custom technology space. My goal is to shine a spotlight on the work that is happening in enterprise organizations who are changing, and the leaders who are driving that change. We are on to episode #36 and for this weeks episode I wanted to highlight some of the amazing industry insiders we have had on Custom Made that have pulled back the curtain on the work they and their teams are doing to transform enterprise organizations. These exceptional individuals discuss the trends and headwinds that are shaping industries such as airlines and transportation, telecommunication, and finance. These trends include Service Design, AI, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, and Cybersecurity. You find the full episode of each of these Industry Insiders here: CM35: How Ericsson is Weathering the Perfect Telecom Industry Storm w/ Swamy Vasudevan - https://by.dialexa.com/cm35-how-ericsson-is-weathering-the-perfect-telecom-industry-storm-w-swamy-vasudevan CM26: Service Design - Designing Beyond the Product w/ Bianka McGovern - https://by.dialexa.com/cm26-service-design-designing-beyond-the-product-w-bianka-mcgovern CM33: Building The Platform Organization at Scotiabank w/ Justin Arbuckle - https://by.dialexa.com/cm33-building-the-platform-organization-at-scotiabank-w-justin-arbuckle CM28: Bringing Innovation to Southwest Airlines through Human-centered Design w/ Heather Figallo - https://by.dialexa.com/cm28-bringing-innovation-to-southwest-airlines-through-human-centered-design-w-heather-figallo CM24: The Current State of Cybersecurity - Risks, Responses, & Responsibilities w/ Alex Cherones - https://by.dialexa.com/cm24-the-current-state-of-cybersecurity-risks-responses-responsibilities-w-alex-cherones CM22: The Modern CIO (Chief Integration Officer) and Legacy IT w/ Charlie Feld - https://by.dialexa.com/cm22-the-modern-cio-chief-integration-officer-and-legacy-it-w-charlie-feld Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #35 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Swamy Vasudevan, Vice President of Strategy at Ericsson. With a career driving product innovation, business growth, market share, and organizational refinement for global markets. Swamy is an award-winning thought leader in network communications and a recognized speaker on topics including Cloud Management, Smart Grid Communications, and GIS. During his time at Ericsson, Swamy has held positions as Head of Cloud Solutions and Chief Technology Officer. Today as the Vice President of Strategy, Swamy leads strategy definition and market growth planning for Ericsson’s North American cloud and network business, serving B2B customers across the US and Canada. This includes directing business development for the North America cloud and NFV unit, focusing on industry-unique, end-to-end solutions for commercial clients. Swamy leads a matrixed team who specialize in competitive analysis, identifying growth opportunities, determining possibilities for disruptive technology, and providing guidance for M&A and venture investments, and he partners with top-level client decision makers in articulating value proposition and driving customer engagement. This week Swamy and myself are doing a deep-dive into the telecom industry. We start by looking at how Ericsson has continued to transform itself to be relevant to its target customers, and grow and evolve based on industry needs. I’m sure your first thoughts when you hear Ericsson may be to associate them with the pre-iPhone era Sony Ericsson cellphone range - I know I had one of those. But today Ericsson is shaping the future of mobile broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership, helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world. During our conversation Swamy discusses the disruptions that are hitting the Telecom industry, including the perfect storm of Technology, Community, Consumer transformation. This includes the impact of 5G, Cloud, Machine Learning, changes to IT and Network teams, and changes in ownership support and business models. And with all of this change how do you innovate and adapt? Swamy shares how business models are shifting, the impact to organizations within Ericsson, and how they are investing in their people to develop and retrain. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #34 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined by Snr Data Engineer, Rowdy Howell, and Greg Corley, a Partner within the Engineering practice here at Dialexa. Rowdy graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BS in Computer Science where he studied algorithms and machine learning techniques. There he worked on a thesis project that trained various models to detect hand gestures on mobile devices using high-frequency doppler signatures. At Dialexa, Rowdy has helped solve complicated problems using machine learning models, design and deploy data streaming architectures, and push the capabilities of the data team. Greg has over twenty years of software experience including management, architecture, construction, delivery, and support. Throughout his career Greg has developed and delivered applications in many business domains including healthcare, travel, insurance, and accounting and in a variety of environments, from two person startups to multinational corporations. In the early 2010s there was a “gold-rush” to get a company’s data into a data lake, but once IT organizations had gone through that effort, people really didn’t know what to do with all of the data to turn it into insight and information. As these data lakes have been turned into data swamps, what can these organizations do to build a competitive advantage through their data? During my conversation this week with Greg and Rowdy we discuss the various challenges enterprise organizations have when it comes to data. For example, What can organizations do to evaluate the data that they have and what are the best ways to analyze it and find value from aligning historical and real-time data sources. When looking to drain the data swamp we cover the processes that organizations can use to clean up a swamp at an enterprise level, to allow you to get value out of your data lakes. Rowdy and Greg give a number of pointers such as: 1) How to identify the beachhead, that first data science project that is leveraging modern techniques 2) Don’t go to big too soon - you want to be able to show real results and business impact from your activity early and often so don’t bite off more than you can chew 3) Develop your existing teams rather bring in all new people - capitalize on their tribal knowledge, develop training programs to broaden their skill sets, and get them working on real projects 4)And finally, understand your audience when trying to internally validate a data science project - sell business automation not machine learning Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Each week I talk with digital transformation leaders within enterprise organizations, and thought-leaders within the custom technology space. My goal is to shine a spotlight on the work that is happening in enterprise organizations who are changing, and the leaders who are driving that change. This is episode #33 of Custom Made and I’ve got a great guest for you. This week I’m joined by Justin Arbuckle, SVP of The Platform Organization at Scotiabank Justin is on a mission to make Canada's most international bank the world's most digital bank. His organization designs, builds and runs the platform for digital and core banking transformation which includes cloud, data, architecture, API's, and agile. Previously he was VP of Transformation and Chief Enterprise Architect at CHEF Software where he built and led a team helping large enterprises become high velocity software businesses. Before his startup adventure, Justin was at GE Capital. As CTO of EMEA he led the Europe-wide functional restructuring of the IT organization and as Global Chief Architect he introduced and sponsored an integrated approach to agile, Lean and DevOps. An executive on four continents and having worked in Financial Services for the last 20 years, Justin is as passionate today as he has ever been about diverse areas such as innovation, venture capital and consulting. This week I’m talking with Justin about The Platform Organization (also referred to as “PLATO”), essentially a software company Justin leads within Scotiabank, Canada’s international bank. The Platform Organization allows Scotiabank to have the ability to deliver a custom approach to technology that drives improved experiences for their customers, allows for continuous innovation, delivers a safe and reliable platform for global business needs, and allows them to focus a getting the basics right. Also during our discussion, Justin breaks down the five perspective transformations of the digital enterprise: 1) Platforms versus tools 2) Products versus projects 3) Depth versus breadth 4) Value versus cost 5) Experience versus use And one last thing, after you have finished listening to this week’s episode, be sure to check out Justin’s open letter to his Scotiabank team that he wrote when he started in this role - a public commitment from the very beginning of his time at Scotiabank to hold him accountable for success - I’ve included a link to it in this episodes show notes at Dialexa.com. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #32 of Custom Made and this week I’m joined again by Dialexa co-founder and CEO, Scott Harper. As Dialexa’s CEO, Scott’s role here as evolved as the company has grown. From working in the business to working on the business. Scott is a serial entrepreneur who has launched multiple technology product companies over the past decade, is the winner of the Ernst & Young Emerging Technology Entrepreneurs Of The Year and the Dallas Business Journal 40 Under 40, and has steered Dialexa through the ups and downs of moving from a startup to a growing brand whilst achieving year-on-year growth and with the team being recognized two years in a row by Entrepreneur.com as one of the top entrepreneurial companies in America. This week I’ve got a great discussion with Scott breaking down how the current consulting firm model is dead and how the relationship these firms have with clients needs to change. During our conversation, we discuss what is wrong with the current consulting firm model and how the consulting firm selection game, and the rules that have been defined, are set up in a way that has stopped bringing value to the relationship. And yes, it is necessary to have criteria (or rules) to help with the consulting firm selection game, but what happens when you create a game with rules? People play the game. Because these criteria or rules are in place, companies tend to focus on the wrong metrics. For example hourly rate rather than say speed to market or product quality. Yes, these are harder to measure and manage during vendor selection but they are essential for project success. Companies need to accept that all types of consulting firms have a place in their organization and take the time to find the right consulting firm that meets their needs, rather than stay with firms that are “jack of all trades, masters of none”. And to help with this, consulting firms need to understand where their strengths are and play in those spaces, rather than over-reach themselves and put the quality of their work at risk. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #31 of Custom Made and this week I am talking with Daniel Slatton and Andrew Turner from Dialexa. Daniel is a Manager in Dialexa’s Quality Engineering practice where he guides teams on how to identify, assess, and resolve issues with regular retrospection. Daniel lives and breathes Collaborative Quality and thorough Story Kickoffs and Reviews, Daniel encourages product teams to self-organize and produce lean, living documentation. Daniel promotes Agile and quality best practices to maximize sustainable delivery through the creation of project specific Quality Agreements. Joining Daniel is Andrew, a Principal in Dialexa’s Software Engineering practice. Andrew has previously been a guest on Custom Made, where he was discussing Site Reliability Engineering in episode #10. With extensive experience in all aspects of software development, Andrew provides end-to-end technical leadership on projects while assisting Dialexa’s executive team in scaling engineering processes and practices. We start this week's episode by addressing some of the misconceptions product teams have with regards to integrating Quality methodologies, and Quality teams, into their product development process. For example, clearing up the notion that Quality is not a specific phase of a project or a series of tests that are run to check the final product that has been built. Which, if you did think of Quality that way, would mean you might not find out if your product met the user’s needs and necessary quality standards until you were too far down the product development process. During our discussion, Daniel references a great quote from Kenny Cruden - and I’m paraphrasing: "Quality Assurance is - Are we building the right product? And if so are we building it correctly?" With that in mind, there needs to be a shift in mindset to a more progressive approach to quality, causing many product teams to rethinking the role of quality in their product development process. For example, how do you integrate “Collaborative Quality” into your product development efforts so that you are a Quality coach across the different disciplines that are involved, rather than a Quality referee. There is a big human aspect in Collaborative Quality in how we communicate with each other across disciplines, facilitate conversations, and validate whether assumptions are correct. Finally we end our discussion with advice for technology leaders on how to foster an environment for quality within their organization, what signs to look for to understand if they are building quality products without having to wait until it is almost finished, and what they should be asking of their teams and technology firms to ensure that a modern approach to Quality is being adopted for their projects. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This episode #30 of Custom Made and this week I am talking with Anne-Marie Levinson, Senior Product Designer here at Dialexa. Anne-Marie brings over 6 years of experience in graphic design, advertising, design research and UX design. At Dialexa she specializes in both user experience (UX) and visual design, helping clients solve complex problems through rich user experiences and efficient design solutions. And it’s Anne-Marie’s journey from graphic designer to user-experience designer that we are going to discuss on today’s episode. We have talked a lot on this show about design thinking, user-experience design and systems design. This changing approach to designing successful products requires designers to constantly refresh their skills and capabilities, and so I wanted to sit down with Anne-Marie and have her share her journey from graphic designer to user-experience designer. A couple of weeks ago I had SMU Professor, Mark Fontenot, on Custom Made discussing how he is transforming the education of the next generation of technologists - and so now it is time to talk about how the role of a designer is evolving. During my conversation with Anne-Marie she shares what the differences are when shifting to a design thinking approach to product design, what are the steps she and you can take to transition from a graphic designer to a user experience designer, and how she continues to expand her skill sets to understand users better, ideate, prototype and test products, and she moved away from making decisions based solely on aesthetics. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #28 and this week I am talking with Sarah Reid, Principal within Dialexa’s Research and Design practice. Sarah has previously been on Custom Made discussing how to take a pragmatic approach to user research, using effective storytelling in product development, and using lean design research to get to the why of your product. At Dialexa, Sarah is responsible for working with our clients to get to the why of a product, creating a user experience that drives both adoption and engagement of the products we design and build, and she is a fan of pragmatic research work to enable her to provide insights in a fast and smart manner. Prior to joining Dialexa, Sarah has held UX architect and design roles at AT&T, Gamestop, and NBC Universal. On this weeks episode of Custom Made, Sarah shares how the Dialexa design process not only helps product teams create amazing experiences that delight our client’s users, but also how we have found that several of our techniques help create the transformation desired in organizations/company. During our conversation, Sarah shows how throughout our research phase we have a standard set of key objectives that can be applied to the company as well as the specific product we are building. These key objectives are: - alignment from the team to create a shared understanding, - creative thinking to really innovate on the problem we are trying to solve, - and validation from users about the desirability/usability of the solution. And finally. we discuss how rather than focusing just on developing your Product/Market Fit for successful products, you should expand your perspective to look at how you develop your Product/Market/Organization Fit to be a successful company. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #28 and this week I am joined by Heather Figallo, Senior Director, Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship at Southwest Airlines. At Southwest Airlines Heather is responsible for leading the discipline of innovation as well as the newly formed labs group which develops prototypes and other stimulus for Customer and Employee feedback. Heather joined Southwest Airlines in August of 2014 as Product and Innovation lead in the Commercial Team. During her tenure at Southwest, Heather launched the Customer Experience Team within Marketing and was the Business lead on the Customer Experience side of the CX / Ops strategy development. In October of 2016 Heather moved to Corporate Strategy & Innovation to launch the Innovation Center and Lab. The Innovation Center’s charge is to create idea flow that supports the Corporate Strategy. The Innovation Center does this by inspiring innovative and agile thinking, directing innovation work through best practices and accelerating the work through the agility of labs. Prior to joining Southwest, Heather’s worked in Advertising, Digital and Innovation Agencies. During that time she led global initiatives for ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, American Airlines, P&G and many other Fortune 500 brands. On this weeks episode of Custom Made Heather shares how she and her team have integrated human-centered design within their innovation practice to inspire, direct and accelerate change within Southwest Airlines. For listeners who aren’t familiar, human-centered design is a framework of processes, that is not restricted to interfaces or technologies, in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. Throughout my conversation with Heather she digs into the detail of her teams approach, structure, and various processes they use to collect ideas, how she divides ideas into near-term and longer-term opportunities to drive change within Southwest airlines, how her team gets buy-in within the organization both at the early stage with key stakeholders and later during the prototyping phases with the end users, and then transition these prototypes to be further developed to be part of day-to-day operations. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #27 and this week I am joined by Mark Fontenot a Clinical Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. At SMU, Mark teaches classes focusing on software development, software engineering, and database systems. Previously, Mark was Founding Faculty-in-Residence of Loyd Residential Commons, and he served as Director of First Year Engineering Design in the Lyle School. His research interests are in engineering education focusing on the measurement of individual innovative behavior and fostering the creative and innovative capacity of undergraduate engineering and computer science students. In addition to teaching and research, Mark is an academic adviser to computer science majors, and serves on various committees throughout the university. On this weeks episode Mark and I are discussing what changes are needed when educating the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. During this episode we discuss what is wrong with the traditional model of engineering education and challenge the difference between teaching theory vs. application in the real-world. Mark cannot stress the importance of the human side of engineering education, and that the so-called “Soft Skills” don't necessarily come that easily to lots of engineering students. We discuss how education institutions must teach students the need to build products and solve problems for other humans, not just for the sake of building and using cool technology. These institutions need to be teaching students to think about the user – to be empathetic! Additionally students must gain experience not just working together with others in a team, but collaborating and communicating across teams and with different stakeholders. And finally we discuss how to nurture a culture of innovative and creative problem solvers. Mark outlines the Three (non-linear) components of Innovative Work Behavior: - Idea Generation - Idea Promotion - Idea Implementation Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #26 and this week I am joined by Custom Made regular Dialexa’s Design Architect, James Utley, and we are excited to have the opportunity to talk with Bianka McGovern, Vice President, User Experience at Goldman Sachs. In her role at Goldman Sachs, Bianka is a UX design lead and program manager for various Fintech projects. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Bianka was the Head of UX in the Tax & Accounting division of Thomson Reuters. During her time there, Bianka successfully built up its UX capability and the Central User Experience team. She and her team defined the strategic direction of User Experience, implemented a Design Thinking and UX process framework for the company, and developed a design system for a portfolio of 200 products. For most of her career, Bianka has been designing in the Enterprise space, typically working on multi-layered platforms and (re-)defining the experience of business workflows. She also has agency experience from early in her career, where she focused on marketing campaigns in the consumer space (fashion and retail). She is a graduate of the University of Applied Sciences in Wuerzburg, Germany with a major in Communication Design. On this weeks episode Bianka, James and I are discussing how the design of successful products goes beyond visual design, beyond user experience design, all the way to service design. Service design is a process in which the designer focuses on creating optimal service experiences. This requires taking a holistic view of all the related actors, their interactions, the applications and products they use, and supporting materials and infrastructures. Service design often involves the use of customer journey maps, which tell the story of different customers’ interactions with a brand, thus offering deep insights. The purpose of service design methodologies is to establish best practices for designing services according to both the needs of customers and the competencies and capabilities of service providers. If a successful method of service design is employed, the service will be user-friendly and relevant to the customers, while being sustainable and competitive for the service provider. During our conversation Bianka shares the macro trends that are shaping how products and services are designed, what are some of the barriers to designing successful products, and what are some of the tools designers need to be leveraging when undertaking service design. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #25 and this week I talking again with Dialexa’s Head of Engineering, Samer Fallouh. Samer has joined me previously on Custom Made to discuss how IT and product development teams within enterprise organizations need to bring modern product development methods to legacy IT operations or face disruption - you can hear more about this in Episode #15. Samer is a technologist with over fifteen years experience in building custom software and hardware products to successfully drive digital transformation at enterprise organizations, and partner with startups who have received funding and now need a technology team to bring their product to market so that it is scalable, secure and built for their user needs. Samer joined Dialexa as employee number three and has been instrumental to the growth of the company. Starting as a Solutions Engineer, Samer quickly moved into an Engineering Project Lead role, and today, he serves as Partner at Dialexa over seeing both the Software and Hardware Engineering practices. On this weeks episode Samer and I are discussing the challenges and opportunities that live at the intersection of hardware and software product development. Samer’s early experience with sensors and connected devices nearly ended up with him suing Microsoft! - I’ll let him share that story. At Dialexa, one of Samer’s first IoT projects was building the connected car company Vinli - you can hear this whole story in Episode #3 of Custom Made when I sat down with founder and CEO Mark Haidar. Now that the interest with IoT has peaked in recent years and connected products are becoming more common, Samer outlines a number challenges that companies need to plan for when building these products including cost and timeline. For example, companies have gotten used to the rapid release timelines in software but that is not possible with hardware - even on IoT projects, software and hardware need to be managed as separate sub-projects with their own processes but with the right connective tissue to make sure that integration points happen throughout the build. There is a need to use 3rd party hardware products in the early stages of your product development to save time and money, but problems will start to occur if you become dependent on using 3rd parties for your device. You are constrained by those suppliers, their business and product growth, and it may leave you not being able to scale or add the features you need in the future. From where Samer sits today, the future of pairing data from IoT sensors and digital data is significant. This combined having historical data integrated with real-time data to empower data-driven decisions is the IoT business opportunity of today and the future.

We are on episode #24 and this week I have an amazing guest with me - Alex Cherones, Director of Threat and Virtual Security Services & Platform Development at AT&T. In his role as Director of Cybersecurity Threat Services, Virtual Security Functions, and Security Platform development, Alex helps create next-generation, Big Data-based cybersecurity platforms and managing the portfolio for threat services. Alex and his team lead innovation for products and services, along with elevating the customer experiences and user interfaces for AT&T Cybersecurity. Alex has more than ten years of experience with product development and product management, amounting to more than $6 billion in development responsibility and accountability. His experience combines technology, product, and finance across a variety of industries and overseeing cross-functional teams; including private equity fund management, fund creation, commercial real estate, corresponding disposition and turnaround restructuring. On this weeks episode Alex and I are discussing the cybersecurity risks, responses, and responsibilities that every individual and every organization now needs to deal with on a daily basis. During our conversation we explore the current state of cybersecurity, what are some of the cybersecurity challenges businesses are struggling with today, and how are businesses addressing these challenges? We also dig into what is the future of cybersecurity defense? How will it get better? And what are companies like AT&T doing to help combat the problem? AT&T Business has become one of the fastest growing managed security services providers in the industry, because AT&T has made cybersecurity a top focus. Investments related to advanced threat detection and analysis, threat intelligence and virtualized security functions give customers more flexibility in how they deploy security solutions. AT&T’s cybersecurity solutions help secure the assets of businesses ranging from small to large, global enterprises. According to IDC’s Marketscape Managed Security Services 2017 Vendor Assessment, AT&T has advanced to the Leader category. Armed with threat intelligence from their network security analysts and other market sources, AT&T’s cybersecurity consultants assess cybersecurity risks to a business, based on its business model, market sector, technical infrastructure, cloud strategy, vendor relationships and operational dynamics. They then recommend targeted risk management strategies, products and services. Several hundred cybersecurity professionals work across both the AT&T Business ecosystem and its Chief Security Organization to protect customers from increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks. AT&T secures more connections than any other communications company in North America. They provide highly-secure connections to more than 143.8 million mobility customers in the U.S. and nearly 3 million businesses worldwide, with more than 41 million connected devices on their network as of Q1 2018. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Hey, everybody, this is Doug Platts and you are listening to the Custom Made podcast. Each week I talk with digital transformation leaders within enterprise organizations, and thought-leaders within the custom technology space. My goal is to shine a spotlight on the work that is happening in enterprise organizations who are changing, and the leaders who are driving that change. This is episode #23 and this week I’m talking with Ted Howard, a Principal and seasoned software architect here at Dialexa in our software engineering team. Ted brings almost 20 years of experience in IT systems, web and native mobile application development. He has the unique ability to connect people with ideas to the right technology to help them realize their goals. Ted’s career to date spans the entrepreneurship space where he was the co-founder of a funded technology-focused startup and actively involved with the initial planning, bootstrapping, and running. Ted also has almost a decade of consulting experience successfully delivering strategy and technology solutions to Fortune 1000 companies where he has been designing and building complex systems for a wide range of clients and industries. On this weeks episode Ted and I are discussing agile product development within the software engineering space. One quick side note - during episode #15 of Custom Made, Dialexa’s Head of Engineering Samer Fallouh discussed some of the challenges involved in bringing modern product development methods to legacy IT operations - of which agile software development was one of them - when you have finished with this episode be sure to check out episode #15 for a broader view on the range of approaches and methods that legacy IT teams need to adopt in order to create successful technology products. In this episode Ted shares how taking an “agile” approach is one of the hottest trends in software development. But, in many cases, people are not really taking an agile approach and as such not changing enough of their approach to successfully build new software products. Ted lays out what agile really is, why there may be trust issues in some organizations that restrict teams on becoming truly agile, and gives advice on how to adopt an agile approach within your IT and product development teams. Ted mentions a couple of great resources during our conversation which I will include in the show notes of this episode at Dialexa.com. Be sure to tweet me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Player.fm: https://player.fm/series/custom-made Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1332213517/custom-made Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #22 and is the second part of my conversation with Charlie Feld. Once you have finished with this episode be sure to listen to last weeks episode #21 and part 1 of my conversation where Charlie shares his extraordinary 50-year career helping organizations and executives achieve IT-driven transformation, how the IT industry lacked a formal framework, and how IT needs to handle the speed of change for their organizations to be successful. Charlie began his career as a systems engineer at IBM, before the world grasped what a computer was. As that changed, the company’s exponential growth opened up opportunities for Charlie. At 26 Charlie was named the lead of a new team in Dallas, where he oversaw the company’s Frito-Lay account, and a little more than a decade into his time at IBM, he left the company for the PepsiCo-owned snack maker. Two years later, in 1983, Charlie was promoted to vice president and chief information officer at Frito-Lay. After 12 years with Frito-Lay, Charlie formed an organization, The Feld Group Institute, that would do interim CIO work. These teams would enter companies in need, clean up issues on the IT side, and – crucially – leave the companies with a foundation to continue succeeding after departure. Currently as the founder and CEO of The Feld Group Institute, but with a career as long as there has been an IT industry, Charlie is considered the First CIO in corporate America and has led transformation efforts for organizations including Frito-Lay, Southwest Airlines, Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, Delta, FedEx, EDS and BNSF. You can find more information about Charlie and The Feld Group Institute at www.feldgroupinstitute.com. On this weeks episode Charlie provides his perspective on what makes a modern day CIO, and how can they be successful. To begin with he wants to rename the CIO role from Chief Information Officer to Chief Integration Officer. Other than perhaps the COO, the CIO (the Chief Integration Officer) needs to truly understand the full extent of a business and the integration points across each function - from sales and marketing, to manufacturing and distribution, to finance and support. A modern-day CIO needs to step into the conversation with their leadership team, be collaborative, be passionate, be part of the conversation about the Who, the What, and the How and be a storyteller to get buy-in to a multi-year story that will lead to a multi-year plan. Charlie recommends to start with the story, the outline, and direction to get buy-in, don’t jump straight into detailed projects and specifics. Charlie goes on to discuss the multiple risks (i.e. Cybersecurity) in not modernizing legacy IT technology, with one of the major risks to your existing business is that your IT leadership who understand your legacy systems will be retiring in the next 5-10 years and taking that knowledge with them. This should be a real concern for all organizations, and is something relatively easy to wrap your head around - but the solution is not to train your newer staff on old technologies, but rather to modernize these systems. The modernization of an organization’s legacy IT can no longer be ignored, the risks to site and system reliability and the risks to not being able to build for the future are too high. To be able to be ready for the future, whilst modernizing the legacy technology of their organization, Charlie recommends building integration hubs tying together your organization and build for change so that you don’t start to create a new batch of legacy IT that needs to be modernized again in ten years time. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show.

Recently I sat down with Charlie Feld, who is currently the founder and CEO of The Feld Group Institute but has had a career as long as there has been an IT industry and is considered the First CIO in corporate America. We cover a number of great topics during our conversation which I have broken out into two episodes. This episode, episode #21, of Custom Made, and next week's episode - episode #22. If you haven’t already subscribed to Custom Made, make sure you do to catch part two and all of our previous episodes. During his extraordinary 50-year career, Charlie has been committed to helping organizations and executives achieve IT-driven transformation. He has been frequently featured in the media, and has received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of his profound influence upon the IT industry, including the Smithsonian Award for Technology Excellence, the Carnegie Mellon Award for Innovative Technology, inducted into CIO magazine’s CIO Hall of Fame and the Tech Titans Hall of Fame Award, as well as Dallas CIO’s Leadership Award. Early in his career while he was as at Frito-Lay from 1981-1992 Charlie rose to the top of the IT function, where he became one of the first outstanding CIOs in corporate America. As Charlie overcame the early challenges of the post and developed a mature IT department, he found that he longed for the challenge of the early days once again. So he elected to found his own firm, The Feld Group, where he developed one of the first frameworks for IT organizations and provides temporary CIO services for large enterprise organizations like Southwest Airlines, Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, Delta, FedEx, EDS, and BNSF. You can find more information about Charlie at The Feld Group Institute, and in the two books Charlie has written, The Blind Spot: A Leader’s Guide to IT-Enabled Business Transformation and The Calloway Way: Results & Integrity - I’ll include links to all of these in the show notes at Dialexa.com On this weeks episode Charlie discusses his journey as the first CIO in corporate America, how the IT industry lacked a formal framework, and how IT needs to handle the speed of change for their organizations to be successful. Whilst many industries such as engineering, finance, sales, marketing, or manufacturing has existed for centuries, IT has only been part of a business for decades and still has a way to become a mature profession. Charlie shares how he has spent his career defining one of the first frameworks and a common language for the IT organization, and influencing the role of the CIO to change how IT can capitalize on the rate of change major organizations have to manage in order to be successful and avoid disruption. Charlie shares examples of where he has driven large transformation and modernization initiatives to stabilize enterprise organizations by addressing legacy IT operations and planning/building for change. From his time at Frito-Lay, Charlie shares three principles he learned from his conversations with founder Herman Lay: 1) Seek to understand a company in its simplest form 2) Nothing good ever happens in a warehouse 3) Look to the frontline people, and understand that are doing the work When discussing the speed of change, Charlie shares an experience that allowed him to try to better predict change. To be a good leader you need to be able to pull from all three of these perspectives: Experience - The core way people have learned for centuries Analytics - The ability to break down a problem Stepping-back - The ability to zoom-out recognize patterns Finally, Charlie discusses how we are only limited by our imagination when it comes to IT - which can be a challenge for some technology and engineering leaders. Technology today is almost limitless, and we have entered the Imagination Age. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show.

Welcome to episode #020 of Custom Made and today I’m joined by Josh Reeves and James Utley from the Research and Design practice here at Dialexa. Josh Reeves is a multi-disciplined user experience designer with a wide range of design skills, from Design Research, to Interaction Design, to Front-end Development. With nearly a decade of experience in the design industry, Josh loves turning complex problems into elegant solutions that improve the overall experience for the user. Throughout his career, Josh has worked on an array of products across many industries from commercial real-estate, to automotive, to interfaces for consumer electronics. Our regular listeners will remember James Utley from previous episodes of Custom Made where we have covered topics such as lean design research, the politics of user research and how effective storytelling can lead to product alignment. James is an experienced designer skilled in Information Design, Logo Design, User Experience, Branding & Identity, and Typography with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. On this weeks episode we are discussing the importance of building a Design System for your organization. A Design System is more than a style guide or ui pattern library. It’s a product that consists of various components, including its typeface, for your designers and developers that enables them to design and build better experiences at scale. During our discussion, Josh and James cover what a design system is, the common and custom components of a design system, when not to include a component in your design system, the advantages of having a design system, and what challenges to expect when building a design system. Earlier this year during one of our events we discussed how to take the guesswork out of successful products - using design thinking methodologies and design systems. Check this out at Dialexa.com once you have finished listening to this episode of Custom Made. One final thought before we get to this episode - a successfully deployed Design System can save your design team approximately $130,000 in time, and almost $500,000 in time of your development team, by saving them both time and headspace on the core common elements of each product (as they don’t need to keep re-designing and re-engineering these common elements), and allow them to focus on what makes that particular unique. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Welcome to episode #019 of Custom Made and today I’m joined again by Steven Ray, Partner and Head of Research and Design here at Dialexa. Steve leads experience and creative direction at Dialexa partnering closely with clients and developers to create a seamless user experience. Steve previously joined me on Episode #7 of Custom Made where we discussed the value of designing the wrong product. Once you have finished with this episode, be sure to check out Episode #7. Steve believes that focusing on the user frequently gets over-shadowed by focusing on the interface and that it’s important to learn about the person and cater the technology to the user rather than make the user figure out how to use the technology or interface. Steve and his team continually bring the latest thinking and techniques in how we design products here at Dialexa, both visually and from a user experience - there is a difference between these two approaches that should never be undervalued. On this weeks episode Steve and I are exploring how to decide which features to add, keep, and kill to avoid “Experience Rot”. We define Experience Rot as a product that has ever increasing features being added, leading to increasing complexity, which decreases the user experience and ultimately starts to cost you users (and revenue). When working on your product roadmap it is as important to assess which features need to be removed from your product over time, as it is which existing or new features will continue to drive growth and increase engagement. Not all feature bets will pay off, and it is better to move them to a feature graveyard than have them clutter your user experience. As you look at all of your existing and potential features it can be difficult to identify which to add or remove, and in what order. During our episode Steve suggests the following: - Carefully review the usage analytics of each live feature - Leverage simple surveys of the small percentage of people that use a low-used feature to see if they would have an opinion if went away - Prioritize your current and potential feature list in two ways - user segments affected and by using an I.C.E. score By understanding which user segment or segments a feature aligns with, you can make sure you see who, and how many, of your users and potential users will be affected by either adding, removing or keeping a particular feature. This ensures that you are focusing on your business critical users as you make feature decisions. A feature I.C.E. score is defined as 1-5 grading of the following elements: - Impact: Impact can be on the Business or the User - this could be the cost to the business to run the feature or opportunity to increase retention of a particular user segment - Confidence: Confidence in the impact on the business or customer. Make sure you are armed relevant data points and feedback from your - Ease: Find out how difficult it is to add, remove or maintain the feature. What is the level of resources required? Does your business even have the current skills set to make the change? You then total these up for each feature and rank highest to lowest to prioritize. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Welcome to episode #018 of Custom Made and today I’m joined by two guests from Dialexa - Sarah Reid, Vice President of Design Research and Quality Assurance Engineer, David Ferguson. Sarah has become a regular on Custom Made discussing topics on User Research and User Experience Design. Sarah’s fascination with how design and psychology interact has led her on a relentless pursuit to shape user experiences that enable elegant solutions to complex problems. Her specialties in web and UX design include layout, interaction and aesthetic design for websites and software products. David is a tenacious Quality Engineer and knowledge seeker at Dialexa, with over a decade of experience focused on quality and scrum methodologies. His background includes leading quality and support initiatives in projects spanning financial, automotive and real-estate industries. Here at Dialexa, David believes in quality as an initiative that should be implemented through varying involvement throughout the lifecycle of a software project, from research and problem-solving to delivery and handoff. By being involved in a project early and often, David and the Quality Assurance team are able to identify the customer and sustain empathy for the customer's needs, concerns, and goals, becoming the voice of the customer throughout the software development lifecycle. During development, David believes in working alongside the development team and project leads. David's goal is to minimize the need for expensive manual testing and implement quality initiatives that are repeatable and sustainable as a platform or application scales and matures. On this weeks episode Sarah, David and myself are discussing what is required during product development to ensure that your product has the best possible chance of being successful - providing a better user experience, increasing adoption and usage, and ultimately delivering positive ROI to your business. By having Quality Assurance (QA) and the end users represented throughout the product design and development process, rather than have QA as a silo’d team that does software checks towards the end of development, you can ensure that quality is built into your new product. After all what might appear to be a bug once the product is deployed, could actually be software working as intended, but not actually designed and developed with the user’s actual needs in mind. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Welcome to episode #017 of Custom Made and today I’m joined again by Sarah Reid, Vice President of Design Research here at Dialexa. Sarah is a Product Designer whose fascination with how design and psychology interact has led her on a relentless pursuit to shape user experiences that enable elegant solutions to complex problems. Her specialties in web and UX design include layout, interaction and aesthetic design for websites and software products. Prior to joining Dialexa, Sarah leveraged her love of design thinking to design administration tools for AT&T Business to Business Services and game art for GameStop's PC download business. Most notably, Sarah worked for a healthcare industry software provider where she used her UX problem solving and process improvement skills to streamline online interactions that contained a massive amount of user information, options, decisions, complex rules and restrictions. The only precedent to an application in this industry was paying someone to sort through spreadsheets and faxing the paperwork. Sarah is someone who is concerned with the why of a product, workflow and User Experience. And, she is a fan of pragmatic research work to enable her to provide insights in a fast and smart manner - which is exactly what we are going to be discussing today. On this weeks episode Sarah and I are discussing why you need to take a pragmatic view to user research, so that you understand just enough to move forward with your product development rather than spend too much time on research that slows down the product development process, or no research at all that leads to unsuccessful products. Successful products come from understanding the user needs, their pains, and their experiences that the product is trying to deliver against. But research is still seen by many as either an area to cut from the product development process, leads to analysis paralysis or would rather move forward on assumptions based on historical data points or opinion. Typically we first encounter Research in school with research papers - learning about a topic through the systematic investigation into, and study of, materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions - and then writing a report about it. But in the real-world, this approach is not always practical, and research needs to take a different, more agile, approach if it is to be successfully applied to product development. During this weeks episode, we are going to explore the three main types of research to inform your product development and define what “just-enough” means. These three types are: - User Research - Market Research - And Design Research And before you say it, don’t get me wrong, successful products can be created by following your gut and intuition. The many successes of Steve Jobs are because of this - though the less discussed product failures are also based on gut and intuition as well. But you don’t get a good gut and intuition without being immersed in the world you are designing for. You must know about the people and their behaviors as well have the vision and strategy to bring about change. You need to build experience - and by following the advice Sarah shares in this episode, you will be on your way to building that experience to have an informed opinion...or gut! Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa

Welcome to episode #016 of Custom Made and today I’m chatting with Claire Burge, Founder and CEO of WYNDR. Before I explain what WYNDR does, let me tell you a little bit about Claire. Born, raised and schooled in South Africa where she studied Entrepreneurship and Psychology, Claire then spent a decade in Europe after the 2008 crash watching Europe rebuild itself and became a global influencer in technology, before moving to Dallas, TX. Claire is a human behavior specialist who has a deep understanding of how digital disruption is impacting companies at a leadership, system, process and individual level. A published author, and global speaker, Claire invites us to reinvent work, suggesting that chaotic systems can bring more effective results than working systematically. Part adventure seeker, part nerd, part psychologist, part technologist. Claire is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and co-founded multiple companies, is a board member of AccelerateHer, Mom to a little girl, a dog, and 3 cats. Now let's talk about WNDYR, a company who specializes in optimizing team productivity through product onboarding. Their work touches more than 450 new SMB, corporate and enterprise clients every month, globally. WNYDR is the company who understands how the world works: they deploy work management software and analyze how individuals traverse the working day inside the multiple systems they live. The work they do sets companies onto a path of digital transformation that places their customer at the heart of all they do. On this weeks episode, Claire and I are discussing why the human factor is so critical to successful business transformation. Too often enterprise organizations focus purely on the technology to drive transformation or self-disruption and then leave success to chance or at the very least human nature. In our conversation we also explore the lack of customer-centric digital transformation - technology change is still happening within specific areas of a business such as HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Support, specific business units, but not across these departments with the customer at the center. There are a number of key factors CIOs, Innovation leaders, Intrapreneurs and Venture leaders need to be considering when planning digital disruption and transformation projects. This includes: - Understanding the link between digital disruption, product/service innovation, product onboarding and humans - Evaluating the changing landscape of skills required in business to function optimally in a digitally disrupted world - And better understanding the role of Onboarding Agencies and Customer Success Agencies in the successful rollout of digital disruption projects Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Welcome to episode #015 of Custom Made and today I’m joined by Samer Fallouh, Head of Engineering here at Dialexa. Samer is a technologist with over fifteen years experience in building custom software and hardware products to successfully drive digital transformation at enterprise organizations, and partner with startups who have received funding and now need a technology team to bring their product to market so that it is scalable, secure and built for their user needs. Samer joined Dialexa as employee number three and has been instrumental to the growth of the company. Starting as a Solutions Engineer, Samer quickly moved into an Engineering Project Lead role, and today, he serves as Vice President of Engineering at Dialexa over seeing both the Software and Hardware Engineering practices. Samer has a track record of success leading various projects, managing teams and delivering on time. He has also architected, designed and constructed multiple platforms. His projects at Dialexa include mobile applications, front-end, backend, DevOps, hardware products, and architecting scalable platforms. He is not afraid of exploring emerging technologies and helping companies and startups push their limits to create innovative products. Samer also has extensive academic research experience including development of an intelligent route planning mobile application. He has a Master of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Detroit Mercy and a Bachelor in Computer Sciences and Engineering from Damascus University where he had a concentration in Artificial Intelligence. On this weeks episode Samer and I are discussing why it is essential for enterprise organizations to modernize their technology ecosystem and adapt their product development methods or they will face certain disruption. Whilst there is no discounting the successes of enterprise organizations with multi-billion dollar annual revenues, they are typically existing today on legacy IT operations that put their future at risk. These risks can come from inefficient business operations run on legacy technology, poor customer experiences that are built around the technology and not the user, and slow-to-market products that are not even connected at the data level. Enterprises must take steps to adopt the modern methods that disruptors use to build successful products. These modern methods will vary depending on the business needs, but there are a few ideas that every enterprise should adopt - these include design thinking, agile software development, rapid prototyping, big data and artificial intelligence, site reliability engineering, and exploring the right programming language for the business need instead of sticking to the languages you have always used. But before enabling these methods to modernize their software engineering practices, there are certain organizational challenges standing in the way - from revamping development processes, preparing for management changes, and eliminating fear of failure. And finally during this episode, we will look what enterprise organizations need to be looking for from their partners to show them and teach them which specific modern methods enterprises should adopt to drive successful product development within a digital transformation. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #014 of Custom Made and I’m joined again by James Utley, Design Architect here at Dialexa, and we are talking with our guest this week, John Hicks - Sr. User Experience Researcher at font design company Monotype. John is a designer, researcher, and educator living in Houston, Texas. As a visual communication designer, John has spent the last 15 years designing for brands such as Mars foods, Dr. Pepper, Pizza Inn, Metro PCS, Samsung and more. In a past life, John moonlighted as an art director for various design agencies, followed by a brief stint at the University of North Texas where he taught undergraduate communication design. Since 2011, his professional efforts have been focused on design research. Following designer and educator Victor Papanek’s lead, John believes in taking a human-centered approach to design in order to champion the needs of users and to create meaningful experiences for them. His combined design and research experience provides John with a unique skill set that allows him to critically examine and solve design problems with solutions that are not only evidence-based but also aesthetically pleasing. In his current role, he is a Sr. UX researcher for Monotype where he fights the good fight to bring exceptional experiences to the MyFonts platform. On this weeks episode, we are talking with John about the politics of user research to inform the building of new products or developing new features for existing products. I think everyone recognizes, at least in theory, the importance of user research to launching successful products. Just assuming what users want is a risky thing and research helps mitigate that risk. Hearing from users first hand creates alignment and empathy for the users need. But user research is still the area of product development that gets squeezed, or in some cases ignored, and so we wanted to discuss how to navigate this challenge. During our discussion, we break down the barriers we have each experienced with organizations doing user research. These include: - Concerns about the investment of time vs getting into the design and build of the new product - Fear of negative feedback (or product failure) - Fear of the unknown - Product teams assuming they already know what is best - Fear of promising too much to the user And we give our thoughts on how to overcome these barriers by: - Understanding your user research options - Accepting that it is ok to fail, or get negative feedback about a feature or even product. In fact, all types of feedback should be welcome - Not looking for solutions just insights, no empty promises to users - Clearly communicating the user research process and expectations to get buy-in from across your product stakeholders and from the upper levels of your organization Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #013 of Custom Made and this week I’ve got a great episode with guests Scott Harper, Dialexa’s co-founder and CEO, and Chris Garrick, Sr Partner here at Dialexa. If you haven’t yet listened to episode #1 of Custom Made, be sure to check it out after you have finished with this episode. In episode #1, I catch up with Scott on how he saw the business opportunity of custom product development that led to Dialexa being born. Scott and the team here at Dialexa have worked with a broad range of organizations, across a variety of industries to drive innovation through custom product development. Along with Scott, I’m joined on this episode by Chris Garrick. Chris is a Senior Partner at Dialexa and represents the voice of the client across our organization having held positions on both sides of the services/client relationship. Chris joined the Dialexa leadership team last year bringing more than 20 years of strategy, operational and consulting experience specializing in digital transformation and has helped several companies enable their strategic capabilities through technology. He has founded two technology companies and held various leadership positions across the energy, finance and technology industries. Most recently Chris comes from spending the past five years at CBRE where he served as Global SVP of Technology and Innovation focused on leading technology transformation strategy development and new tech identification, introduction and incubation. Whilst at CBRE Chris co-founded CBRE Labs - a dedicated team focused on innovation, design thinking and building a case for change through experimentation. Prior to CBRE, he was a consultant specializing in the intersection of technology and business at Booz & Company, where he was aligned with the consumer, media and digital practice. On this weeks episode, I’m talking with Scott and Chris on how to drive innovation within an enterprise organization. Innovation is definitely a word that has lost its impact and its value due to being overused and misused, and means different things to different people - or just makes you want to roll your eyes! Successful innovation is also typically associated with the start-up community, whereas an enterprise organization can be known as the place where innovation dies or not utilized to drive business impact, but instead becomes an outlier or science fair project within the organization. But that is not true, an enterprise organization has an existing customer base to build new products, offerings or companies off of. They have established processes and resources that can accelerate growth, and there is a wealth of experience that if tapped in to and aligned in the right way can be extremely powerful. Now don’t get me wrong there are still hurdles to overcome for innovation to be successful within an organization and so in today’s episode, we wanted to address what it actually means to innovate within an enterprise. During this episode we address the following key topics: - What does it mean to innovate at a large organization - What does an enterprise innovation process look like - And why you should focus on a Case for Change rather than a Business Case to set expectations for the projects you take on

We are on episode #012 of Custom Made and this week I am joined again by Russell Villemez - Dialexa’s Sr Partner and Head of Technology Strategy. Throughout his career, Russell has either been a CIO or worked with CIOs at enterprise organizations, providing technology transformation leadership to companies experiencing periods of major change. In his role here at Dialexa, Russell works with CIOs to assess their current technology ecosystems and develop multi-year roadmaps to direct and drive their digital transformation efforts. Russell has previously joined me on our second episode of Custom Made to discuss the topic of “digital transformation” and how it is being thought of in the wrong way - once you have finished listening to this episode, be sure to check out episode #2 to hear his thoughts. On this weeks episode, Russell and I are discussing the need for CIOs to build an enterprise data platform that all applications can pull from and feed into, instead of self-contained applications with their own independent databases which cause data fragmentation and duplication. Building an enterprise data platform is essential for any organization if they are to have the ability to better understand their customer, activate successfully with an omnichannel strategy, and be able to build new applications that add data value, not data debt. And so why should every CIO and technology leader at an enterprise organization listen to this topic and take action on Russell’s advice? The disruption coming from your competition, and coming from left field, is coming faster and more dramatically than ever before. Lets say your business has a mandate from the CEO that they need to do XYZ (for example a blockchain application) and you need to do it right away as a defensive maneuver against that disruption; but the IT response to this request is two years using the old methods of product development, and for this new product to be successful it requires an enterprise data platform, which takes two years to build before you can even start this new product that could help avoid disruption - then, you have already been disrupted, you just may not know it! CIOs need to act now, while this pressure is not upon them to build an enterprise data platform so that they can have better response times to building new applications, have a unified view of their data, and deploy successful products to avoid disruption. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This week I am excited to be talking to Dave Copps, founder and CEO of Brainspace Corporation. We are exploring the impact AI is having on your business and our society in episode #011 of Custom Made. Dave is a Dallas-based visionary leader in the local and international tech community and evangelist on the role technology will play in transforming the world. For the past 15 years, as a technologist, entrepreneur and CEO he has founded and launched three successful companies focused on machine learning and AI. Dave currently serves as founder and CEO of Brainspace Corporation, a global leader in Investigative Analytics and Cyber Security, which was acquired by Cyxtera in mid-2017. Brainspace is playing a lead role in the area of augmenting human intelligence using data visualization to connect people more intimately with AI and radically alter their ability to surface important patterns and insights in data. During our conversation, Dave and I cover a lot of ground around the topic of Artificial Intelligence and how it is changing our businesses and our society from Ai Winters, to government regulation, from how machines think, to multi-dimensional problem solving to humans co-evolving with technology. To get us all up to speed, there three types of Ai: - To start with there is ANI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence which is non-sentient machine intelligence, typically focused on a narrow task. Today, we are are working with this type of AI. - AGI or Artificial General Intelligence is the second type, which is a machine with the ability to apply intelligence to any problem, rather than a specific and predefined set of problems. Think of AGI as being “at least as smart as a typical human”. This type of AI does not exist yet, but as we push the boundaries of narrow AI, we are getting closer. - And finally, ASI or Artificial Super Intelligence which is an AI far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. Where AGI is hardly on the horizon, super intelligence is much more uncertain. A godlike AI seems like a huge leap, but many scientists caution that the moment we unlock AGI, the exponential power of AI could rocket from AGI to super intelligence. Many warn that this is something that needs to be approached carefully as we barrel down the path of ever more sophisticated AI. Dave also shares the story of Brainspace, his most recent AI company, that creates “brains” in a matter of hours to analyze millions of documents and conversations - whether that is looking within an organization or around a particular research topic. This brain then creates visualizations to allow users to interact with the data to answer their questions. Over the years, Dave's companies have placed machine learning and AI in thousands of organizations, including all major consultancies and intelligence agencies, around the globe. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on to episode #010 of Custom Made, and today we are talking Andrew Turner, Head of Software Engineering here at Dialexa. Why this topic, and why now? Well in today’s current landscape CIOs won’t get promoted if everything works. But they will get fired if anything doesn’t - and so a 1000 watt spotlight is now shining on an organization’s technology reliability and security. Andrew is an engineer, speaker, and technical leader with experience building scalable software solutions for clients ranging from venture-funded startups to Fortune 500 companies. He specializes in applying modern development workflows and technologies to create data-driven applications with a need for performance at scale. At Dialexa a significant proportion of our projects focus on designing and engineering custom software products and platforms and as our Head of Software Engineering, Andrew works with various teams to architect and engineer solutions that solve our clients’ hardest problems. He passionately explores new tools and technologies to improve the developer workflow and craft creative solutions to common problems. With extensive experience in all aspects of software development, Andrew provides end-to-end technical leadership on projects while assisting Dialexa’s executive team in scaling engineering processes and practices. In today's technology landscape end-user expectations for application performance are at an all-time high, and with all companies now becoming technology companies, it is critical to ensure that your technology performs at as optimal a level as possible. Whether you are a growing start-up or an enterprise organization every time you site, applications or technology are down, hacked or not working correctly you risk your customer base and your reputation. Security threats grow more sophisticated on a daily basis. And as a result, CIOs are under more pressure than ever to maintain reliability and stability of business systems. This pressure has sparked greater adoption for site reliability engineering as a formal practice in the developer community. Site Reliability Engineering is defined as the focus on effectively building, running, and growing systems in production. This includes ensuring the stability and resilience of a production system in addition to continually improving performance while building features. With Site Reliability Engineering, you balance the need for site reliability with the need to ship new features. And it’s not just building with reliability in mind. It’s questioning how you can make a stable system run even better. Adopting a Site Reliability Engineering practice is all about having the right monitoring, tooling, and processes in place so that you have confidence when deploying a release that it will add value and also meet availability requirements. The ultimate goal is to build a valuable system quickly and effectively without sacrificing production reliability, security, and scalability. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #009 of Custom Made, and today we are talking Jordan Bell, typeface designer at Hoefler & Co. in New York City. We are discussing how a small change can make a big difference to your brand’s user experience by exploring the world of typeface design. The logo or a mark of a brand is really important and tends to get the spotlight. But a brand’s typeface is possibly the most interactive element of a brand - whenever we open up an app, read an article, or navigate a UI we are generally looking at a lot of text. And so why not have that element we are interacting so much with be unique and relatable to that brand. Also, with the globalization of technology, the growth of internet access allowing new audiences to discover your brand, and the diversity of devices or ways in which a user can engage with a brand - the necessity of creating and updating your brand’s style is critical. Here at Dialexa when we are working with a client who has developed various applications over many years, or has grown through acquisition, they tend not to have a consistent branding and so we are brought in to help them integrate, modernize, or replace these platforms and develop a new more consistent user interface. This new look and feel is typically built out from a design system. A Design System is more than a style guide or ui pattern library. It’s a product that consists of various components, including its typeface, for your designers and developers that enables them to design and build better experiences at scale. Though originally trained as a graphic designer in New Mexico and his home state of Texas, Jordan became interested in type design and how it performs in various contexts. To pursue this interest, he left the mountains of Santa Fe to attend Reading University in England where he earned his MA in Typeface Design program in 2014. While at Reading, Jordan researched and studied the history of American sans serifs, handwriting and its influence on the personality of our designs, and Scotch roman typefaces and their impact on American type design. Since joining Hoefler & Co. he has worked on many projects including Archer, Operator, and Inkwell. Famous for creating long-lived typefaces marked by high performance and high style, Hoefler & Co. creates the fonts that help shape the world’s foremost institutions, publications, causes, and brands. With a library of more than 1,000 typefaces designed for print, web, office and mobile environments, fonts by Hoefler & Co are everywhere: you’ll find them on Twitter and at Tiffany & Co., on HBO and Netflix, on every can of Coca-Cola, and on every iPhone ever made. Hoefler & Co. is the only type foundry ever to be honored by the National Design Awards at the White House and Hoefler & Co. typefaces are in the permanent collections of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jordan provides a number of great resources during this episode, and has sent me some additional ones afterwards, these have all been included in this weeks show notes that can be found at Dialexa.com. Be sure to tweet at me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This is episode #008 and today I’m joined for another episode by Dialexa’s Head of Design Research, Sarah Reid, and Design Architect, James Utley. At Dialexa we have the opportunity to work with a range of clients from funded startups to enterprise organizations - and a lot of these companies are looking to bring a new product to market. Whether that is a consumer-facing product, or a product to improve business operations, there is always the need to get buy-in from across your organization and from potential users for a product that doesn’t yet exist in any form. And that is why this week we are talking about how effective storytelling can unify a product vision, build empathy, validate ideas, and communicate your product value to key stakeholders and users. Let me go back a bit in time a bit, say back to sometime between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C., to the Lascaux Caves in the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France where the earliest form of storytelling has been recorded. On the cave walls, someone drew a variety of animals and one image of a human being. When closely examined, this mural of sorts actually follows a very simplistic series of events. It tells of rituals performed and hunting practices. It tells a story. Effective storytelling has been key to helping listeners image and feel what the speaker was describing, and it is as valuable today as it was back in that cave in southern France. In a previous episode I spoke with Dialexa’s Chief Creative Officer, Steven Ray, on the value of design in product development - and how if a picture paints a thousand words, then a product sketch is more powerful than a feature list. Well if you are even earlier in the product development process where you are trying to get alignment on your product vision, gain budget and resources to start developing, and communicating with early potential users - then you need to be effective in how you are telling the story about this new product. During this episode we are exploring what are the steps to successful storytelling, what techniques can you use to structure your story - for example using the hero’s journey framework or the 5 e’s framework (Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit, and Extend), and how to really leverage personas during your product’s design and development phases. And throughout this episode, Sarah and James share a number great resources which I’ll be sure to include in the show notes for this episode on Dialexa.com. I hope you are enjoying the show and are getting a lot from our episodes each week. If you are, can you hit subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, and everywhere else you listen to Custom Made, it helps other listeners find us and I’d love to hear what you think. You can also tweet me (https://twitter.com/dougplatts) and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Steven Ray, Chief Creative Officer at Dialexa, is an award-winning Creative Director and Interaction Designer with over 12 years of focus in interaction, visual, and interface design of: websites, software, mobile applications, and product design. He’s worked on an array of products for a diverse range of clients and industries such as Amazon, Evernote, Shopsavvy, FOX entertainment, Appcelerator. Steve is one of the founding members of Dialexa, as well as the two Dialexa Labs companies, Vinli and Robin, that have been on previous episodes. When Steve joined Dialexa back in 2012 he brought along a more comprehensive view on the role of design within our approach to custom product development. Today, Steve leads experience and creative direction at Dialexa partnering closely with clients and developers to create a seamless user experience. He believes that focusing on the user frequently gets shadowed by focusing on the interface and that it’s important to learn about the person and cater the technology to the user rather than make the user figure out how to use the technology or interface. Steve and his team continually bring the latest thinking and techniques in how we design products here at Dialexa, both visually and from a user experience - there is a difference between these two approaches that should never be undervalued. After all the user experience design of a product is such a crucial part of the product’s adoption, engagement, and the eventual business impact. This episode of Custom Made is about the value of designing the wrong product. Now designing the wrong product may sound counterintuitive but stay with me on this. It is a very expensive way to evaluate a new product if you only align stakeholders’ product vision, test with users, and iterate on the user experience once it is in development. You lose both valuable time and money as you revisit/redesign and redevelop features and workflows. With the need to get a product to market quickly, without rushing out poor quality products, identifying ways to be more efficient throughout the product development process is critical. Gaining alignment on the product as early on as possible in the process is a key step to creating a successful product, in a timely manner. For example, stakeholders involved in a project always have a different image in their mind of the what the product is or can do, and it is not until they have something they can see and react to do you really get a true understanding of their expectations of the product. Therefore taking additional time during the research and design to explore and test a range of product sketches and designs can save you time in the long run. After all, if a picture paints a thousand words, then even a basic sketch of your product is more impactful for product alignment than a feature list or product description. Be sure to tweet at me https://twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-di... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c... Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

We are on episode #06 of Custom Made and I’m talking with Justin Crandall, co-founder and CEO of lawn care company Robin Autopilot. Robin Autopilot is on a mission to disrupt the multi-billion dollar lawn care industry by delivering a better customer experience through modern technology, oh and bringing robots to your home - can't forget the robots! Robin is the second company to come out of Dialexa Labs, our internal incubator here at Dialexa - the first company was connected car platform, Vinli, which you can hear more about in episode #03 of Custom Made when I sat down with Vinli CEO Mark Haidar. Here are a couple of facts about the lawn care industry that you may not be aware of: - It is a multi-billion industry in the US, with no clear national, or even regional, lawn care leader - which makes for an interesting business opportunity. - Other than the mowing and lawn care equipment, technology has never been part of the user experience. And speaking of the equipment: - Just one hour of mowing emits as much pollution as 11 hours in your car. - One gas mower spews 87 lbs. of the greenhouse gas CO2, and 54 lbs. of other pollutants into the air every year. - Over 17 million gallons of gas are spilled each year refueling lawn and garden equipment – more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez. All of these points led to Robin, and it’s evolution over the past three years. In 2015 Justin and his co-founder Bart Lomont launched an Uber-for-Lawns business that grew to $5 million in just 2 years. In that short time they completed more than 100,000 lawn care jobs and also experienced every challenge you can imagine, from truck breakdowns, to crew members that don’t show up for work, to unprecedented amounts of rain. Also, because of this growth, they were now also a big contributor to one of the greatest sources of pollution in the United States - dirty, gas-powered lawn equipment. This caused Justin, Bart and their team to pause and look at this problem - there must be a solution they could bring to market. Today Robin is the first of its kind Robotics as a Service offering for your lawn that has competed at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield and Shark Tank. During our conversation, Justin shares the full story of Robin, how they brought custom products and technology to an industry ripe for disruption, and how their business came to an inflection point last year as to which path and offering they wanted to focus their passions and business on. Be sure to tweet at me twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: @custom-made-dialexa iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custo…d1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: twitter.com/dialexa Medium: medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

Successful products and sustainable companies are those that are built on user understanding intertwined with strong design and technical capabilities. This understanding ensures that products that are built are useful, usable and desirable. With that in mind, I'm joined by Dialexa's Head of Design Research, Sarah Reid, and Design Architect, James Utley, on this weeks episode of Custom Made. With Sarah and James as my guests, we discuss how, with the importance of getting products to market quicker, many companies are adopting a new approach to understanding their users to inform product design. This approach is called lean design research. Because a well built product with terrible design, is a bad product - and a well designed product that is poorly built is also a bad product. You need to place equal importance on the user experience design and the engineering (think Minimum Lovable Product over Minimum Viable Product) to make a product users love and that positively impacts your business Before you start building your product, and even before you start designing, it is critical to success to understand your users - this is design research. But it is not always necessary for this to take a year, 6 months or even less to understand them. There is a need to understand enough to move forward with a product, and then set up an approach to allow you to continually learn more about your user as your product is being designed, engineered, and even once it is live. Sarah and James have extensive experience working with startups and large enterprise organizations to help them understand their users, and design the best product that meets both user and business needs. During our discussion, we cover, what is lean design research, why it is important, and what are some of the techniques to bring this approach to your product development - and for anyone who has seen The Founder a film starring Michael Keaton which told the story of McDonald's. The scene where they are developing their speedy system of making the food with the kitchen staff in the basketball court is a great example of design research in action. Be sure to tweet at me https://twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-di... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c... Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Dialexa Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

On this weeks episode of Custom Made I'm joined by the co-founders of health and wellness company, Adaptive Nutrition, Tyler Nicholson and Kia Wright. They are on a mission to provide their clients with sustainable nutritional and lifestyle tools necessary to meet and exceed their health and wellness goals. The interesting thing about this conversation is, by having this combined experience across these two key areas of an individual's health (food & movement), means Kia and Tyler provide a unique perspective on the infiltration and effectiveness of technology, and data, in this space. Whilst you can follow conferences such as CES to see what the future may hold, I wanted to explore the role that technology plays today in the life of the "everyday athlete". In this episode of Custom Made we discuss how Kia and Tyler have seen sports technology change how they train/advise their clients, and how the vast amount of data that is now available allows all of us to better track and improve performance like never before. We explore any risks they see with this technology, e.g. people not getting annual check-ups because they believe their device is good enough, and where they see sports and healthcare technology going and the impact it could have with more sensors, smart equipment, predictive analytics for health, etc. And of course, we explore why they saw the need to create a custom product and offering to help clear confusion around eating habits, and how this custom product provides specific recommendations to improve a user’s health. Be sure to tweet at me, twitter.com/dougplatts, and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: @custom-made-dialexa iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custo…d1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: twitter.com/dialexa Medium: medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC9JXv0TkvMD8PpQ7umyXRrQ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

This week on Custom Made I'm joined by serial entrepreneur, Dialexa Chairman, and Vinli CEO Mark Haidar who is sharing the chapters to date that tell the story of connected car platform, Vinli - from conception, to product launch at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield, and beyond. Mark discovered technology at a young age thanks to a couple of computers donated to his school by the United Nations. Born and raised in Lebanon, Mark founded his first tech company by the age of 17, and built award-winning technology systems before his 21st birthday. After moving to the U.S. to study at the University of Detroit Mercy, Mark led the development of a connected car project for the US Army. With aspirations to create a better world through technology, Mark co-founded Dialexa with our CEO, Scott Harper. As Dialexa grew they developed an internal incubator, Dialexa Labs, that has spun out three companies including Vinli, the world’s leading connected car platform, and Robin, the world's first robotic mowing service. Today, Mark is the Chief Executive Officer of Vinli, and sits on the board of Vinli, Dialexa, Nara, Robin Technologies, UNICEF USA (Great Plains Region), and is an active member of YPO. When he’s not in Dallas, Mark is sharing his story on the global stage, and advocating for children and refugee rights. The Dialexa Labs team designed and developed Vinli with the original mission of making the most disconnected mobile device in the world - automobiles - connected! The team conceived and created the most powerful and comprehensive connected car platform in the world, reimagining the in car experience for both drivers and passengers. The solution is comprised of the most powerful connected car platform and OBD-II device out there, the most comprehensive app store for any car or model, and the most diverse suite of applications and services for vehicles. Be sure to tweet at me twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: @custom-made-dialexa iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custo…d1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: twitter.com/dialexa Medium: medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC9JXv0TkvMD8PpQ7umyXRrQ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

For this weeks episode of Custom Made I'm joined by Russell Villemez, Snr Partner and Head of Technology Strategy here at Dialexa. Russell is a longtime Affiliate with The Feld Group Institute with experience coming from 17 years in operational roles such as serving as the Enterprise Services CTO for the Americas at HP, and as a CIO in the telecom space. From the other side of the table, Russell has also spent 15 years as a partner at various consulting firms. Russell thrives on the scale and complexity of leading major change agendas in large corporate environments. And in his role at Dialexa as Head of Technology Strategy, Russell provides technology transformation leadership to companies experiencing periods of major change. During our discussion, we address the concept of digital transformation and how so many companies are using this concept incorrectly. 'Digital Transformation' should not be seen as a buzzword, a fad, or something new to add to your priorities - but rather it, and your transformation strategy, needs be part of an organization’s always-on day-to-day life. Russell outlines how organizations have not been paying enough attention to their technology ecosystem "hairball" that is continuously growing. And he goes on to share how technology leaders need to have active plans for change, modernization and decommissioning of their technology systems - otherwise, they will face disruption. Be sure to tweet at me https://twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show. Follow Dialexa on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dialexa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dialexa/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dialexa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/custom-made-dialexa iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/custom-made/id1332213517?mt=2 Twitter: https://twitter.com/dialexa Medium: https://medium.com/back-to-the-napkin Podcast: https://by.dialexa.com/topic/custom-made YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9JXv0TkvMD8PpQ7umyXRrQ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for our latest content and top weekly reads here: https://by.dialexa.com/newsletter-signup

For our first episode of Custom Made, I'm joined by Dialexa Co-founder and CEO Scott Harper. Dialexa is a technology services firm that specializes in designing and building custom products and platforms for both funded startups and enterprise organizations. Scott is a serial entrepreneur who has launched multiple technology product companies, the winner of the Ernst & Young Emerging Technology Entrepreneurs Of The Year® 2016 Southwest Award, and in this episode, Scott is sharing where he has seen the business opportunity for custom product development. Be sure to tweet at me twitter.com/dougplatts and let me know what you think of the show.