Always Be in Your MVP

Suzanne: Arshad. Arshad Wala.

Arshad: Hello.

Suzanne: CEO, Digitalworks.

Arshad: Yes.

Suzanne: All right. This is the story of you.

Arshad: Oh.

Suzanne: You didn't know that's why we were here?

Arshad: No, no. Story of me. Cool.

Suzanne: The story of you. Let's go back.

Arshad: I'm an expert on me. We can talk about me.

Suzanne: Right, so you're the expert of you. Let's work backwards.

Arshad: Sure.

Suzanne: How long has Digitalworks been around?

Arshad: Digitalworks has been in formation, I'd say about 4 years, but in the making for the last 11 years.

Suzanne: What is it?

Arshad: We're a consultancy which is a little different than an agency or a firm or a product company. We help other companies create products, create experiences. Products is the new buzzword, but it's really create and craft the experience. So it's the experience of using the utility, which can be a product or a service. It's the experience of designing and maintaining and scaling that service, that utility. And then it's that leave behind viscreral feeling that people have, how people brag about it, how people evangelize your brand. It's the consulting of crafting those 3 layers that we define as experience.

Suzanne: One of the things that's been my experience at The Development Factory, and we do a lot of similar work, right, is that question of going outside to a group like Digitalworks, a team of experts in the realm of product versus insourcing and developing from within. I'm not talking just of course about engineering. I'm talking about everything. What do you think is the benefit to somebody sitting around, saying, "I want to create a great experience. I'm going to go and bolt onto a team?”

Arshad: Sure. There's that great saying, which is "outside-in looking" or "outside-in thinking." I think that the biggest difference that differentiated us being a consultancy, not an agency is that an agency would produce that work. That's where a product company or companies says, "we're going to this agency. Let's have them help us out." We come to you, all right? We believe in the same team, and we integrate within your company. We're not an outsider. We come in, and we look at the resources that company has. We work with them, so we're facilitating. We come in with a process. We come in with a neutral point of view, or we come in with a view that we're not the same pressures and stress.

So if you're looking at an internal team, and you want them to be innovative, well, your product person has some revenue goals and stresses on that. The designer and engineerings have their own personal goals and department goals. So us coming in as the outsiders says, "Okay, great. Let's put those aside. Let's band together as this new blended team, and let's go execute." Really, the biggest value we drive is that we have a process that is not contingent on other priorities that distract from creating the proper experience.

Suzanne: It sounds like a lot of the clients that you work with are established companies, then. What is that moment that happens internally where an existing company says, "I think we need help." Where do they realize that? Do they realize that on their own?

Arshad: More and more, so there's an interesting shift where we go back when we first started, about 5 years. It was a very hard sell. Really, it came from us helping with start-up companies, so it's interesting. With start-ups, you have a CEO, and they have a vision, but they have no revenue, no customers. That's where product-market fit comes in very importantly because if you don't see that gap in opportunity to go close, then you will never survive your start-up phase. We learned activities and techniques to validate that, to lower the risks, and to understand their assumptions on how big they were. Using those same techniques, we would sell those as inside drivers to the enterprise, right? Enterprises would be launching products and like, "why isn't that working? How come it wasn't exactly what we expected?"

And there's a lot of things that get covered up with a lot of marketing dollars. You can buy ads and PR, and then that will do wonders, but that has a short-term effect because then, your drop off comes back because there's no core value. Then, the questions are like, "how do we provide value or understand value sooner?" It was the same activities, same techniques, just different medium, different scale. That was the sell. The sell was hard, but you had companies that were leaders in that space we wanted, too, so we worked with the redesign of Disney. They hired Frog to do this grand conceptual vision. Then, they had their internal team start to build it. Then, we came into it like, "Let's start testing every 2 weeks." They're like, "What are you going to test it in?" "It doesn't matter. Every 2 weeks, we're going to commit to a test." Then, that just changed the tone. We didn't know what we were, but we instilled that process. Every 2 weeks, we would have something. We test it. We learn about it.

We realize that people were mostly buying. It's interesting. In Florida people buy multi-date tickets. In California, they buy single-date tickets. Can't have the same interface for both, so we designed 2 different variances, and then we launched geographically specific interfaces. What's happened is that transitions happen where now, everyone needs a UX, UI. We don't have to do the sell. People know this. "Oh, we do UX, UI. Let's get them in," but they don't understand why.

The difference now from us and other agencies is that other agencies might sell an academic process, or they're trying to still establish themselves and what value they drive. It's very tools-focused. What we've realized is that tools are 50% value. You also need mindset. We come in, and we have a conversation. We get an understanding, and we immediately connect with our sponsors, or stakeholders, saying, "I got a good sense. Is this how things are operating? It's not yielding good results," and like, "Yes, exactly." I said, "Great. You know what? We have to change the way you think."

There's that classic little "a" agile versus big "A" Agile. There's doing agile and then being agile. It's funny. I had someone who was a client, and was like, "Arshad, look at our backlog. We're being agile, and we're going through it." Then, I noticed the backlog had 300 tickets in it, and about an hour into it I said, "Okay, can we stop? I got questions. We're talking about agile. You guys have this great Jira board. 300 tickets. Just that, in a vacuum, doesn't seem agile to me." Like, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Well, if you're supposed to react to change and be reactive, have could you have estimated so much work? How can you plan that?" That's like me, saying, "I'm planning out 12 months in advance."

They were all looking, and was like, "so what do you guys say?" "I'd say just delete it." I said sort it by freshness. If it hasn't been tagged in the last 90 days, delete it. What shocked me is that product owner looked at it, started doing some filtering, looked around and they just started deleting it. All right, so to me, there's that difference. I don't have to sell it. Companies look for UX, UI, or the look for innovation. We come in, and then it's out being and practicing and being present with the client that keeps us there.

Suzanne: That story of the backlog reminds me a little bit about the book Getting Real, 37 Signals. They talked about when they launched Basecamp. As you know, the people would submit, "Here's a great idea. Loved the product. Here's a dozen great ideas of features." They'd be like, "thank you so much." Delete, delete, delete. They weren't tucking away all of that feedback for a someday. It's that there is that reckless abandon or that willingness to pivot that comes from not caring. It's like life, right?

Arshad: Yes.

Suzanne: The more we bog ourselves down, we get married. We have kids. We have this home. We have this job. We have these things. It becomes harder and harder to make a change even if we think the change is right. We keep going down a path.

Arshad: Well, it's funny where there's so many parallels from just doing and being. Yes, that's an example of using a tool but not having that mindset there. It's interesting. I joke, but my wife, also being in the product industry, I say, "she gives me a retrospective every week." That's really why couples go to therapy, right? We don't go to therapy because she gives it to me. Every week, she says, "here are the things you did really well. Please continue doing that. These are the things you didn't do so well. Figure out why you didn't them so well," right? I get a Delta Plus every Saturday.

Suzanne: She's a better Product Manager, it sounds like.

Arshad: She's way, way better a Product Manager than I am.

Suzanne: That is funny. I mean I've certainly seen ways to apply agile into other disciplines, but I haven't really thought about incorporating it into couples. This is good. This is good. I guess I can't take it now that we're on the air. This is going to be yours. Talk to me a little bit about ... Okay, so you described this as the experimentation, right? In product, we talked about this. The number 1 most misused term minimum viable product. Everybody has just come to think that it means put a shitty product in market, or put a product in market with a few features, but the MVP as it was originally defined is about experimentation. It's "what's the least amount I can do to learn the most amount about something?" It sounds like from what you were describing that that was a lot of what you were bringing at Digitalworks, certainly to your start-up clients. It's saying they're coming to you and going, "how much to build this big vision?" You're saying, "we'll take 10% of that, and try to prove or disprove if any of the things you think are right or are wrong."

Arshad: Right.

Suzanne: Can you share with us a couple? Do you have a couple memorable experiments that you guys conducted that you could?

Arshad: I could talk a little bit more in general just about my passion for having an MVP focus. I can give some examples, and the examples are true for our start-ups or to our enterprise. I think before the MVP, it actually goes back to Steve Blank, like understanding your customer. I think that, you need to understand your customer before you get to MVP. I think that's nice like product as MVP, customer as the UX of this discussion on that, but what I tell anyone, mostly our start-ups is that, "show me 5 potential customers. If you can't rally 5 potential customers, forget what product you're going to build." They're like, "no, no, we just need you to build it." I said, "Great. Imagine I built it. Now, what are your customers going to say? How are you going to convince them? How are you going to tell them the value of it?"

That's where things get hard because then, I find out that the people they've been talking to is their cousin and their mom, and my mom loves everything of mine, right? Find 5 actual customers, potential customers to just talk to you for 10 minutes about this. If you couldn't find that, then the problem is not real for them, right?

Let's say you've overcome that hurdle. You've talked to 5 potential users, consumers of your experience, and they want to have this discussion with you. Then, it comes into this MVP, and I've heard this many times. "This is our MVP, and then this is version 1," or "this is our MVP, and this is version 2, version 3, version 4." I say, "You guys have to understand. You are always in MVP because MVP means minimum, which means the least amount of work, Viable which means, 'how do I maximize the value? What's that product solution look like?'"

I would never want to say, and I've heard most viable product, MVV, so minimum variant. There's all these variances, but what I'd say is, "why would you ever want to do more work than necessary for the same value outcome?" For me, that just means working smart, and then working hard. Not working hard and trying to get all the bells and whistles. I think that's a mindset where it's MVP, and then it's MVP, and then it's MVP. You should always be in your MVP. That gives you an interesting scope of what do you consider part of your MVP? If you look at companies like Apple. They put design and form an aesthetics as part of their product. That's part of the lure in the culture that's around it. Those characteristics need to be defined in their definition of an MVP.

I help companies, and they say it's like, "oh, we're building MVP, but the design looks like crap." I say, "Think about the company you're in." This is mostly for enterprise companies. I say, "Where in your organization does design have its importance? Where do people value it? If your company, from the top or from its DNA does not value design, stop trying to make this an Apple from the bottoms up. Maybe you should find another company to work for." Maybe they'll work for Apple, right, if you hold it so true.

When it comes to experiments, it's interesting. People get surprised on what I define an MVP, but my MVP is a survey. It's a simple poll. We're in an audience, and we're talking with this client. Then, we went out to Starbucks. I just started asking people. I said, "would you use this? Would you use this? Would you this?" It was a very simple test where 1 out of 9 people say yes. I said, "that was your MVP right there. We are presenting the wrong value problem." We went through a whole value prop exercise, and then, what we did is that I bought some Google AdWords. They're like, "What are you doing?" I said, "We're just testing this value." I said, "if people do a search, and you presented the solution in the appropriate way, they should click it." They're like, "Where is it going to go?" I said, "Doesn’t matter" Then, the clicked it, and it went to a 404 page. I said, "That's fine. We don't need to build a landing page. We just need to see if people would click." We went through about 50 value props, and it shocked me.

This is why I get really excited. It's that people started clicking on one of them. If you ask me, personally, I'm like, "it's stupid idea. No one's going to do it.” But wait. There's an audience that's clicking on that one value prop." What's interesting is we went through so many versions of it. There's a suite of offerings this product did. It was only 1 of the 5 core features people were clicking on. That was an insight to this company. Then, I said, "Okay. Let's go write some more." We wrote multiple variants. People were clicking on all of them. I said, "Now, it's time to build a landing page." We went to Fiver. I know it's Fiver. It's supposed to be $5, but 5 more dollars for next day, 5 more dollars for responses. It's like $15. Still, $15 for a landing page, and on the landing page, we had a sign up form. I said, "now, the test is will people give?"

Suzanne: Yes, I mean it's fascinating to hear you speak about it because I teach this topic, and I see the lights go off when we get to this idea of MVP and when I share some of these simple types of experiments. Especially ones, where it’s like, "just run an ad, and see if you can get it. If you can't even get people to your page, don't worry about everything else, please, honestly." I certainly wish that I knew more about what I know now in the early days of doing. We wouldn't be here. I would be on my yacht. You wouldn't know me, with all due respect.

Arshad: Yes.

Suzanne: Yes, I mean it's incredible how much you can actually learn, but part of it is being open to hearing. This is the other thing we talk about. You brought up Steve Blank, Customer Development. Sometimes, people mistake the idea of going to customers and talking to them with talking at them where they've got a very clear idea about what they want to hear. Then, they structure a set of questions that allows them to hear back exactly what they want. Then, there's been no actual learning. I'm curious because part of what you do is kill the hopes and dreams of would-be entrepreneurs in existing companies because they're coming to you a little bit from that place of "this is the best thing." You're coming at it from the place of "Let's see." Then, surely, there have been many circumstances like the one you described where the results prove unfavorably that you have either the wrong value proposition or the wrong customer segment. How do you take their hand gently, and take them beyond that dismay?

Arshad: Well, I think there's a bit of charm that comes into that. I think it's a differentiator between us and other agencies. It's that this is where UX designers get the bad rep of like, "Oh, they're the 'no' people. They're the people who want to slow the process down. They're the ones who want to do research," because to your point, if everyone just listened to UX designers, we'd all be on yachts right now, right? It is. Yes, that's the correct way of doing it, right? Yes, you've got this CEO or new start-up. You've got this brilliant vision, and of course, you're right, but let's go validate that with your research.

No one likes to hear their ideas no good. That's like in the improve world that's the "no, but" versus the "yes, and." My style is like, "Yes, totally. That's awesome. How much money you got? Cool. You have money to build all? Let's go build all of it. Great. Can we start with one of them?" It's the continuous yes, and then, we get to focus on 1. Let's go try it out, and what I show is that I love sciences and ran experiments and still run experiments.

It's that I show people like, "this is just an activity or a series of activities we're going to go through." It's empowering them and teaching them how to continue doing those activities. In the enterprise space, it's the same way where "I'm not coming in, and trying to show you I have more knowledge of your industry. That's why you're an employee of this company. That's the value you bring. I'm giving you a scaffold to go play around in." It empowers people to focus on the process and the shift of focusing and gaining passion about the problem and not the solution, right? That's the solutions where people get sad. "Oh, I thought this was the one." I said, "that's cool. Let's try again." Sometimes, I tell people later on, it's like, "do you know what WD-40 is?" You know WD-40, right? Water displacement. What's the 40 stand for?

Suzanne: Yes, yes. The 40th time when they got it right.

Arshad: Right, and I say, thank God it wasn't the 39th time, right? WD-39.

Suzanne: Doesn't have that same ring?

Arshad: Yes, yes. It doesn't have the same ring, but that's exactly what I tell people. When people like rip up their hypothesis statement, I say, "No. Save it because I want you to see how much effort you've gone. I want you to build that. Okay, not we're on experiment number 40. Maybe it's going to work." Those are the talented CEOs that I like to work with because you see they have that passion and drive, and they get there. I think that's where the stubbornness comes in. It's not when the sponsor or the stakeholder is stubborn about their solution, but they're stubborn about solving the problem. That's the differentiator.

Some clients who say, "you have the solution, and the solution doesn't work." Well, our relationships don't stay engaged long because they usually find some other cheaper developer to just make the product they want. Then, sometimes, they come back 6 months later, and say, "Hey, Arshad. Can you help us out again? These things didn't work. Is that okay?" You had fun not making product. Now, let's just try these small bets, right? Small experiments to see where it can level up. You that AdWords thing? I've done that for our enterprise clients. It's interesting how I have- the tools and the processes are the same- it's the ability to execute that just changes. It’s just the scope and the scale.

Suzanne: Right, right. Do you run into this problem? I know I certainly have, where you have prospective client, and they say, "we're doing this very special unique thing that's all about us, and we're unique." Do you have any experience in that? They're like, "Well, I've got all of this experience, and it's domain-specific, but I don't have the 1-to-1 experience of the very specially unique thing that only you are doing or believe to be doing." You mentioned earlier, this outside, looking in. Are you of the opinion that when it comes to user experience, the less industry-specific knowledge you have already, the better it is or that doesn't matter? What's your stance on that?

Arshad: I'll give the consultant answer, "it depends." It depends.

Suzanne: I thought that was the instructor. It's always going to be a little different.

Arshad: Yes. No, it totally depends. I would say there's a perception. We know perception is showing within reality, so clients feel confident when you've done this for another like industry. Knowing that they want that if I'm pitching them, I need to instill confidence in our agency or our consultancy. I think that's one. That's where the relevance comes in. I think 2, the concern is that when you become focused, because I know there's a great dev shop in New York. They only do Android, and they're Android experts and Google swears by them. The challenges that they've gotten so much focus that they have a lot bias there. They've lost that competitive spirit, and they believe the entire world is powered by Android devices, right? Their solutions are very prescribed by the textbook vacuum design guide. It has lost that connection with like, "well, what if people use other devices than Android. What are the learnings from there?" I think there's a balance. That's what mean "it depends."

Yes, having industry or relative experience lessens the challenge of instilling confidence, but I think having too much and saying, "I only work specifically with" ... I mean, we actually got turned down for a project for Coca-Cola because they wanted to make a product and marketing for, they call them tweens - it was 13 to 19-year old females. I was like, "yes, we don't have any portfolio pieces like that." I said, "shouldn't you also be concerned if you're only looking for that specific niche?" Those girls are going to become older, and girls that are younger turning into 13, right? We were missing those gaps. I think that's what I said. I give the "depends" answer. I think it's a balance. I think being way too industry specific is a danger. I think having no industry-specific in pitching a company, I would say "you just need to be committed to persevering. Don't give up." They're like, "oh, well, this wasn't my forte, and so I'm giving up."

Suzanne: One of the luxuries we have as consultants, as hired hit people, is you're always getting to touch something new. You certainly build up a big portfolio of new and different. You've been with Digitalworks now, you said it's been 5 years, right?

Arshad: Right.

Suzanne: Do you ever have moment where you long for a home? Where you think, "I just wouldn't mind being part of something, and taking it from inception to rapid growth to maturity to decline"?

Arshad: Tell me this question. I've had some close friends ask me. It's like, "how come you haven't had your own start-up?" I see it the same way where I see there's people who have fallen to 3 types of modes. They can cross, but usually, people will explore 2, and then, they'll end up in 1. The 3 roles that I see is that you can be a technician, so craft, a person, a designer, a developer. You can be a manager, so that's resourcing in operations. Then, there's that person with the vision. The stubborn one who, "we will do this no matter what." I think to buy into a company or to find a home, as you said, I would need to fall in line with that home’s vision or mission.

Me, longing to have a home, no. My excitement and passion is I have a process. I have a technique. I want to run that as many times as I can and as many diverse areas as I can. The goal for me, the home for me is having my process rendered in the broadest diverse environments I can. I think that's to answer that where I don't see myself having a start-up just because I don't ever see me, getting so passionate about 1 product vision. It's even more stretch for me to join a company because I've got a lot of strong opinions where, again, I'd have to be the CEO. That's doing a start-up where I don't see myself doing that either.

Suzanne: You're passionate about process.

Arshad: Right, operations.

Suzanne: Yes.

Arshad: Right? Making it happen. I love and I think that's the mindset that I'm good at helping people, coach them into. Saying, "we are here to build for speed. We have to get it out there as fast as possible." I was talking about MVP. I remember there was a company where there was a new application we had users sign up. There were all these tickets for deactivating the account, so deleting the credit card. I said, "look, we have zero customers, zero revenue. Why are we bothering about deactivating?" They're like, "well, legal won't approve it." I said, "well, don't even tell legal because we don't have this thing launched." It's about like are we building for speed, or are we building for scale, where it's very different conversations.

When I say for scale, we have to understand that what you build from your zero to 5 customers is different from 5 to 10, 10 to 100, and 100 to 1,000, 1,000 to 100,000. It's like "I'm not driving the first car I had. I'm not living the same little studio apartment I first had. I had to get a bigger apartment, got married, got a bigger apartment. Now, I'm about to have kids. I have to get a house. Your technology needs the scale and evolve in that sense, too. Building for speed, building for scale, those are the things that I find passionate about helping other people with their ideas for.

Suzanne: Right. Yes, I certainly relate. I love hearing you say so candidly, "I'm not a visionary." I feel the same about myself. I think I've met so many great visionaries in my lifetime, and a lot of them have been so completely unmoored, as visionaries have to be. They're elevating 20,000 feet, looking out into the distant future, but the great visionaries have often been paired with those grounded people who can say, "let me now pluck out in sequence the things that need to happen." I feel a little bit about myself as, "tell me where you want to be, and then, I can figure how to get you there."

Arshad: Yes. Yes, I know. I've got the resource. It's funny. So many times. It just happened yesterday. I was having coffee with an old friend. He's like, "I just want 15 minutes." I was like, "Okay, yes. Let's go." We spent half an hour. He's like, "so what do you think about this idea?" I was like, "It doesn't matter what I think, because honestly, if you want my two cents I think it's stupid, but I've told everything is stupid. What's important is what do your first customers think? What do they want? Is it delivering the value to them, right?"

I remember that we had a CEO. She was a single person. She was CEO of her brand new start-up, one person. She said, "I have that X amount of dollars. I want to build this." I said, "no, it's dumb. Not going to happen. Let's go find some customers." I didn't say it was completely dumb. I was a little more tactful, but what I said is it was unproven, and it seemed like a long shot, paraphrased down to me, saying dumb. What I did ask her is that, "if you get me twice the budget, I will continue the conversations." That was 2 sides. I thought 1 would just have her go away because she was very persistent, but what happens in 2 weeks is that she gets double the budget. I said, "Oh my gosh. Do you know why I asked double budget?" She said, "so we can build more features." I said, "no. We're with the same amount of features, but when we fail, I know that we can still go a complete second cycle." She was like, "Cool. Let's do it."

Then, after all these heavy moments where I kept telling her, "You're wrong. You're wrong. Let's test it. Let's test it." She said, "Why are you so pessimistic?" She's like, "you're just squeezing the jam out of my donut." I said, "no. You're the CEO. You keep that passion, and if you're still passionate after all the doubt I put in you, this is going to be awesome." We got that relationship. She understood that she's up there blue skying and I'm here trying to get her down. You buy those custom font licenses. It expires after 200,000 impressions. She was very concerned. She's like, "Wait, so next 200,000, we have to buy another license?" I said, "Yes." I was like, "First of all, do you understand how many impressions we have to have for 200,000 views?" She's like, "Yes, but we're going to scale this company." I said, "You keep thinking that. When that happens, let's talk about it. Right now, can we go with this?" She's like, "Okay, for now."

Suzanne: When you have that problem, that means you also have 200,000 people hitting your page. It's not the same problem anymore.

Arshad: That's exactly it, but she had that vision, right? "It's going to be used by everyone. 200,000 is not enough." I'm just like, "we've got zero. Let's wait until we get there." It was this great healthy dynamic where she was heads in the cloud. She gets all credit for it because all I did was my activities. The moment there was something that proved incorrect, she came up with another one. She came up with another one. Honestly, I don't have that drive. If I try an idea, and it sucks, I give up. I'll go do something else. She kept trying, kept trying, kept trying, kept trying. That is a characteristic for someone being visionary. I'll keep trying as long as you pay me, right? That's why he needs twice X the budget. I knew we had runway to keep running the experiments.

Suzanne: That's the pragmatism of process. It's not just about the check. It's like, yes.

Arshad: No, resources to do them, right? I give it all credit that through her stubbornness and sheer will of wanting to succeed and her openness. You said this in the very beginning. She was always open to feedback. In fact, she would come on the testing calls. She was like, "oh, my God. I can't believe they said. We should do this and this and this." She got the process, and she had then a team that run the process, and the team respected her. It's a crazy one with these big ideas that drove them, right? That's the aspiration. That's where we wounded up.

From her sheer stubbornness and 9 months, they started making money 9 months after they launched. It's now been about 2 years that they're actually profitable, and they're going for investments. It blows my mind. This was the same thing that I said. It's dumb. I still think it's dumb because I don't understand why the market can't drive the services elsewhere. Clearly, they're okay paying that premium. She's making that premium, and she's delivering it. It's great, right? Again, it goes back to "I don't know if it works or not. What I do know is that I'll prove it to you if it works or not."

Suzanne: As the self-proclaimed pessimist, are there any products in your life right now that actually get you excited where you think this brand has been able to create value for me? Here's how.

Arshad: I'm sure a lot of people think this, but I think Uber, just from so many angles. When I first used Uber, it was the black car. This was years ago before anyone really knew about it.

Suzanne: That was their original value proposition?

Arshad: Yes. It was the town car.

Suzanne: Ride in style.

Arshad: I felt like I was on Entourage. I whip out my phone, and a town car would come. First time my wife was with me, she was like, "who is this? You're just jump in a random car." I'm like, "it's for us." She's like, "oh my God." That cool factor. Then, I remember it would be about a hundred- It was about $90 from LAX to my place and less than when it first came out, it was so worth it. 90 bucks done, black car, and now, I get in this whole issue. I'm like, "you're going down from 5 stars to 3 stars because you took Santa Monica instead of Wilshire. The whole bill is like $18 in my UberX, but it burns me, right?

It's interesting how they've gone from this luxury experience to now it's become a utility. It's in fact, my primary mode of transportation. What's interesting is that in all these and working for a lot of agencies and advertising clients, it's like time on-site or time in app and yet, I call my Uber from home through Amazon Alexa. I say, "Alexa, call my Uber." It's there, zero time in app, but yet, they're making money.

Suzanne: You're messing with their metrics.

Arshad: But they're making money, right?

Suzanne: Right.

Arshad: They're get that $7 ride out of me. It's amazing how in the world where everyone's concerned about eyeballs. Uber built a genuine business that delivers value and drives revenue for them, right? It just marvels me how their whole value prop is open the app, push a button, close the app. You talk about one-click shopping on Amazon, which was brilliant. Again, I mean, I had to eventually remove my credit card because I was shopping way too much on one click. That one click was addicting. That was a great product.

Suzanne: Do you have any dash buttons lying around?

Arshad: No, my wife does it. I don't even get close to it. I just push them all the time, but Uber did the one-tap app. Open the app, tap the app, close the app, get in your car. You would get in the car and be on your way. The other app that's really just timing is the Pokemon Go.

Suzanne: You did it? Are you doing it right now?

Arshad: I'm testing. I'm testing. I'm testing.

Suzanne: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay.

Arshad: I'm testing up to level 16 right now.

Suzanne: Don't test your way into a busy traffic, by the way.

Arshad: I actually had to take someone out of the middle of the street. I saw this kid. He was probably in high school. He was in the middle of the street, and I went, tapped him in the shoulder like, "Hey, dude. Get out of the middle of the street. You could still catch it from the sidewalk." I think what's interesting is I went to 3rd Street Promenade this weekend. It blew my mind. I felt like I was in the Truman Show. I did not know what was going because every single couple, everyone was glued on the phone, playing the same part. That is creepy. How the heck does that ever happen? The entire 3rd Street. Everyone was on this. I mean I saw old grandmas on these phones playing Pokemon Go. I'm just siting, and saying, "this is very bizarre." I know we didn't get the memo.

Suzanne: I think Pokemon Go is actually an elaborate ruse by the chiropractic to society to get us to start holding our phones 15 degrees more in front of our face because for the last few years, you've got every ... People say the number 1 criticism of Pokemon Go is "look at all of these zombies walking around with their phones like that." I said, "it's actually better than the zombies we've been for the last 5 years, walking around face down on the ground." Fascinating.

Arshad: They're just walking around. Yes.

Suzanne: You did it.

Arshad: There's this whole thing like VR, AR. I'm sure I might rub people the wrong way, but VR, I don't understand. I know there's a great saying.

Suzanne: That's because we're old, by the way.

Arshad: That's probably it, but what's interesting is there's the saying. It's like, "there's 2 types of VR. People who tried it and get and people who haven't tried it." I mean I tried VR. I still don't understand going into an immersive world, but AR, I 100% get. AR is brilliant where this, being a game that plays with that light AR, I love it. I love how someone's made a practical version because it takes me back. I remember when I was on the Gameboy and the cartoon show. This is so cool. I've got a photo where the Pokemon was on my car dashboard. I love it. I tweeted it to everyone. I was like, "hey, look. There's a Pokemon on my dashboard." That's good use of technology and that nostalgia of like, "I wish I was capturing Pokemons with my Pokeballs.

Suzanne: Well, it's a great example. We talk about value. I mean AR has been around for years. I mean I remember when I was just getting started. Clients would say, "do you guys do anything?" Same thing, right? "Do you guys have lots of experience in AR?" "Oh, you mean the brand new technology that nobody has made commercially viable? Yes, we got tons. What do you need?" The problem is people want to leverage technology independent of the why. I think this is what you're talking about with product, with user experiences. We want to do the thing, or we want it to look this way, or we want to work this way. Everybody always dives right into the trenches without understanding "who is it for? Will they want it? Is this viable? That big V in the MVP." I do agree, watching from the sidelines because I haven't been playing Pokemon Go, is finally, somebody figured out how to make AR interesting, viable.

Arshad: Yes. No, that's what excites me. It's that more games will now ... This was like the game that's going to start that. Something interesting on that, what I think is also brilliant is that it's the second company that's nailed that hooked model. Tinder, right? Swipe left, swipe right, and I've had so many clients that say, "oh, just give us the Tinder interface." I was like, "okay, let's understand. The interface is not what makes Tinder successful. It's the outcome, and there's this mystery that I'm going to keep swiping, and there might be a random connection, but it's really the outcome of that connection."

Well, the real value of Tinder is well, we know what, but how can your app, a fashion client, that swiped left for the dress, swiped right for the dress, and will match a dress correctly to you, that outcome of me, finding the right dress is nowhere near me, hooking up with someone. That whole hooked model doesn't get there, but Pokemon Go has actually nailed it because what's interesting is people are walking around in the hope of something popping up. It's that rogue match on Tinder, and the outcome, instead of getting laid, the outcome here is leveling up your Pokemon. Someone's nailed it. This random act of, "will I get it? Will I not?" Then, even when you throw it to catch the Pokemon, sometimes, it gets caught. It sometimes pops it, but it's these moments of excitement and delight that is exciting that it's the second app that I say, "they've really got that hooked model."

Suzanne: When you say hooked, for those of us listening, and you're referring to Nir Eyal's book: Hooked.

Arshad: Right, right, right.

Suzanne: How to make habit-forming products. What else is in your reading list, listening list, places of inspiration?

Arshad: Yes, so it's interesting. My reading list is a little short. The book I recommend UX designers or up and coming people interested in UX is Lean UX by Jeff. I think it's a great mix between Lean start-up and applied UX thinking, because there's the whole academic science of human-centered design. Lean UX is number 1, usually. Then, Hooked is another great book. There's also interesting when we talk about this. I don't believe that there's a level 2 or 200 course UX course.

There are level 2 product in business and all this, but with UX, there's a simple straight forward process. Then, level 2 is called practice. It's gaining experience with learning that process. For me, it's interesting where you start to trust the process. There's been moments where I've been in client workshops and engagements. I was like, "oh, my gosh. Everything's going off the deep end." I'm going to try to manipulate the situation, and then moments I don't, it works. For me, with the UX, I think it's for me. It's going to events in the community, going to events around the world. I think the thing I like the most is there’s a lot of great- I follow a lot of cool people on or people I think cool on Medium. That's really my go-to store.

Suzanne: How come you don't follow me? I really put you on the spot. That is the definitive. Don't worry. I'll send you the link later. You'll be like, "I'm so glad."

Arshad: What is the link?

Suzanne: Well, I got a few. I mean @suzanneabate, @devfactoryla @100productmanagers.

Arshad: That's what I was going to say. 100 product managers.

Suzanne: We're making history. I already told you. You were a part of this. Removing the needle.

Arshad: Yes, no. It's interesting. My source of inspiration is doing. I don't read a lot of books. The 2 books, Hooked and Lean UX. I've read Lean Startup. I've read these books because they've been in the industry, but for me, it's doing. It's interesting. Someone was saying, "this UX process is so long." I said, "okay, everyone, get a black sheet of paper." I broke down the process in a 1 hour design thinking workshop. I said, "take 5 minutes. Find a stranger. Talk to them. Understand their pain point. Go take 5 minutes to find the articulation of the opportunity. Then, take 10 minutes to sketch out some ideas. Take 5 minutes. Make the product. In 20 minutes, come back to that person, and say, 'would this solve it?'"

That's the long and the short of it, right? It's developing empathy, identifying the opportunity, making the solution and testing it. To me, that's the source of inspiration, to see "was my investigation ... Did it have bias? Was it true? Was my solution appropriate? How far off?" I think there's lot of intuition that is developed that instills confidence to knowing like, "okay, we can go forward." I mean the small scale has more personality, right? It's a process, resource, operations type of guys.

Suzanne: You just went on record, essentially, and said that masterful UX can be distilled down to 30 minutes of some sketches and some chatting.

Arshad: Yes, I've got a medium article in draft mode from that one.

Suzanne: Okay, okay, okay. Send it along. Last question for you, Arshad. I know you're a busy guy. Is there a "I'm going to have a mug. You're going to print a quote. Your name underneath." I ask people this. Personal mantra, some sort of sound bite that you use that you really feel reflects one important philosophy or belief that you have about life. It doesn't have to be UX specific.

Arshad: I'm going to butcher the quote. That's what I'm trying to remember but it goes, if it doesn't fit in an experiment, or if it can't be experimented, then it's wrong.

Suzanne: Right.

Arshad: That openness to try. It's the excitement of discovery, and it's the willingness to keeping on, keeping on.

Suzanne: Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Arshad: My pleasure.

Suzanne: Great chatting with you, and do send along the article, and I'm sure that all of our listeners are going, "where is that article?

Arshad: We'll link you. Yes, no, I'll have that in draft mode. I'm interested to see how the community responds to it.

Suzanne: Awesome. Yes, let's experiment.

Arshad: UX in 1 hour. I feel when I get myself into.

Suzanne: All right, Arshad. Thank you so much.

Arshad: Thank you.