Part of the Process

In the run up to a 15below customer conference I always seem to attend another event with some similarities elsewhere. This year was no different with the Travel Technology Initiative Spring Conference in London around the topic of the "UX revolution" that has been occurring in travel over the past couple of years. The first of the stand-out talks for me were Anna Chomse, Industry Head - Travel at Google who showed the process going from exploring holiday options to booking, with the different needs at each stage. She then showed a few examples of good design reflecting those needs, and how sea r ch terms used or platform (such as mobile) can make a difference to the experience of using the site. Thomson holidays was one example of how to do it right. (The Hoover website with its search terms not in the user's language and confusing mobile experience was an example of how not to do it) Next Sam Crowther, Head of Creative at Bauer Radio then took us on journey throug

online - simplify decision making So you've got g reat new idea s but you need to decide on what to do next. In most c onsumer product development where there is a volume of (potential) users, e.g. a popular public service such as Facebook or Amazon, this is relatively easy as you can go through an MVP process, do some lean startup experiments or even run some A/B test and make changes.  B2B product management doesn't have quite the same volume of usage or "want" being a driver, for example a SaaS platform about coordinating snow ploughs won't be able to gain much more usage during the summer months. With this in mind I am going to take a look at five things I've read this month and pick a key idea from each to build up a toolbox that can be applied. Ask the right questions , onc e we know we are solving the right problem then we are off to a good start. Keeping the bias out of questions and using techniques such as conjoint analysis to find