Two Facet is podcast done by Juncal González (Product Designer) and Matt Mikulski (Product Manager) It's a recording of their talks about the philosophy of product development and how each role sees it from their perspective.
When gathering feedback from your users, do you have any preferred method? User Interviews, Online Reviews, NPS, Forms… there are so many tools out there! In this episode we dive into the world of customer feedback discussing, comparing and ranking the most popular methods. Tune in for a fun chat on what works, what doesn't, and some surprises along the way! Learn when to use different tools and tricks! Hear real life stories about our past experiences Find out how to mix different feedback tools for success! ······················································· Do you like what we do? You can buy us a coffee
What is the role of the high fidelity prototypes when crafting Digital Products? Do we always need them? We don't have a clear answer but in this episode we debate the purpose, risks and pitfalls of this type of prototypes, as well as concept designs. Choosing the design approach is a strategic decision that can be influenced by stakeholders, the stage of the project and the purpose we have when building our design artefact. Join us for this episode where we put prototypes in question and try to answer the design dilemma: High-fidelity or not? ······················································· Do you like what we do? You can buy us a coffee
Talking with your users is always worth it. Spending just an hour with them could save you months of building something no one wants. Plus, you might validate your genius and get killer ideas for improvement! In this episode we delve into the topic of user interviews and why they are so important in the process of building digital products. We discuss the value of talking to customers and the benefits it can bring in terms of: · Saving time · Avoiding wasted resources · Gaining insights that can help improve the development process We know not everyone has a background in research or has access to big research resources, but this shouldn't be an excuse for not conducting user interviews ;) There are plenty of materials and books out there, such as The Mom Test, which provide simple techniques that can help anyone conduct effective interviews. While there are principles and tips that can guide the process, we believe that the more interviews one conducts, the better they become at it. Here we share our own experiences of conducting interviews, including the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned along the way. Tune in for practical advice on how to structure and prepare for interviews, including the importance of having clear research questions and avoiding false positives. We also discuss some of the most common problems that can occur during interviews and offer suggestions on how to avoid or overcome them. Overall, this episode is a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their skills in conducting user interviews and gain insights that can inform the development of digital products Get out there and talk to your users! It's not as scary as it sounds and could make all the difference :) ······················································· Do you like what we do? You can buy us a coffee
When starting a new project, you may take different approaches but, for sure there are steps you never skip. Which ones? In this episode we discuss our experiences when starting and working on a project. The things we always do and the steps we follow: from understanding the business context and the problem space, to defining the design approach, to managing expectations and communication with stakeholders. What about you on your side? We discuss topics like What do we do when starting a new project? Understanding the business context Understanding the problem space The difference between research insights and feature requests Understanding how the project aligns with the product strategy Understanding the problem space helps product designers Defining the problem Choosing the design approach Thinking about feasibility Defining boundaries The product vision Don't create high fidelity UI just yet SaaS products and UI design Product Vision vs. Tactics Designer-developer collaboration The two types of product managers Stakeholders' expectations management Synching with peers outside the team Following up with deadlines Communicating outside the team Communicating in longer sprints ······················································· Do you like what we do? You can buy us a coffee
Is Shape Up better than Scrum?
In this podcast we talk about product management and building digital products in general. In the channel you can find topics about: · Product Discovery · Design Thinking · Lean Startup · Shape up · Continuous Discovery Habits · Product Design · Agile methodologies We are Juncal González and Matt Mikulski, the hosts of this podcast. We both work at Docplanner, a scale-up focused on healthcare; and are the co-founders User Signal, a small startup focused on improving the customer feedback management. Check out our content, we bring a lot of real-life examples of our experiences running teams both in small and large scale of digital products! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/twofacet/message
Will electricity flow from one end to the other?
It's rough. It's solved. It's bounded. These are the three principles to follow when defining a solution in the Shape Up process. Even if the outcome is a rough idea that is not very concrete, a lot of times it takes more than one session to do it. So here's the second of the three parts real-life shaping exercise. In this episode, after the problem definition, we work on two key steps of the process: - Setting boundaries: How much time are we willing to invest in this opportunity? This is basically, defining the appetite. - Coming up with raw solutions: What possible solutions can we think of? What would be in and out based on the appetite and problem definition? We go through the process of defining a solution, trying to be not too abstract and not to concrete, zooming in and out while we rough out ideas. Also, in this session we don't forget about the problem definition we did in the previous session, which will be essential as a north star for our solution. You can get a copy of the the template we use in the episode here _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
Shaping is all about developing our ideas from abstract to concrete. In the Shape Up process it's the stage when we define the key elements of a solution before we consider it ready to bet on. In essence it's a design exercise where we go from understanding the problem at hand and defining it, to ideating possible solutions and designing a high-level proposition. This includes defining boundaries and risks! In this 3 part series we go through the whole process with @Juncal doing a real-life shaping exercise. In this first part we will take you through our process of: Analysing the problem space Narrowing down the problem Defining our target users Working on a problem definition using How Might We questions, making sure we cover all the W questions: why, who, when, how You can get a copy of the the template we use in the episode here _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
As a product team we need a Northstar Metric to guide us towards success: a metric that represents the vision of our product, aligns everybody on the team towards our goals and help us make product decisions. So, how do we define it and, moreover, how can we determine the steps we can take in our day to day work to impact it? The North Star Framework by Amplitude helps us define all this in a structured and collaborative way. In this episode we discuss what is this framework, when should we use it and the benefits, as well as how to use it. We go through the core elements do the framework that can be defined in a collaborative workshop: - The North Star - The Input Metrics - The “work” We also explain and discuss with examples, the Northstar framework checklist, the list of what makes a good metric: - It expresses value - It represents vision and strategy - It's a leading indicator - It's actionable - It's understandable - It's measurable - It's not a vanity metric To know more a about the framework and how to run the workshop, you can have a look to the original Northstar Framework Playbook by Amplitude _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
There are many prioritization strategies available for choosing the next features/experiments for our product… but how do you decide which one to use? In this episode we talk about the two tools we use the most in our team: ICE (Impact Confidence Effort) scoring and OST (Opportunity Solution Tree), from the book Continuous Discovery Habits from Teresa Torres. We compare them and discuss the similarities they have, like being collaborative and continuous tools, as well as always having a well defined goal to guide us in the process. We also talk about what makes them different: the way they are visualized, the type of discussion they prompt and the output we get when using them. And when to use each one of them? ICE score is more useful when we have a clear direction of the project, whereas OST is stronger when the direction is not defined. And they can be combined too! In this episode we explain how. _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
Is there a moment in time for doing product discovery? When building digital products, the problems we are facing are complex and unknown, so it's difficult to say we can find the answers by performing a one time activity. And even more, if this activity is outsourced, it reduces the capabilities of the team to make good product decisions. Teresa Torres in her book “Continuous Discovery Habits” explains the benefits of approaching the discovery phase as a team routine, so it becomes a regular process performed by the product trios on a weekly basis. In this episode we explain how are we've been applying some of these habits inside our team, how we've adapted the process to our specific needs and the benefits we are getting from it. These are the main tools and practices from the book we are currently using on a weekly basis: - Product Trios - Continuous Interviewing - Opportunity Solution Tree - Ideation and Brainstorming - Experimentation And we are also combining our Continuous Discovery Habits with Shape Up: using the former for the shaping track and the latter for the building track. Tune in to learn how we do it! _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
Best product teams are cross-disciplinary, small, and autonomous. Their composition varies from company to company and from project to project and yet they have a set of essential characteristics in common.In this episode, we discuss what is a product team, what makes it different from “classic” teams, and which are the main skills needed for a successful product team. These abilities translates into different roles depending on the company or the product: Understand the user: UX / Product Researcher UX / Product Designer Product Manager / Product Owner Data Analyst Understand the market and the competitors: Product Manager / Product Owner UX / Product Researcher UX / Product Designer Understand the business strategy: Product Manager / Product Owner Product Strategist Understanding feasibility: Developers QA Defining, executing and delivering the solution UX / Product Designer Developers (FE, BE, etc.) QA Project Manager / Delivery Manager Market the solutions: Marketing specialist Product Manager Evaluate the outcome: Product Manager Data Analyst Whole team if possible Last but not least, we talk about Product Trios: a model for collaborative product leadership that represents the intersection between the 3 key disciplines in product: Desirability: Design and Research Viability: Engineering Feasibility: Product _____________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
How do you frame the first iteration/s of a product or feature? How do you decide where to start building it? We like to use the ICE scoring framework to help us prioritize our ideas based on Impact, Confidence, and Effort. This episode is a tutorial where we show you step by step how we create an idea bank and go through the process of evaluating the different ideas using ICE scoring. We use a real example from our experience defining the first iteration of a video-consultation tool to provide telemedicine services. For the process of ICE scoring, first, you need to define a clear outcome of the project and a target group of users for your first iteration. Then, you brainstorm the ideas of the features that your product will have. Once you are happy with the list of ideas, you have to assess them towards the outcome and target users, as well as compare them between each other based on: - How impactful each idea can be towards our outcome - How confident you feel about this idea based on evidence, data or intuition - How hard you asses it will be to build In this tutorial we use a google spreadsheet to brainstorm and score the ideas You can use our free ICE score template ICE score it's not a way to create a backlog, it's just a tool for the team to generate, discuss, assess and prioritize your ideas! If you want to learn more about how to prioritize the features to build, check our episode How to Prioritize and Choose the Features to Build _________________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
In this episode, we have our special guest Natasha that explains to us how the world can be interpreted as linear and organized, or volatile and ambiguos. Also, together with her we discuss how the triple diamond model helps us navigate the complexity and ambiguity of this world when finding solutions to complex problems. HOW DO WE SEE THE WORLD? Is our world as linear, causal, and based on rational decision-making as we might deem it to be? The traditional understanding of the world perceives humans to be rational and logical 24/7, as well as reality to be a “clock world”-- easy to figure out and simple. But, our world is not like that: we live in a VUCA world… Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous… a “cloud world”: highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable. WHAT ARE DOCPLANNER'S PRINCIPLES AND HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THE WORLD WE LIVE IN? Our new understanding of the world needs new principles, and these are ours: People are neither rational nor irrational, Know your reality and its context, Adapt to the chaos and ambiguity, Collaborate to see other points of view, Work on the right things to reduce waste. In more practical terms, we work with the TRIPLE DIAMOND: understanding latent user problems and needs (“doing the right thing”); building the right solutions to solve these problems (“doing the thing right”); and, this way, reducing waste and maximizing value delivered using techniques like Lean startup or Scrum. PRACTICAL EXAMPLE Our biggest learnings come from failures, right? To see our work in practice, we are going to present and analyze a real DocPlanner project that did not go so well mainly because it underestimated our new principles, as well as skipped triple diamond steps. In addition, we will look back and discuss best practices: practices we would apply if we faced this project again! ______________________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
“If we would only spend a bit more time on this feature before release, we could make it just perfect”... does this sound familiar? And yet when building digital products, we work with MVPs and small improvements. Why is this better than working on more finalized features? As startups, we are trying to figure out what's the best thing to build as quickly as possible. That's why early products are not meant to be perfect… we are in constant experimentation! In this episode we talk about Lean Startup, the scientific approach proposed by Eric Ries in his book: “The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” We explain why Startups need a specific approach to creating products. We give an introduction to the Lean Canvas and we cover in detail the Build - Measure - Learn loop: How we reduce waste by avoiding building the wrong thing How we set up experiments that will help us validate or invalidate our hypothesis How we define success and failure metrics for our experiments How we learn based on the changes in customer behaviour that we see from our experiments _____________________ If you like what we do you can buy us coffee
Agile is not easy for UX design. It was created to address developers' pains without considering the designers. There are different ways to inject the design process into Scrum, as the Dual Track, but in the end, this creates a small waterfall that stops us from being really Agile. In this episode, we talk about Lean UX, the framework that has helped us to really be Lean and Agile taking into consideration the UX Design process. Lean UX is a combination of Lean Startup, Agile, Design Thinking, and UX Design. It transforms the UX Design process into a fully collaborative one where the whole multi-disciplinary team takes part in the UX Research and defines and co-creates the solutions together. The deliverables and documentation are replaced by communication, common understanding, and collaboration; and instead of focusing on outputs, now the team works based on outcomes. The UX research is embedded inside the team, with the participation of all the team members, building increasing knowledge, understanding, and empathizing our customers. We talk about tools like Proto-personas and weekly interviews. We explain how the UX designer takes the role of a design facilitator, making the design process more collaborative with whiteboards, workshops, Design Studio sessions, or Design Sprints. This process, together with a UI Kit or Design System, allows designers and developers to work simultaneously and in parallel to be really Agile. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
Metrics help us make better product decisions and evaluate how good our choices are. They guide us to our goals and show us how we are moving towards them. Metrics reflect the health of our business as well as the behavior of our users. In this episode, we get into the detail of how should metrics be: user-centered and actionable, so they don't become vanity metrics. Tune in to discover the list of the most popular ones explained with examples. As promised, here's the list of the ones mentioned in the episode: CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost CLTV - Customer Lifetime Value ARPU - Average Revenue per Unit Adoption Retention Churn DAU, WAU, MAU - Daily / Weekly / Monthy Active User CVR - Conversion Rate Time on Task Success / Error Rate We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
From having an idea to executing it, there is always a process: ideas are vague, full of questions to be answered and decisions to be taken. We also have limited resources to carry them out so, how do we move from ideas to action? This process we need to navigate will take us a step back to understand the problem we are solving and, only then, move us forward to shape all the details that the idea will have when becoming real. In this episode we talk about some of the processes we follow in product development to give shape to our ideas and be able to develop them: The Design Process, which is embedded in the other processes and always contains these stages: understanding, gathering inspiration, generating ideas, making the ideas tangible and testing our solutions. The shaping exercise inside the Shape Up framework, where we always take a step back to define the problem and explore if there is a feasible solution for it. The refinement stage in Scrum where the whole team look for missing information and explore the possible implementations We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
The performance of a team is not only based on the expertise of each of the individuals. The way team members collaborate and relate with each other is key in achieving team and business goals: it's what makes the difference and creates high-performing teams. How a team performs varies in different moments in time, the team evolves as people get to know and understand each other, their strengths and weaknesses, and find their unique ways of collaborating. In this episode, we talk about the framework developed by Bruce W. Tuckman in the sixties that help us understand this process. With a real-life example of our own experience, we discuss the four stages that teams go through, from creation to high-performing: forming, storming, norming, and performing; as well as the fifth one: adjourning. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
Crazy ideas can lead us to amazing ones if we let them grow in a proper environment. This is what the concept of Greenhousing ideas, that we learned from Gabri Prat, is all about: instead of killing the idea, try and understand it, shift it or test it! In this episode we talk about this concept that helps us manage stakeholder's ideas, emphasizing the importance of asking why first. We also cover the ideation process: if you don't have any ideas, here we give you some easy tips and activities that you can apply in your team that will improve your ideation workshops and brainstorming sessions. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
Design Sprints are a super agile way of applying Design Thinking to product development, integrating your whole team, and fostering creativity. This is the second of a two parts episode where we explain step by step how to do a Design Sprint and give you some tips from our real-life experiences when using it. We recommend you to listen to part one first
If you are facing a big problem with an unknown solution and you have a cross disciplinary team to work on it, the Design Sprint methodology is a perfect fit to find and validate a solution in less than a week. We've used it several times in the last years, introducing it into our agile processes. In this episode we cover the basics of it: what is it, when to use it and how to prepare it. We also go into detail of the the activities of the first day of workshop, together with some tips based in our real life experiences. We will cover the remaining steps of the process in the upcoming episode
When developing digital products, making wise decisions on where to start and how to prioritize all the ideas we have in mind to develop is essential. There are different prioritization techniques in product. In this episode, we explain our experience with our favorite one: the ICE, that we learned when working with Itamar Gilad, which helps you define the priority of your idea bank based on the Impact, Confidence, and Effort. We also discuss how prioritization is done on a tactical level; as well as going through other prioritization techniques like RICE, MoSCoW or the so-called HIPPO. As we promised in the episode, here's the link to the official Itamar Gilal page where you can learn more about the ICE and his GIST framework. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
Shape Up is an agile way of working that helps the team ship work that matters by increasing focus and collaboration. Until recently we were using Scrum and Kanban methodologies inside our product team but we were lacking focus and ownership of the projects… so we read the Shape Up book and we decided to give it a go! In this episode we discuss the problems we had before with other methodologies, like the struggle with planning the releases or the big amount of designs that were produced. We talk about the process of adopting Shape Up, the main benefits we got from it and how we tweaked it to work for our team. We also go through the challenges we faced, including the shift of mindset from all the team members. You can read the Shape Up book online for free here. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
User Research is essential throughout the whole product development process: from discovery, to finding solutions, to validating them; and in all the steps in between. In this episode we discuss when and how we use User Research, what are some of the essential skills that are needed to do User Research and who should be involved in the process. We also talk about how User Research is tightly related with both the Product Manager and the Product Designer roles and how each one of us sees it from our perspective. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
How do we know if it will be worth investing time and effort in redesigning? How can we sell the need for a redesign to stakeholders? In this episode, we get into the 5 quality components of usability and discuss how both Product Manager and Product Designer care about them, but from different perspectives. We also connect them with other UX concepts like cognitive load and consistency, explaining why they are important. We go through the 10 Usability Heuristics and explain how to use them as a tool to define and determine the extent of the problem we are facing when we want to start a redesign. And last but not least, we give you some tips to follow when connecting the redesign project with the business goals. As promised, here is the link to the 10 Usability Heuristics from Nielsen Norman Group mentioned in the episode. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter:@TwoFacetPodcast Email: twofacetpodcast@gmail.com Hosts: Juncal González, Matt Mikulski Music: Sunlight by Lightblow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
In this episode we dig into roadmaps: what they are, the different types that can be defined and how to use the ICE (Impact Confidence Effort) framework to prioritize problems to solve. We discuss the impact that a well communicated roadmap can have in the outcome the team will achieve, helping designers and the whole team with systems thinking, creation of scalable solutions and handling legacy. In this episode Matt is on holidays in Poland and you can hear his step brother in the background wanting to take part in the podcast too!
Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Design Sprints are all agile tools that we both have used to build digital products, but what are the characteristics of each of them and when should you use them? In this episode we discuss the five stages of Design Thinking (Empathize>Define>Ideate>Prototype>Test) and the tools used on each one of them. We also examine the differences and similarities between Design Thinking and Lean Startup, and how they can be combined and used depending on the stage your product is. Finally, we define what Design Sprints are, when to use them, and how we have successfully integrated them in our daily workflow with Scrum. We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feedback! Twitter
In this episode we discuss the different stages of a product (Problem Market Fit, Solution Market Fit and Product Market Fit), what should be the strategy on each of them and how they relate to Lean Startup and Design Thinking. We also talk about why is it important for Product Designers to understand them and how the design tools and resources are different on each stage.We invite you to continue the conversation and give us feebdack! Twitter
In this very first episode, we discuss how we understand product strategy and why it is important for the whole product team to care about strategy and business goals, and why the strategy should be transparent and how the whole team can benefit from it. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twofacet/message
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