Alžbeta Ivanovičová

First, it’s good to settle the difference between project management and product management. As the name implies, project management operates on a project-to-project basis. Whether it’s a new feature being added or a research that needs to be carried out. All project-related tasks should meet the desired deadline, for example a release date.

Product management is a bit different. Take a bank as an example. One of the products a bank has can be a mobile app which the product team is responsible for. That means adding new features, researching customers’ needs etc. Everything the team does revolves around the product – the banking app.

And here is the key difference: While projects have deadlines or endings, developing a product is perpetuum mobile, a never-ending process. Deadlines are not as important. Making sure the app works from a business, usability and technology point of view is what matters more.


Do you need a product team?

If you have neither project nor product team right now, there is a chance you don’t need one yet. If you struggle with the points below though, you may want to reconsider.

 * Stakeholder driven roadmap – there is no one to oppose stakeholders + prioritization is in the hands of the HiPPO (highest paid person's opinion)
 * No product discovery process (or using single track agile)
 * Too much focus on dates / features
 * Not enough direct customer interaction – stakeholders are left in the dark, not involved in roadmaps or timelines
 * Not utilizing engineering or user experience early enough
 * Infrequent release cycles – development takes longer than expected, missing deadlines
 * Lack of focus, too many interruptions – struggling to prioritize tasks for developers or designers
 * Product architecture limitation / technical debt
 * Too many meetings / consensus culture
 * Poor developer morale

There are of course many things that indicate you need a product team. These are some I come across most often.


Product teams and customer experience

Apart from solving the issues listed above, a good product team is also beneficial for overall customer experience. How?

Nowadays, customers want consistent experiences. If they interact with one company, they expect the same behavior across all channels. If your product or service works differently offline and online, the customer becomes frustrated. This is mainly the role of CX departments but a good CX department should include product teams that work on this seamlessness.


Building an all-star product team

It’s important to note that a functional product team should be multidisciplinary. Building a good product team might be the toughest challenge. There is no universal rule or a formula but from my experience a good product team should include at least:

 * Product manager (responsible for managing tasks and priorities)
 * Developer
 * Designer
 * QA / Test engineer
 * Data analyst (optional, but highly recommended)


What’s next?

It is always a great idea to map your customer journeys. Once you have that, you can start thinking about assigning different products to different teams. One of the ways to do that is to assign one all products related to a particular customer journey to one team. This way, the team has a deeper understanding of the specific journey and can make relevant decisions.

Another great approach is to build teams based on related features. If you use the same or close to the same tech background for more products, you can use that to your advantage and build a team who will specialize in improving them.

And remember. Continuous product discovery and improvements should be the main responsibilities of your product team.

Want better CX? Start building product teams

Dominika Babulicová

In this free webinar, we show you three different ways we took to address customer pain-points connected to difficult portfolios of our clients. You will learn about our customer research methods and CX design strategies. You'll come away with clear steps to assess the best approach for your organization – whether it is a small or medium business or a large-scale corporate.

 * Topic: How to design desirable product portfolio
 * Date: Monday, 24 October 2022, 5:30-7 p.m. CEST
 * Place: Online (invitation to Meet available after registration)
 * Admission: Free, registration required (register below)
 * Speakers: UX Researcher Dominika Malejčíková and Art Director Pavol Pružinec from customer experience studio Lighting Beetle*

*Webinar will be in English







Registration to this event was closed.










About the webinar

Many product owners are cursed with the mantra telling them: the more bells and whistles your product has, the better it is. They'd like to tackle all possible customers' wishes or competitors' benefits. However, we repeatedly see businesses going too far and overcomplicating their portfolio.

Tangled product offering is a painful experience for many customers, regardless of a phase of the customer journey they are currently in. And it does not even matter if the product belongs to a small, medium or large company or what segment it operates in.

Whether it is features or discounts, adding more frills to a bundle does not necessarily boost its value. On the contrary, it can eventually kill sales or customer's loyalty. Overly complex, feature-heavy products turn out to be counterproductive and confusing. But there is a way out – and it is based on knowing your customers as the back of your hand.

On examples from telco, banking and insurance, which suffer by the most unrecognizable products, our UX Researcher Dominika Malejčíková and Art Director Pavol Pružinec will showcase three different levels of intervention based on organizations' maturity in approach to customer experience.

 * Topic: How to design desirable product portfolio
 * Date: Monday, 24 October 2022, 5:30-7 p.m. CEST
 * Place: Online (invitation to Meet available after registration)
 * Admission: Free, registration required (register above)
 * Speakers: UX Researcher Dominika Malejčíková and Art Director Pavol Pružinec from customer experience studio Lighting Beetle*


About the series

LB*Webinar is a series of 60-minute lectures followed by Q&A, where we share our expertise in helping companies design customer experience that drives their business. These events are most valuable for product managers, CX specialists and CEOs who want to make their product and services outstanding. Recordings will be available on-demand among our tools.

LB*Webinar: How to design desirable product portfolio

By now, design systems have become popular not just in progressive design teams.
They are slowly turning into cornerstones for product development within
organizations of all types and sizes. But what's the best way to start building
one in your environment? How to maintain it, advocate for it and envision its
futures?

We are thrilled to invite you to Lighting Talks*, new series of hybrid meetups
organized by our CX studio Lighting Beetle*. In conjunction with a globally
celebrated World Design Systems Week 2022 [https://www.designsystemsweek.com/],
we are proud to dedicate our first event to the topic of design systems. If you
are a designer, a developer, a product lead or simply a fan of a systematic
approach to customer experience design, we'll be happy to meet you – in-person
or online!

Lightning talks
Adam Močkoř, Lead Front-end Developer at Lighting Beetle*
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/]
Project-first approach: A sustainable way to building design systems

Nathan Beddows, UX Copywriter for Škoda Auto [https://www.skoda-auto.com/]
How to write award-winning design system documentation

Nathan Beddows and Adam Močkoř, speakers of Lighting Talks* on Design Systems
Event details
Topic: Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Date: Tuesday, 20 September 2022, 6 p.m.

Venue: Online or Lighting Beetle* office in Pradiareň 1900, Bratislava, Slovakia

Admission: Free, registration required – register below

Registration to this event was closed. 

Evening agenda
5:30 p.m. – Door opens for guests in the venue

6:00 p.m. – Welcome and introduction (online stream starts)

6:10 p.m. – Talk by Adam Močkoř and Q&A

6:40 p.m. – Talk by Nathan Beddows and Q&A

7:15 p.m. – Networking for guests in the venue (online stream ends)

8:30 p.m. – Venue closes for the night

About the series
Lighting Talks* are a series of hybrid meetups organized by a CX studio Lighting
Beetle*. The events cover topic from UX design, data analytics, engineering,
customer experience, product management and more. The events are a fit for
anyone who understands the value of a quality customer experience that drives
businesses and is on a lookout for inspirations.

From agencies to corporates, from freelancers to managers – each time you can
gather insights in two lightning talks and/or a panel tailored to a specific
topic related to customer experience or digital product design. In person at our
office in Bratislava, Slovakia, or from anywhere in an online stream. Records
will be available shortly after each event on our Youtube channel
[https://www.youtube.com/user/LightingBeetle].

Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Michal Blažej

Companies that haven’t started working with their customers (more in my previous 
article about CX maturity
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/journal/on-a-scale-of-1-to-10-how-customer-oriented-is-your-business]
) usually don't believe in customer research. The argument is simple and almost
always somehow related to a popular anecdote: if Henry Ford asked his customers
about their wants, they would say "We want faster horses". No car would ever be
made, and that’s why we shouldn’t ask our customers for their solutions.

I want to show you two opposite views in regard to this anecdote, because I
believe it makes better sense that way.

Customer’s POV: Do this, because it'll serve me better

Every customer will tell you things they dislike about your product or service.
They would want it to be cheaper, faster, more reliable… And it makes sense.
Everyone wants what is best for them. That’s why we shouldn’t expect solutions
from our customers. We shouldn’t expect them to design for us.

Whether the anecdote is right or not, it does UX disservice. Especially if UX
researchers don’t ask the right questions, the same as Henry Ford.

I would advise Mr. Ford to discover the needs of his customers. He would then
realize that customers don’t need faster horses (solution). They need to move
from point A to point B faster. And exactly this correct identification and
isolation of customer’s needs inspires us to provide creative and diverse
solutions. 

And maybe, if Henry Ford asked the right questions, he wouldn’t come up with the
car to replace horses, but invent a hovercraft or skateboard. And the world
would look completely different now.

Business POV: If we only listen to customer’s solutions, we will go broke

Yes. If a company tried to satisfy their customers and invest heavily in their
vision of perfect products, it would go broke. By this logic, we shouldn’t ask
the customers about their ideas, because their ideas are biased and don’t make
sense businesswise.

And yet, customers need to be heard a lot more. But the designer should not act
only as the customers’ voice. The designer is there to solve problems.

A good UX designer is the person trying to achieve equilibrium between customers
and what the business wants. Their task is not simply to address the customer's
need, but also the context in which the solution is created – and that is the
investing company.

Besides, UX design preaches that we should start with the customer. Or else we
will get stuck in our own beliefs that don’t necessarily reflect in our
customers.

At Lighting Beetle*, we push our designers to always look for solutions that
address customers' problems, bring value to the business and are viable in the
business context. This way sustainable and good solutions are made.

And how about you? Do you ask for customers’ solutions or needs?

Think customers have solutions? This will change your mind

It always strikes me how creative people get when it comes to keeping time
records. I’ve heard about filling double-the-time inputs, writing custom
scripts, or even putting the optical mouse into a glass cup to generate fake
activity so the corporate computer stays awake. But what surprises me the most,
these stories usually come from my smartest, most lively friends. That’s how I
realized it’s not about laziness. People just don’t believe the time records are
worth anything. 

The core problem with agility
When it comes to implementing agility, most companies think it’s about tools and
processes. Breaking down silos into multidisciplinary teams, introducing kanban,
training Scrum masters or having those beautifully tidied Jira boards... But
imagine how many times you’ve found yourself or your team being late with the
project deadline although you followed the process and used the tools with 100%
accuracy. Still, the work got prolonged somehow or you realized the whole
initial roadmap wasn’t estimated well.

Tools themselves are misleading. Often this is mistaken because organizations
are more focused on iterating the visible elements of agile transformation,
although the less visible are the ones that matter and have the real impact. Of
course you’ll appreciate tools and processes, but becoming agile solely because
of them is nonsense. Agility – as an ability to adapt to change – is less about
specific practice, but rather about attitude.

Being agile starts with data
In Lighting Beetle*, we’re strong believers in data-informed decision making.
And just like we can use it when analyzing a customer research, we can do that
for work estimations, too. Being able to confidently say how long a certain task
or project would take, was actually the very first step we took to transform
into an agile studio.

Back in 2009 when LB* was established, we wanted to do every project that came
our way. To deliver it in a record-breaking time and the highest of quality. But
we quickly realized this is no easy feat. We struggled with resource
estimations, faced tight deadlines and felt overloaded. And we put the pressure
on ourselves by unconsciously agreeing to unrealistic commitments.

Only when we implemented time tracking into our workflow, we started to see
patterns and the work became more predictable. The time tracking reports became
an essential tool. Not just for account managers making invoices, but for any of
our designers or developers deciding about how to invest their time to bring the
highest contribution to overall value. We learned to work agile and it enabled
us to deliver on time and in budget.

Measure time for better decisions
1. Start benchmarking time spent on tasks and regularly evaluate it. Not to boss
around but to identify possible obstacles and collectively discuss how to
overcome them. That’s what all the agile ceremonies exist for, as this article
explains
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/lean-ux-rituals-an-invaluable-tool-for-agile-design-teams]
.

2. Gain confidence – yourself and in your team – by being aware of your efforts.
Knowing how difficult a certain challenge was, enables you to plan the next one
better. Data is useless if we don’t learn from it, so let people be conscious
about their work and feel in control. At LB*, this awareness helped us 
implement
the Lean UX process
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/journal/lean-ux-our-recipe-for-agile-design].

3. Once people feel confident about their knowledge and experience, they are
ready to take over the responsibility. They start to make bold informed
decisions and plan the most impactful work autonomously. And that’s the moment
of agile transformation you’re so desperately aiming for.

Confidence is sexy
A client recently told me: “Agility is not a threat. It’s like a fire. It scared
people until they learned how to tame it.” I bet you’ve heard this one before:
The trick to boost agility is in the mindset change. For us, the trick was
hidden in time tracking and you can read the whole story in the Toggl’s case
study about Lighting Beetle*
[https://toggl.com/track/customers/lighting-beetle/]. 

Data allowed us to gain confidence in decision making and taught us enormous
learnings about running agile projects. We allocate resources better and deliver
on time and within budget with almost zero scope creep. And thanks to agile
decisions we also succeed in keeping our work and lives balanced. I highly
recommend trying it yourself.

Why time tracking is (not) useless in agile environments

For experts like product managers, CX leaders or innovation managers, work can
sometimes feel like living in a silo. Often, they are individuals missing
counterparts within the same organization. And since our network as a customer
experience studio is huge, we came up with the idea of organizing Circle of
Trust events. The premise is simple. Up to 10 experts meet in one room to
autopsy a CX-related challenge with a support of LB* facilitator who makes
ground for a safe discussion.

Our June topic was exploration or discovery. We get feedback regularly from
researchers and product owners in our partnered companies about their struggles
exploring new ideas for better customer experience. So we decided to seat
experts from telco, banking, retail and power engineering in the circle and
“explore” the topic.

> “Even when we didn’t achieve what we intended in the exploration phase, it is
still a success. We now have more data on what the customer doesn’t consider
important.” – participant
Discovery is a broad topic which can mean a lot of things, so we started off
with settling on a definition. In the conclusion we came to, exploration
includes:

 * Understanding the customer and discovering their needs
 * Coming up with new ideas and innovations to support company’s business
 * Looking at different industries and searching for benchmarks, working with
   data

Coming up with new features or product ideas from behind a closed door is the
complete opposite of exploration. So if you already utilize the discovery phase
and find yourself in a similar struggle as our attendees, the fact is you are
doing great. According to the global research by NNg
[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-model/], only 32% percent of
companies incorporate exploration in their product vision or business strategy,
and our CX maturity research confirmed
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/sk/blog/studia-o-urovni-customer-experience-na-slovensku] 
this applies to 30% of Slovak companies.

> “Try to pitch your idea to two other people. If you can defend your point and
you come to an agreement, then your idea is probably worth a try.” – participant
The most interesting topic to the majority of attendees turned out to be How to
collect feedback from users and come up with new ideas? In just two hours, we
identified and exchanged experiences with various ways to tackle the problem of
collecting customer feedback and acting on it. These were used in real life
cases by the participants:

1. Creating personas with different approaches
It allows you to step outside of the box and think about how they view different
problems. For inspiration, here is a nice article about creating personas with
templates [https://www.hotjar.com/blog/user-personas/].

2. Collecting feedback from customers through chat or customer support


3. Having an internal platform where employees can post their ideas and thoughts


4. Examining new ideas using A/B tests
Keep in mind that sometimes the results can be very close. It’s therefore
important to have a sample that is big enough. To figure out the significance of
data, you can use an A/B calculator [https://abtestguide.com/calc/].

5. Rapid idea validation with the fake door test
You show the users an option that doesn’t exist yet. After they take the action,
the system lets them know that this feature or product / service is not yet
available. By measuring how many of the potential users showed interest, we can
gather proof it’s worth building. You can find 28 more proven tests like this
one to validate your idea in our popular Experiment Toolbox handbook
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/experiment-toolbox].

6. Doing a review of competition on both local and international level
Use what is already out there to gather data. It can also be a good way to
cross-check insights you generated during interviews.

7. Knowledge sharing with stakeholders / product owners in different
organizations
Get in touch and make a field visit to other companies, even in foreign
countries. You can connect with them via LinkedIn, at local meetups or in
professional groups on various social media. Or just become a member of our
Circle of Trust and meet with your peers regularly. If you’re a fan of the
concept, let us know [marketing@lbstudio.sk], we get you a seat.

Exploration is a challenge. How to come up with ideas for better CX?

Adam Močkoř

Most effective designers (and developers alike) dream of a robust design system.
A design system that would include many components that can be used across many
products. To achieve that, some companies rush to add new components to their
design system even before testing them in live production.

It happened to us at Lighting Beetle* too. A client was developing multiple
products and designers came up with the idea of implementing a new component to
the design system that could be used in various applications. 

> Project first approach allows building a design system in sustainable way even
with small teams.
And so we did. We designed the component, developed it and documented it in the
design system. But during implementation we encountered technical requirements
that were not compatible with our previous idea. While fixing the problem,
design requirements on the products evolved, as is tradition in agile
development. The end result was inefficiency. Neither the products, nor design
system, nor developers, managers or team benefitted from this effort.

While building a design system, we recommend the “project first” approach. Let
me explain it with the help of an analogy with cogs.


Design system like swiss watch

Similarly to swiss watches, a design system also relies on a perfectly
functioning mechanism with cogs of different sizes.

The design system itself represents the center wheel. It’s the biggest, most
stable cog, therefore turning slowly. Design system too should be a steady part
of an organization that is only iterated, not rapidly changed. For a design
system to work, it also requires detailed documentation that is understood by
everyone involved.

Smaller cogs around the center wheel (design system) represent individual
products (or projects) that are influenced by the design system. These cogs
rotate at a faster pace, meaning they are more agile, and need to react to
technology changes and users’ needs quicker.

Benefits of project first approach
Validation

When testing new design changes, we use the smaller cogs – projects. It allows
us to promptly collect user feedback without worrying about affecting the whole
ecosystem. Designers can experiment safely and only the components validated by
real customers get implemented in the design system.

Efficiency

Once new components are validated and we can use them in multiple projects, it’s
time to implement them into a design system. By doing this, we continually
improve the robustness and usefulness of the system. Now, whenever we build a
new project, we can use existing resources thus saving time it would otherwise
take to design and develop new components.

Standardization is a lengthy and laborious process. The end result though is a
consistent design across the portfolio that is not affected by constant changes.
This can increase customer satisfaction as well as satisfaction of people
involved in the project.

What do design systems and cogwheels have in common?

In my previous post
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/on-a-scale-of-1-to-10-how-customer-oriented-is-your-business] 
I explained a system that you can use to assess to what extent your company is
customer-oriented. I have noticed stakeholders inside companies oftentimes
assess this stage by how much work is done on UX projects. In reality, it’s not
about the amount of time dedicated to UX research but how the data from these
activities are used and interpreted.

We do UX and that’s good enough for us
Overestimating customer orientation is usually noticed during transition from
stage 3 to stage 4 (see Stages of customer orientation
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/on-a-scale-of-1-to-10-how-customer-oriented-is-your-business]
). Companies in stage 3 are characterized by using UX principles daily to design
their products and services. They collect feedback from prototype testing and
use that to improve the usability. That leaves them thinking they are customer
oriented.

Yet, product decisions are still made behind closed doors by a small number of
people, usually product managers, owners or stakeholders. UX methodologies are
only a part of implementation, not really a part of project specification. It is
not unusual that UX and PM professionals disagree on things
[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-product-managers-overlap/] which results in
confusion and inefficiency.

UX research teams point out problems that cannot be solved by design change.
They require changes to be made on product level or in business processes. Those
insights are collected, usually repeatedly mentioned in presentations but have
almost zero impact.

Heureka!
Heureka happens once the data from UX research finds its way to forums where
business decisions are made. When product owners use customer data to make
informed decisions about products and services, the company quickly transitions
to stage 4 and becomes more focused on customer needs.

Change in company’s DNA
This process enables a shift in the company's priorities. Project or feature
that seemed essential before can easily lose much of its importance because it
is not that interesting for the user. This way the company becomes more
customer-oriented and starts prioritizing different tasks.

Suddenly, product owners are more invested in customer needs and wants, hence
they require more research capacities. Since customers’ needs are usually tied
to online space, product owners that were used to the offline world now have to
think digitally. This leads to change in organizational structure. Need for
collaboration creates space for new multidisciplinary teams that involve
different roles and stakeholders. Ultimately, this leads to fulfillment of
customer needs.

Here is why you don't fully utilize customer data

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.


Level 0: Prehistoric companies

There is no customer research or user testing in the company. This is the prehistoric period "before UX". Product design and service design is based on the feelings and expert views of a few key people. These organizations already have trouble retaining loyal customers and have poor performance in the digital environment.


Level 1-3: We do UX and it's fine

Level 1 companies find that testing prototypes of digital services will save them money that would be wasted on unnecessary development. After a while, they will understand that customer feedback really helps them. They will start demanding customer research to help adapt designs to customer needs.


Level 4-6: Customer data decides

Customer research is becoming much more important than testing. Customer data is used to make product decisions and often contradicts the status quo and the expert perspective of internal stakeholders. The work is no longer organized into projects, but looking through customer paths helps teams focus on customer needs and are less tied to the company's organizational structure. UX designers are appearing in companies.


Level 7-10: The customer is part of the strategy

Customer-conscious companies not only make decisions based on customer data, but customer values and needs become part of the company's strategy. Due to the sustainability of such a change in the company's thinking, the culture as well as the organizational structure is often redefined. Such companies are able to quickly adapt to the ever-changing needs of the customer.

So – at what level is your company?

Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

On a scale of 1 to 10: How customer-oriented is your business?

Over the past 30 years, design has become a key tool in the transformation of
companies. In the tenth episode of the Minimum Viable Podcast, Michal Blažej
examines how the design segment and the role of designers have changed and
developed over the years. He invited Anton Schubert, a British designer and
consultant, who years ago taught LB* design thinking to the microphone.

Anton started his career as a car mechanic and has been designing since 1993.
For more than a decade he worked for such important companies as IDEO
[https://www.ideo.com/eu] and Futurice [https://futurice.com/], and today he has
his own company Good Growth [https://goodgrowth.co.uk/], which is dedicated to
sustainable design.

You can find the Minimum Viable Podcast on:

 * Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/5aRmaKcccGkKT5USoN3hMB]
 * Apple Podcasts
   [https://podcasts.apple.com/sk/podcast/minimum-viable-podcast/id1475081821]
 * Google Podcasts
   [https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9jNTY5NjcwL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz]
 * Anchor [https://anchor.fm/minimum-viable-podcast/]
 * Castbox [https://castbox.fm/ch/2223485]
 * or below in the transcript.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I mentioned in the introduction that you are a veteran designer. Can you give us
a quick run through your job experiences? What formed Anton the designer
becoming who he is today?

I have to say that what really made me a designer was the first job I ever had.
I left school really early and all I wanted to do was fix cars. So I became a
car mechanic. When I look back at that first job I had, I think that was the
spark for my interest in all things designed. You know – when you think about
fixing things and solving problems and taking things apart... A very physical
activity. It relates quite well to what designers do, but in a different way.

And then, long story short, I moved from car mechanics into engineering. I
worked at an engineering factory as a machine operator, where I met engineers
and designers for the first time. I mean a mechanical engineer here, not a
digital engineer. And not really having any kind of education in what design
actually was back then, it was these guys from Japan who inspired me what I
could do. So I went to study three dimensional design. I ended up being a model
maker, we’re talking like 28 years ago. A model maker back then was somebody who
used to make prototypes. You make models of designs. And my area was very much
on consumer electronics. Back then, we were making works-like-looks-like models
of computers, telephones, hairdryers, toothbrushes... Anything that was a
physical product. And I got a job at IDEO as a model maker in a London office.
If anybody knows IDEO, it works all over the world. We were working with some of
the biggest customers in the world.

I was there for twelve years and it was my design school, I learned so much
about design. I went from being a model maker to being a client relationship
lead and running huge projects with really big international clients. But then,
I have a Finnish wife. I was already doing some work with Nokia in Finland. I
was teaching as well. And I decided to move to Finland. And from then on, I've
had a number of jobs in Finland, which have been building off each other.

The first job, I moved to brand strategy, because I realized that the design
work in IDEO was never really thinking about the story of the brand. And it was
more about just the thing that we were actually designing. Then I moved to a
company called Futurice, which was a technology company. I'd never worked in
technology, so it was something I really felt I needed to get on board with, and
I became their head of design. That was another good learning curve for me,
because we're at that point merging design with technology with business. That
was the start of the digitalization revolution, really, and helping our
customers to digitalize. And then I got a head of design job in Vincit, a
similar kind of digitalization company.

I want to mention, I joined this company called Scope Impact, which is actually
quite inspiring because I ended up doing social impact work. I was in Africa for
a few months designing health services for adolescent young women and got really
keen and interested in this more purposeful design work, something that has more
meaning. And also sustainability was a really big passion of mine. Since then,
I've been developing sustainability offerings. I've been doing customer work
around sustainable transformation, and that's what the Good Growth company is –
a company using a design lead methodology that helps customers transform and
move towards delivering on their sustainability strategies.

> Designers inspire people to do things that they wouldn't normally do through
vision, through dreams, through insight, through really beautiful envisioned
futures.
When you talk about design, you talk about engineering, you talk about different
kinds of problems. What kind of non-digital designs have you been doing in the
pre-Futurice era?

We didn't have the Internet or mobile phones, designers weren't designing that
stuff. For instance, when I was working at IDEO, we used to do a lot of work for
companies like Nestle and Johnson & Johnson. We used to design shampoo bottles,
IDEO was designing a dog toothbrush for the American market... So, applying the
design approach to understand how you would design a toothbrush for your pet.
There's nothing digital about that but it's the same approach as we use now for
digitalization, but it's a very physical outcome.

Some of the stuff that we did at IDEO back in the day was, there was a lot of
hype and effort around organizational design, and it's still very strong. It's
called transformation these days, but we did projects where we would go into
companies and coach companies on how to work better together. That's definitely
not a physical thing, it's not even a software thing. It's a human interaction
thing.

When we look at the design from a more general perspective, do you spot any
phases of development of the design industry or how the impact of design has
changed over years?

Yeah, there's been some really big ones. If I think about just my career, I
think the first big driver for design was user-centeredness. And even now, I
still make customers that think this is a new concept. But I think that was one
of the big things that IDEO also built their business on, even back in the late
70s when we started to be user-centric and designed for the user. Then, the next
biggest influence on how design was done was the emergence of software. I
remember Bill Moggridge already promoting this whole idea of interaction design
– designing for software as well as hardware. It wasn't just about form and
function anymore, it was about user experience. And that was definitely because
of the digital revolution.

And then, there's quite many smaller influences around how design is done, one
is design as a methodology. Design at that point started to become a methodology
and approach to problem solving rather than just being the thing you did when
you designed a product or service. Whether it was for brand strategy, whether it
was for transformational, organizational stuff... you could apply the design
thinking methodologies. And I think the whole startup world – everybody wanted
to be a startup – where design played a huge role in merging all of these things
together: user centricity, prototyping, sprints, conceptualization, testing,
minimum viable products... That was a very design led approach when you think
about innovation, and innovation was all part of that.

But now, in regards to what I do now, it's now very much around sustainability.
Design as a problem solving approach to sustainability in all its forms, not
just environmental but social sustainability and also business sustainability
design. It's a great approach to that size of problem that we are faced with in
the next few decades.

In addition to his career as a designer and consultant, Anton Schubert also
teachesI remember when we worked, like, twelve years ago on a website I usually
talked to a marketing department. But today we talk to C-level people about
design. Clearly, it has changed over years how they perceive design in
corporations. Has the impact of design changed and grew bigger?

It has, for sure. But I think it depends on what kind of company you're working
with. There's a maturity curve. There are some companies that are design lead
from day one. But there's still many companies, big corporate organizations who
don't understand the value of design and don't know how to apply it in their
business and often see design as a sort of aesthetic layer to products and
services.

It's a little bit more mature in the UK and maybe in some parts of the US, but I
think it's a people thing. You meet some CEOs and C-level people who really get
how to apply it in a business sense. You meet other C-level people who don't
understand it. They're very traditional in the way they run their businesses.

But overall, yes, design is being considered a viable approach. It's also being
compared to the old way of doing things. When you think about the McKinsey,
Accenture and other management consultancies, design is an attractive
alternative. It's a desirable approach that brings new things that those other
approaches don't bring. And I think some businesses are really looking to do
things differently.

When we enter some of the more conservative industries, it seems to me like:
Okay, maybe this is just the way they operate and it works for them. Maybe
design doesn't have room here. Do you think that the companies actually will
evolve into more design-centric and user-centric?

My game plan is yes, they will. If you look at the challenges we have, there are
three words I often talk about that designers bring to the table really nicely.
They are inspiration, creativity and collaboration.

Inspiring people to do things that they wouldn't normally do through vision,
through dreams, through insight, through really beautiful envisioned futures.
Designers are pretty good at doing that stuff. And I think we should be even
better at that, because that's really what people need at this point. They need
a sense of hope, they need a sense that we can have a really great future. And
designers are creative people, right? They can do that.

The second word is creativity. So the approach to solving problems, it's not
static. Of course, there are many design tools out there. There's co-creation,
prototyping, user insight, conceptualization... there's all sorts of tools we
can use. But I think designers are really flexible, adaptable people, and they
can bring new creative approaches to problem solving and that's really needed
now. Creativity is needed to solve against some of these really complex
challenges.

And the third word is collaboration. If you look at some of the problems we're
solving now, they're very complex and they're systemic. There are
multi-stakeholder problems with people across value chains who’ve never worked
together before. And especially if we want to solve sustainability challenges
with design, we've got to become radical collaborators. We've got to become the
people who are able to get all of those different people in a room together,
simplify a complex dialogue and help people to make decisions.

> Designers are crafts people. Whether it's about strategy or whether it's about a
UI, it's a crafted thing.
When we worked together, you had these really great presentation skills, you
were able to decide quickly, had a lot of empathy, you were able to generate
ideas quickly and interconnect people to collaborate. It seems that part of that
you still see as the future skills and attitudes that the designers need to
adopt. What skillset the designers used to have and what will they need in the
future?

Not everybody has to talk big picture and vision. We need people to create real
things as well. So those UX and UI and those detailed designers, those people
who visualize beautiful concepts and bring them to life, they are very
important. It definitely helps if designers have that core skill, a specialism.
I see a lot of designers coming out of universities as generalists, but it's
important to develop your craft. And designers are crafts people. Whether it's
about strategy or whether it's about a UI, it's a crafted thing.

To be a holistic designer is the thing that we're developing now, designers need
to think about the big picture. They need to connect the dots between the detail
and the big picture. IDEO taught you to think about desirability, feasibility
and viability. Nowadays designers have still got to think about that, but
they've also got to think about:

 * Does the customer want it?
 * Does it make money?
 * Does it harm the environment?
 * Is it good not only for the individual, but does it improve the lives of that
   individual's community, the society that individual lives within?

You do need to have a more holistic, big picture view on things. It's going to
be really important because the problems are becoming more complex. The
solutions will naturally become more complex. But you'll have to look at more
things to find a good solution.

That's exactly the journey that we took over the last couple of years. We first
thought about us all being designers and being really T-shaped because that was
something that we believed would bring us a more holistic point of view on the
problems. But one thing is being really good at something and having the craft
and the other thing is actually having a more general view on the problems,
being able to connect the dots. So that's where we are today, we have started
specializing our people, but still equipping them with the skill of
interconnecting the dots and having a more business and general point of view on
the problems.

I think that's why those three words I mentioned are important because the
customer often needs that a lot more than just the craft itself, because that's
going to help them do something that they wouldn't normally do. Now we're having
to help people do things they would never have normally done in the past.

Anton during a lecture at the Dash Hack design eventYour first agency job was
probably IDEO which you joined in ‘99, and the agency definitely had to evolve
over that time. Do you see how evolution has gone and how the agencies have
changed?

If you call yourself a consultancy, a consultant is somebody that you trust to
give you advice or support on something that you don't know much about – like
your doctor. It's like the metaphor of a kitchen: The chefs and the cooks are
making the food in the kitchen and sending it to the customers. And there's the
delivery guy outside delivering the ingredients. I think that has been the
biggest journey for the agencies, especially the digital agencies to not only
deliver the great ingredients, but also to get in the kitchen with the cooks.
And even if possible, start serving the food to the customers.

It's a weird metaphor but that's the kind of journey that they've been on.
Especially the digital companies, a lot of them have come from this very easy
business model of “let's sell our developers to companies who need developers”.
But as digitalization has matured, a lot of customers have already hired their
own designers, their own tech people. They already know how to do agile, design
or be user-centric. Design agencies always have to reinvent themselves to be
seen as the consultant, to bring something to the customer that the customer
cannot do themselves. So design companies have gone from craft, from “let's
design something”, to coaching or transformation.

I've recently watched a keynote from Jacob Nielsen from their energy conference,
and he basically predicted an exponential growth of the design industry. Today
we have tens of thousands of designers, but in the future, we'll have millions.
And with the future, he meant a few years ahead. Where do you think the industry
is headed? And is his prediction something that you feel is true or not?

Well, I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise. There was one point, maybe a
decade ago, when I lost a little bit of hope in the impact of design and the
power of designers to change things. But then I see companies like Futurice go
from 16 designers to 150 designers all over Europe, and I think that wouldn't
happen unless there was a need there.But I've also seen another trend, a sort of
attitude. These days designers want to work on customer projects that are really
meaningful and deliver impact. They want to work with sustainability, they want
to work with inclusivity. And I think that's great, it goes all the way back
down to this basic user insight work.

If you're the person that connects the customer to the business, that's a really
important need. And I think the designers are quite good evangelists that they
can actually make a change in the companies where they are present. As I said
earlier, design is really good for envisioning the future because that's
becoming harder and harder for companies to do. Even now, companies have a three
to five year strategy, but in this climate it doesn't make any sense. You can't
invest your company's strategy in a three to five year plan. You've got to
continuously create the future step by step. And that's where designers have
unique skills, much more than the management consultants, because they can bring
futures to life, pilot different experiments and co-create futures with
customers and networks.

> Design agencies always have to reinvent themselves to be seen as the consultant,
to bring something to the customer that the customer cannot do themselves. 
Is there something that's your design challenge, something you'd like to address
in the future?

Yes, it's obvious for me there's one design challenge – climate change,
environmental sustainability. That's the biggest challenge we face now. And
that's happening now. And within this decade, we're talking about eight years,
we need to address some huge existential questions for humanity. And if
designers aren't active in answering those challenges, then I don't know what's
the point. You don't have to read very much to understand that the next big
transformation is going to be the sustainability transformation. And we're
already 40 years too late. Companies are going to have to deliver on their
sustainability targets according to law. How are they going to do that? They're
going to do that because they're going to have to get a shit load of help from
companies like us, people like us, designers, developers, business people,
consultants. They're going to have to get help to deliver on those targets.
That's what I hope that design can play a really big role in.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Listen to the full interview with designer Anton Schubert:
The Mimimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design
studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer
experience.

Design is all around us. The Minimum Viable Podcast explores design with a small
“d” – the one that looks for solutions to people's problems. In it, together
with our guests, we address topics that are related to design, but which we do
not normally associate with it. Thanks the Zeldeo [https://www.zeldeo.com/] 
production studio for the cooperation.

We look forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement.
Send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about
design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

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Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

Want better CX? Start building product teams

LB*Webinar: How to design desirable product portfolio

Lighting Talks* on Design Systems

Think customers have solutions? This will change your mind

Why time tracking is (not) useless in agile environments

Exploration is a challenge. How to come up with ideas for better CX?

What do design systems and cogwheels have in common?

Here is why you don't fully utilize customer data

On a scale of 1 to 10: How customer-oriented is your business?

Minimum Viable Podcast #10: The Evolution of Design

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Don’t miss out

Your journey starts here

Your journey
starts here