Contact Us

We’d love to hear from you!

Register Now

Qual On Demand

with Jonathan Fairman of dscout
Aug 09, 2017
36
Back to Podcasts
36
Qual On Demand | 100 PM
00:00
Qual On Demand | 100 PM

Jonathan: My name's Jonathan Fairman. I'm the Vice President of Product at dscout. I think I'm here because I really love what I do. I was enamored by the 100 PM podcast, and bringing people to Chicago, which is super cool.

Suzanne: You haven't always been in Chicago. You were in Arizona. That's where you went to school. And, how did you go from school in Arizona to Director of Product at dscout in Chicago? Tell us about that.

Jonathan: Sure. The classics ... so, I graduated in 2000, which is quite a while ago in the world of, sort of, product and technology. Growing up, it was going to be designer of some sort. Engineer, artist, something.

My program at ASU had an emphasis, not just on the core of product design, but of ethnographic research, and design planning. So, that really opened my eyes at a fairly young age to what it meant to take a deeper look at why you were making decisions in your product.

And, that very quickly led me to some interesting opportunities in Chicago, when I graduated.

Suzanne: What was the first product-related job or first, sort of, career job that you had out of school?

Jonathan: So, I graduated and came immediately to a company called Doblin Group. Doblin is an innovation consultancy, and what we were doing there was user-centered service design and business design. So, when it came to understanding someone like Luxottica, and what it meant to re-imagine selling glasses in the eyewear procurement process. And, people have ... it's a medical moment, it's a style moment. And, how do we start to break those down and see how we can re-create an experience.

So, I very quickly moved out of physical product through education, and into the kind of more experiential space. That was about two years. I missed getting my hands on things, and joined a company called Gravity Tank. Gravity Tank was a little more traditional product design, innovation, with a heavy research bent, and then many, many years later, dscout was spun out of Gravity Tank.

And so, my connection to dscout and my last, almost two years here, really did start almost 15 years ago.

Suzanne: Wow. So, you kind of had a fork in the road, and then you went your own way, and then went back.

Jonathan: Came back. Yup. Yeah.

Suzanne: Talk to me about research because, what I think we’re at this really interesting intersection where user experience design is suddenly part of the vocabulary at all the levels in all the industries, and more, and more, and more there are streams of education available for people to get introduced to user experience design, and the user research part is an old, this is an older discipline.

And, when you say research, it doesn't always sound cool like UX Design sounds cool, and product management, or product design and development sounds cool. So, is research cool? Was it cool to you as a young guy to be doing?

Jonathan: Research is super cool. I'm a people nerd. And, you know, at dscout that's sort of something we've really embraced, this idea of being a people nerd. Because, if you're not curious about people, you're not gonna create good product or good service for them.

I think, when I was young ... I've a real affable mom. She just seemed to know everybody. She was a teacher in my hometown. And so, there was a lot of just ... in every moment, out and about, as a kid, you were talking to people, or you were listening to a conversation.

And, you know, good product should speak to people. It should inspire people. It should evoke emotion. And, without really understanding a person's relationship to that experience, you're not going to be able to get there, I think, through the design work alone.

Suzanne: One of the exercises I typically do with folks that take my class, first, first class is introduce them to this idea that, to be a product manager, it's really just about looking at the world differently.

And, we all actually, I believe, have this ability. We just may not be connected with it. We get a little bit self-involved. We're kind of living in our own world. And so, it's first an exercise, at least as I describe it, of stepping outside of yourself and observing, even your own decisions.

"Why did I choose that particular brand? Why did I purchase this one and not this one? What did motivate me to make this decision?"

And then, when you start to get bored with observing yourself, then you kind of turn that lens to other people. It sounds like you've been doing this. Maybe you've had that lens on your whole life, as you're describing.

Jonathan: Yeah. You know, even just a reflection of this conversation, it seems that way, certainly. And it's ... I think it's also, it is really hard to separate your point-of-view, because it's a very emotional thing.

You feel it. You are there. You are experiencing it. And, to feel like, "Well, that's what other people must experience," and I think that's that gut check of, like those quick hit research projects, even if it's a simple interview. A quick interview with a person or two. You can start to see very quickly that there are other ways to look at the world. You know, we're not a culture of a single belief. And so, I think that the power of research and getting outside of your own shoes, so to speak, it's just a very meaningful, and can be a very quick way to see other perspectives.

Suzanne: And so, going back in time, you're doing research, you kind of, you couldn't have avoided it. You were basically groomed to become this empathetic creature, and where did you pivot into more of the product design aspect?

Jonathan: Yeah. So, you know, out of school, it was a real ebb and flow between design and kind of research roles. And, you know, I always enjoyed that kind of raw creation process. And, it wasn't until, I think, probably four or five years into my career, that moment when, you know, you start your career and you're just like, "I'll tackle anything. Just give me anything." And that's a good approach. I think that's a very positive way to start your career.

But, eventually, realizing what really motivated me got, actually, a little out of design, the subtleties of, like we have an amazing design team at dscout. They're better at design than I am. Right. You lose some of that edge of your practice, and that's why you bring in, you know, fresh experts.

But of sort of crafting that experience, and designing something that's a little bit different than some of those very unique moments or the physicality of a product, and starting to think, sort of, where that whole experience goes, and then taking another step out to scratch in that kind of business itch that I had of, "What does it mean to have that strategically fit into a brand sort of portfolio and their impact on their audience?"

Suzanne: How do you think the point-of-view as a product person who comes from a deep research and design background, and still very much part of you, how is that point-of-view different from, you know ... you've listened to the show, as you've said, other folks who might have been born up in digital products or come from a technical product management background.

How does your specific lens shape who you are as a product manager?

Jonathan: Well, certainly, it shapes me good ways and bad.

Suzanne: Okay.

Jonathan: I think maybe that's a realization after quite a few years in a career. You know, in the good ways, it gives me a very clear language to speak to design, and to speak to the end-user.

I think, ultimately, where it starts to make me different from a lot of people coming into the field as a young contemporary would be these issues around measurement. The very sophisticated, sort of, frontal analysis, and deciding, making decisions based on some really powerful, you know, quantitative measurements of some history of, sort of, dedicated documentation styles, that maybe were derived out of being an engineer, in a previous career.

You know, engineers, you can't give an engineer wishy-washy. "It should do this, kind of-" You know, hand motion is not a spec.

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: You know, you get like agile, and then like hyper agile, and like super fluid, kind of, you know, interactions, but an engineer knows what they need. And so, there are moments of learning, even still to this day, of making sure I'm putting that hat on. I'm being empathetic to their point-of-view, and what it means to truly get a spec.

No matter how chaotic a schedule is, you still have to deliver these things. So, you know, certainly, pros for being able to speak to one part of the workflow but, coming from design also comes with its own peccadilloes.

Suzanne: Well ... and I'm gonna stay here on this point because we pick on developers a lot lovingly on this show, but I like to pick on designers too.

So, we can come back to picking on you, but what I'm kinda hearing you describe, I think, is the validated learning approach that has sort of become really readily embraced in product-thinking, which is, "Let's experiment. Let's measure it. Let's make an adjustment based on that insight."

And, to your point, a lot of those measurements are increasingly being leveraged through, as you say, quantitative data, right? "What is our churn? How can we fix that? What's our retention rate? How can we drive that up?"

And, a lot of the times we can patch up the funnel based on those quantitative insights, and there is an important qualitative aspect to the build, measure, learn, sort of loop, right?

So, what I'm hearing you sort of say is, "I subscribed to a validated learning approach, but I'm kinda way over on the other side of 'let's measure it through qualitative analysis'."

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, and that is ... you know, I'm a very numbers-oriented person. That's just who I am. But, the experiences I've worked with throughout the arc of my career have primarily been qualitative.

Now, at Euromonitor, where I spent eight years building their product team, after a year on the consultant team, we were dealing with heavy duty quant. But, that was more market research, different than frontal analysis of a user through your products.

And, what I think is really helpful for us at dscout, where we're not dealing with 100,000 users a day. So, we don't have ... we just don't have the luxury of some B2B or B2C products, as far as volume of data that comes to the platform.

So, we can start to understand, you know, is this feature worth reproducing, if we're gonna do a rebuild in this section of the product. You know, we can take a quick look at usage stats and get a sense of, "You know what? We can de-prioritize this. We have other things that we think will bring more value."

Then the ... but the flip-side of that with the qual is that it's just such a galvanizing kind of research, and it's the product we build. So, our culture at dscout, while we believe in quant and understand how that can highlight where situations are happening, the qual can really get into the nuance of what is someone experiencing, "How are they feeling? What is their emotional response gonna be?" Even if it's a business tool, you need to have a lot of confidence, even at dscout.

So, we have this moment where you design your research, you build your scout pool, the participants who are a part of the research, and then you hit launch. And, we have a couple of like analogies that come out, people like hitting the launch button is like packing for a big trip, right? It's an anxiety moment. "Do I have everything?" You do the ... touch every pocket 12 times, "I've got it. Good."

Or, you'll get this idea, it's like playing with live ammo, because you're releasing research to your participants into the wild. And, even though that doesn't happen a lot, because intrinsic, it's just sort of one moment in research, we still see the emotional feedback we'd get, and we talk to our customers about that moment.

It's so important to understand that we want to give them as much confidence as possible for this thing that is a minute of what could be a one-week, six-week, 12-week arc. And, that's just not a quant kind of data point to me.

Suzanne: What is your favorite or what are some of your favorite tactics for quickly grabbing research?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: Yeah. As product manager.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, I have a luxury I'm gonna get into first, before maybe talking about what it means to get outside of that luxury-

Suzanne: What luxury?

Jonathan: The luxury I have at dscout. And so, we have a consulting component to our business. So, I can turn and talk to anyone of, a number of power users and these are a special type of user. They're power users.

I can turn to them and ask them anything I want about the product. Anything about what they're experiencing at that moment.

"Here's a sketch. How do you feel about that sketch?" I can get immediate feedback.

In addition to that, we get to throw alpha, pre-alpha, really course interactive pieces, and technology pieces. Let them try it out. We don't have to worry about building a glossy interface that makes it clear. We wanna see if the change we, if the power we give them influences the quality of the research that they’re doing.

Suzanne: It's almost like an in-house usability lab that's happening.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: You don't even have to go down to Starbucks, and most of us have to take someone's Starbucks and say, "Can I buy you this coffee and show you this sketch?"

Jonathan: Yeah, exactly.

Suzanne: You do have a Starbucks downstairs. I suppose you could bring some to them.

Jonathan: We could. And, seven ways to make coffee here, so we're covered.

Suzanne: Well, in that sense, it is a quintessential startup, by the way.

Jonathan: Yes.

Suzanne: The folks listening can't hear, but I walked in, open concept, all the computers going, all the usual markings you expect to see-

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: In the vivacious, young ... I guess it's a young company-

Jonathan: Fairly young. We're, you know, technically, I'd say we're five years old. You know, really founded in 2012. But yeah. We're like-

Suzanne: A startup? Do you consider yourselves a startup?

Jonathan: So, I do not have as much experience in the startup space as probably a lot of your audience. I came from a big global business. So, this feels a start-up as I've ever felt.

I think of us more though as like an awkward teenager start-up, as opposed to a seed. You know, we have a mature product. We have customers who have been with us for years, who are signing contracts for years further.

So, we have a growing maturity about us but, certainly, you know, someone right now's making a pile of grilled cheese for happy hour, and someone else is making a whole bunch of mixed drinks, like there's definitely a good mix of fun, and startup mentality.

Suzanne: Right. And so, to go back to the question-

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: So, you know, part of it is, all the traditional things you expect, paper prototypes, getting people in a room, and the benefit, as we said, of having some of those users be more or less in the building, so you don't have to go out in the rain to get the data.

What about other things? What's worked well for grabbing qualitative data quickly?

Jonathan: Yeah. For us, I think, building a clickable prototype and doing a screen share, getting that feedback from a user is such a nice method. You can reach out to somebody, schedule a 30-minute call the next day, and get into some pretty meaningful feedback.

I think, in reality, if you can talk to four, five, six people, with a click-through, you're going to see if there are stumbling blocks or not. Are you going to valid the concept as a whole? No way. That takes, sort of, more strategic thinking, maybe a variety of testing.

But, to understand if a new way to present your messaging flow is commonsensical or discoverable, you can really, through screen-share, through clickable prototypes, do some quick stuff.

You know, we challenge ourselves at dscout to use our own research tool. Right. That's at the heart of what we offer. And, it's good because, one, we learn all the pain points 'cause it's not a perfect product, right? That's the nature of product management. Criticality and optimism.

But, that doesn't always suit us because it's primarily sort of an app-driven interface. So, we find clickable prototypes for reaching out quickly, to be sort of our first approach.

We also have, sort of, a luxury I'm just recalling is that our customers, our users, are user researchers. And, they love nothing more than getting to be on the other side of the table. Instead of asking the questions and trying to understand what's happening, they just get to finally be the person who's listening too.

So, our users are natural communicators and eager to give feedback.

Suzanne: Right. Let's go into dscout, because we're right here and we're all around it. I think it gives a lot of important context to kinda the things that we're discussing.

Jonathan: What dscout provides, we have a researcher-focused side, sort of a web app, where you design your research, manage your research, and then analyze the feedback that you get. And that feedback comes through the app, which are Scouts. So, the Scouts are really research participants. And, they would be asked by our clients to go on unique missions.

"I wanna understand snacking." And so, that would start with a research maybe programming three missions.

Mission one is, "Tell me who you are and how you feel about health and wellness, and how you eat." Just a nice kind of introduction mission. And so, the scout, through the app, will shoot a one-minute video talking about it, maybe take a couple pictures of their cabinets. We can get an early inventory of how they eat.

And then, we'll have the second mission would be, for the next week, record an entry every time you snack. And so, we'll ask them to shoot a little 30-second video, to talk about that snacking moment.

And then, the researcher would program it into a series of questions. "Were you bored? Were you hungry? Was it at night? What time of day was it?" You know, sort of behavioral. "Were you at home? At work? On the go?"

And so, what happens is that you've got this collection of snacking moments. And maybe that last mission that the researcher programs in and sends to the app, that's received by the Scout would be just a reflection.

"Now that you've thought about snacking for a month, how does that work?"

So, what you end up with, what the researcher ends up with is through remote ethnography, a very quick way to understand the life of a snacker, and to build many, many snacking moments. And so, it's a technology window into someone's life.

And, well, maybe I should stop there for a second, but I kinda wanna compare it to more traditional ethnography.

Suzanne: Yeah. Well, the only interjection that I wanna make is it sounds a little bit like from the researcher participant perspective or the Scouts, as you described them, that it's essentially like being on Snapchat, but with provided context.

Jonathan: Yeah. I think that's a great analogy. And even-

Suzanne: You can use that for the website, if that helps you with your position.

Jonathan: It might. It might. You've met Cam, our VP of Marketing. I will let him know, and if he likes it, I'll let him know it was my idea.

Suzanne: True Product Manager.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: Okay. So, go on.

Jonathan: So, I think that analogy is nice, if you think about this just having never heard of dscout, we've got a tool that lets a researcher send a series of questions, driven and centered around uncovering special moments and capturing that through video, and open and close-ended questions.

And, those participants and their day-to-day lives, and the moments that they're in the places, that they're really experiencing these things, can feedback as a diary, in a sense, through the app, and back to the researcher.

Suzanne: I mean, and this is such a fascinating idea because, you know, when we talk a lot, when I coach about customer researching, customer development, and those, you know, famous words get out the building, and the challenge that comes up inevitably is, "How many people do I need to talk to if I'm constrained by geography?" And, "Can't I just go online?" You know, the other side of not wanting to leave your computer, but somehow get all of that qualitative feedback.

And so, it sounds like what dscout also allows for product companies to be able to do is get out of the building remotely without sacrificing the look-me-in-the-eyes-ness of it.

Jonathan: Sure. The emotion.

Suzanne: ...the moment but, yeah. The emotion. Thank you. The emotion about it. The realness of it. The imagery of it, or the video imagery of it.

Jonathan: Yeah. I would agree. In fact, to build even further on that, is not every moment can be captured in the company of a researcher. "What's the last thing I do before I go to bed?" Or, "What's my routine when I wake up in the morning?"

This is not an easy thing to fill out in a survey. And, you know, it just doesn't work that way. It's also an awkward moment to have a researcher living with you, or longitudinal studies, someone like Fitbit, and what is that adoption process look like? How does that expectation shift over time?

You know, you get it. You un-package your Fitbit, and it's wonderful. Then you try and sync it, maybe you have trouble. So, you've gone from excited, to dejected. Right. And, we have videos of these moments, but then you achieve your first goal, and you're elated, and you achieve another one, and you now have a satisfaction curve of someone's adoption process over 30 days.

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: And in each one of those moments, you can relive the elation or the frustration through these videos and photos.

Suzanne: And participants presumably are ecstatic to share because we're now in a society of oversharing anyways, already kind of part of how we operate.

Jonathan: Certainly.

Suzanne: "Wait. Let me get a quick photo of what I'm about to eat." We're doing that all day long without context.

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, [inaudible 00:25:30] with dscout was, "Oh. Everyone's gonna have a mobile phone. What a great conduit to their lives." And then, there's this multiplier on top of it of, as you point out, like social media and just imagine what the last five years have changed. Now people interact digitally, and what they're comfortable saying into their phone.

We did some work with the ad council about a year ago on online bullying, and we had a lot of teens as our Scouts, and it was this heart-wrenching feedback, and recollecting of being bullied, and witnessing bullying that they were sharing with us.

And, you can kinda see culturally how, imagine getting a teen to open up to you, a stranger, even if you're a wonderful ethnographer, you're great at listening, but you've got this scared, closed-up teen who witnessed their friend being bullied. And these are the kind of moments that can get shared through this platform, in a way that we've never really seen in traditional research.

Suzanne: Right. Well, the other interesting thing about how it reverses the traditional model of research is, and you've sort of already intonated this, is you no longer, as the resear ... you know, we always talk about Henry Ford, that great quote, right, "If I asked people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses."

So, the advice that researchers get is strategically surface insights. I'd like to describe it as being an archeologist, it's like just dust gently around the bones, if you just go right in and try to yank it out, you know, you're not gonna get it.

And, in some ways, it allows us to circumvent that process. We don't need to intrude. People will just open up on their own, and honestly, and in this kind of shared private interaction.

Jonathan: Yeah, and within important contexts.

So, if you ask somebody, if you do an intercept on a store, while someone's buying hot sauce, and you ask them, "What else were you considering besides hot sauce?" Maybe they say mustard. Maybe they say vinegar.

But, when you go to someone's home, and you say, "Show me everything that flavors your food. What do you use for big flavor?" And, all of a sudden, there's garlic.

So, you've got hot sauce, you got three kinds of hot sauce, salt, pepper, and garlic. And, do the hot sauce people think of garlic as a competitor to their product?

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: Right. The consumer does. But it's not in the same aisle. It's not in a focus group situation, and this is the power of being in the environment, and capturing those little details that become very actionable, very quick for a product team to take on.

Suzanne: I'm getting so excited about seeing the product itself, because, so I wanna go to the other side. We talked about the participants, so I'm a product manager, or I'm a product company. dscout is a tool for me. This is a tool for product companies. Benefit for me.

Jonathan: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Suzanne: So, product companies, if you're listening, this is a tool for you. So, I can through the interface ... I don't even need to talk to you. I mean, you're a nice guy and I am enjoying talking to you, but I can essentially get on-boarded with dscout, use the tool, create my own research. Can I select my own Scouts?

Jonathan: You have to be a subscriber or enterprise customer to use our recruiting tool. Right, so we presently have a diary tool and a recruiting tool.

And that's that quick recruit to access. And, certainly, anyone who's done research understands the quandary, and the effort that can be part of recruiting. So, that is for our subscriber, enterprise customers.

But, we do have a DIY. We have an assisted project that started to open up some of those potentials. But, if you have your own participants, certainly, you could really just go to the site, sign up, use the tool, without any kind of intervention from us at all.

Suzanne: I love it.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: I love it.

Jonathan: But it's ... to be fair, and I kinda mentioned it earlier, as a product person, for all of us, it is a balance of optimism and criticality. And, if you've never done research, you need to take a second. You know, it's not ... you're still doing research. You still have to have that mindset. You still have to think about the subtleties of what it means to write good questions.

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: We don't write questions for you. We have templates that you could start with but, you know, it's not just a kinda quick rapid fire. It's still ... because research is important. You know, you ask a good question, you're gonna get a good answer. You ask a dumb question, you might get a dumb answer.

So, you have to go into it with a mindset of, "I'm here to do research," not, "I'm here to get somebody a video of my user."

But, I think, that's just intrinsic, in any kind of thought-provoking task.

Suzanne: So, on the company side for your company customers, who is the ideal end-user, just to build on that point that you're describing?

Jonathan: Sure. So, I think the ideal end-user is anyone on our product team, so that we get a lot of sort of UX research. We get some on the, some strategy people who wanna understand and start forecasting and sort of road map work.

You know, that's sort of our sweet spot today. And anyone who's ever cared about what a person thinks about their product or how they interact with their product ultimately is a potential user of the platform.

Suzanne: Now, I can imagine for myself, it would be dangerous because I would get lost, and then just being in research phase, like I love this idea of creating missions, and then just sitting back in this portal, and getting connected, because I think talking to people is one of the most exciting aspects of product management.

I mean, I would ... I share very much with you the sentiment of empathy, which is something that you brought up earlier, and it's just so fascinating to learn how people think, and not from a place of judgment or criticism, but just like, "Huh. Would never thought that way."

Jonathan: Sure.

Suzanne: Isn't that fascinating?

Jonathan: Yeah. And, in that point, I think it's nice to just kinda build on the empathy theme for a minute. The in-depth interview, or these sort of interactions that we get to have here today, there is nothing better, certainly, you know, it's all the texture of human conversation and reality.

Suzanne: That's why I came all the way to Chicago to be with you-

Jonathan: Yeah, and thank you for that. But, what's still cool, I think, with dscout, or any remote ethnography tool, is that you are still getting real moments, and that wince that that person is making when they're trying to describe what it means to charge all their devices while they drive, that's a real wince. And you can see that. Now, that video is telling. But it's also just a good reminder, I think, of the importance of getting that research done.

And, more and more research timelines are getting squeezed into product timelines. So, a researcher may have, you know, five-ten years ago, easily, six, eight, ten, 12 weeks to visit six cities and sit with, you know, two families in each city to make sure they understood how the laundry process worked, and everyone's home, and it's a three-hour site visit, and you've got airfare, and you've got logistics, and instead of having all that luxury, and it was meaningful, and it helps set the stage for the power of research in product and service design.

But, now it's researchers have to work on design sprints and engineering sprints. And, that risk of ... we're starting development of this in two weeks. We know we've got some sketches. You know, we need some form of insight. And that's where-

Suzanne: Maybe you should've back fill six months of qualitative insights into five days. Can you go into that-

Jonathan: Yes, please. Yeah.

Suzanne: Right. So, dscout facilitates that crazy ask-

Jonathan: Sure. And it does. It's, you know ... our consulting team does some projects that run very long because we're doing really intense, really exciting kind of work, but we have plenty of customers, where our normal project is, set it up on a Monday and Tuesday, recruit Wednesday and Thursday, on Friday, start firing off the first missions. Your Scouts are engaged.

Let's say they go through that weekend, and then to the end of next week. And, you have that last week to take what you've been watching already pour in, 'cause the entries, the data just pours in.

And, you've got a week to kinda synthesize it, and put it together, and deliver it, and share that with stakeholders, and invite your peers into that experience that you're going to share.

So, really, in a week or two, or three, you can do amazing things.

In three, four, five days, you can still do very meaningful work because you can get into 20 people's homes in a day.

Suzanne: Yes. That quick deployment that you were talking about earlier, that I think is equally significant. And again, it sounds a little bit like ... one of the problems, shockingly, or maybe not shockingly that I get a lot is, "How can I organize all of this research data that I've collected, and sort of get it out in front of me?"

And, it sounds like the tool that you're designing and building solves exactly that problem. It doesn't just solve the problem of, "How do I get research far and wide, and on demand?" But, it gives you, presumably, a well designed interface for organizing and distilling the data, and being with it.

Jonathan: Yeah. You know, very much so. Let's just assume it's the best design interface ever for analysis.

Yeah. The reality is, if through intention, most of these research missions are centered around a little 30-second or 60-second video, and that is so, it's bite-sized, because anyone who's ever coded up a three-hour home ... you know, back to the laundry example, when you code up that kinda work, it takes 12 hours, but when you have 50 one-minute laundry moments that are part of an entry that came back to you, where you had a couple close- and open-ended questions, you have very structured qualitative data, which makes it a very special quick-hit thing.

So, you can say, "Okay. I've got 50 videos of what it means to carry my laundry down the stairs," and you can sort them on, you know, "Is the load heavy? Is the load irregular? Is it about the door jammed at the stair's turn?" You know, if you're asking these questions, you're essentially pre-tagged to slice this up.

And so you can get into the insight very quickly. Often, research for anybody who's sort of done these projects, it's like an infinity diagram. It's a very physical activity sometimes. You print everything out, and then you organize them on a wall, and then you re-organize them, and then your stakeholder comes in, and you re-organize them.

Suzanne: It's stock photos of product management everywhere that makes it look like we do this really cool stuff.

Jonathan: Yeah, or even in this room [crosstalk 00:38:47]. Our culture, you see these grids? Like we don't mess around. We pin up in perfect grids, 'cause you never know when someone's going to take a picture.

But that ability to take qual, which can be messy and unstructured, and have it in this little bite-sized pieces, let's you share those empathetic moments, I think much quicker.

Suzanne: Yeah. I mean, I told you I was excited before. You're not doing anything to make me less excited, which I guess is also part of your job.

Jonathan: There you go.

Suzanne: I wanna go back. I told you earlier I was gonna pick on you, and now is the time. Feels appropriate. So, one of the things we talk about a lot in product management is this kind of translator quality that we need to have, 'cause we're speaking, we're working with so many, we're a cross-functional team. We've got developers. We've got designers. We've got sales and marketing folks. And, they all see the world very differently, and speak in the world very differently.

And, what do you think makes it hard to work with design-centric, research-centric folks, like yourself?

If I were a product manager, and you were on my team, and I know there's gonna be moments of friction, because Jonathan has a very specific way of seeing the world, and a very specific set of ideas about what the right process is.

Jonathan: Yeah. I think the frustration might be the process. Maybe like, "Let's try it this way. How'd this work out?" Or sometimes being ... I'm very comfortable being in the loose. Unstructured moments of life, where let's just quickly put of heads together, solve this, and move on, where that might disrupt someone's workflow. That might disrupt their expectation because, on the Monday stand, they didn't know we were gonna be doing this later in the day because of that stand is about the day.

These are probably the things where, when you get a design focus, kind of research, soft around the edges, mindset, these are the things that come out, as opposed to, "I have an MBA," or "I have a computer science degree." And, strict order. Facts. Schedule. You know, is the way.

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: So that ... you know, trying to be earnest and honest. That's where I would drive you crazy.

Suzanne: Well maybe not me. And, you know, we've talked about the values of agile, right? Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and agile is hard in that regard because, as much as we all understand like, you know, you can go back and forth on an email, ten times with somebody versus solve it in two minutes by just jamming it out in a room.

It sounds like you're the, "Let's just jam it out," guy. People are avoiding you on slack or whatever 'cause they're like, "Jonathan's gonna pull me into a room and wanna jam it out in a minute."

Jonathan: Totally. This is like a session. This is gonna make me feel better when we're done with this. This is good-

Suzanne: I told you there was a big reveal about why you're really here.

Jonathan: I like this. Yeah. So, you touch on something. You use the word translate, which is funny because in the last meetup I spoke at, I had a slide about translate.

And it was about ... that was simply by using someone's terms. When sales uses “MRR”, learn what “MRR” is, and use their word, not yours.

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: You know, that sort of level of translate. But there's also that need to understand and be empathetic to how everyone works. And, in that same presentation, I talked a lot about, for research folks, certainly, you have all these tools of understanding your users.

Take those tools. Turn them to your colleagues. You know, make sure you understand their day-to-day life. The plight of the engineer is insane. They are juggling 10,000 lines of code that any one moment of any little kernel of that code fails, the whole thing comes down. The whole house comes down.

Suzanne: It's really a semicolon miss and then-

Jonathan: Totally. And I'm a lousy speller, so I'm especially empathic to that kind of moment. And, you know, I've been bit. I've learned my lesson. I'll get bit again. But, that reality of making sure you're being considerate how everyone works. And so, at dscout, we're always sort of striving, particularly with the product engineering teams, to keep a little bit more of an asynchronous communication flow.

"Here's a quick little doc. One-pager with an animated gif about what happened in the test session we did with three people. When you have ten minutes, go for it." And making sure we're trying to leave those things out there, because what you can never afford to have happen is communication breakdowns. Because as soon as you stop communicating, everyone grinds to a really ugly halt, whether it means people are building the wrong thing, or resources are becoming out of alignment, you really need to make that happen.

And so, understanding how people ... and it could be, you know, one sprint team versus another might need different communication tactics. And trying to be respectful of that.

Suzanne: Is everybody at dscout, you know, just talking about communication, is everybody at dscout in the same office, or do you have like a distributed team-

Jonathan: We are, primarily, we have a couple of technology partners kinda spread over all over the place, but that is sort of for peak moments, and some specialized tasks. So, we are generally all in-house.

We have a full stack engineering team, front end, back end, database, IOS, android, QA, all right here. We have every other business function. You know, marketing, our success team, you know, customer account, sort of management. Just the works.

Suzanne: Yeah, I guess, you know, we're talking about communication, and I'm just curious about your thoughts on what it takes to ... and, you're sharing, I guess some of the specific things you're using here to facilitate better communication, but any advice for our audience or opinions about how do you be an effective communicator in a cross-functional environment, whether it's an in-house team, as you have here, or whether it's with distributed resources, you know, you've worked in large organizations.

I can imagine you've participated in remote teams as well. How do we get better at communicating with our collaborators?

Jonathan: Yeah. It's just like inspect and adapt. Right. If we think about how we're building product, I think it's also how you build your communication flow. You know, set up a process, try it, see how that goes for a month, ask everyone how that goes, like ask for that kind of feedback, and change.

Don't be afraid to change. I think as a very straightforward lesson, there's also just making sure you understand everyone's sort of peccadilloes, and strengths and weaknesses, and the tenor, you know, like the temperature of the room, kind of.

Like, right now, we are cranking. We've got some really big deliverables, and really exciting stuff. But, if you drop a firework into that, you know, it's just not gonna be pretty, whether it's with the marketing team and changing a date, or the sales team and changing a feature that everyone thought, you know. And so, making sure that everyone that you're communicating, sort of, the right way, the right moment.

I think that's important. And always be honest. You know, it's good news or bad news. You need the news. Don't tell someone, for example, I would never hide from our account management team that we're not going to do a feature. I'll push, and I'll push, and I'll push, and I'll see if we can get it done, and as soon as I learn that we can't, you have to tell them.

It's bad news. They don't wanna hear that. It's a bummer. But they need to know that, right? So, you can't, particularly, for sort of someone young, starting their career, it's okay to give bad news.

Yeah, you don't wanna give news like, "I'm super hungover and I can't come in today." That's a different kind of bad news. But-

Suzanne: But owning the reality of the situation-

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: Giving people, I mean, I could get really tangential about it and even the ways that can affect our personal lives, but when you control information that's not only yours to control, you take choices off the table for the other person. And, I think that is an important aspect of this, it's yeah, no one wants to come and say, "Hey, we're not gonna be able to do that thing that we said." And, certainly, not for like, "I'm trying, but I wanna give you, whether it's 24 hours, whether it's two weeks, whatever the amount of time, probably not enough. But, I wanna give you that so that you can have the full array of remaining choices at your disposal to do."

Jonathan: Yeah, I totally agree. And, actually, with that also makes me think of, and it's the worst when product people do it. But it's to come, not with solutions, but with problems often, right. Instead of saying, "Can we make this thing do that?" Whether it's a technological issue or a sales process issue, come with, "I'm having this problem. I'm trying to achieve X. Any ideas of what we can do?"

I think that's a ... 'cause that's our dream as product people. You never want someone, "Hey, I've got this idea. What if we clicked here, did this?" What you want them to come and say is, "Hey, I've got this problem. My users always stumble when they're trying to find the files to attach."

Suzanne: Right.

Jonathan: Right. That's ... so.

Suzanne: Learning "How can we solve this approach."

Jonathan: Yeah. And I think a downfall of a lot of product people is this idea of owning the decision. It's theirs. It's theirs to make. And you forget that you're surrounded by experts and, if you're lucky, they're not just experts, but also really, really smart people who also feel the same way you do, and want to make good product.

Suzanne: Well, what ... let's talk about advice for our audience here. We do this segment called Get the Job, Learn the Job, Love the Job, what advice would you, Jonathan, who has been in this world of product design and research for a long time, not to age you, but-

Jonathan: No one can see this beautiful gray, coiffed hair.

Suzanne: Yeah. Yeah. What advice can you give to somebody who might wanna get into this world of product management, whether, you know, research-centric or rooted in the technology, either way.

Jonathan: Sure. I think, you know, I kinda did a little pre-thinking on this, just because I know this is a really nice element to all your podcasts, and about like getting that job, particularly when you're very young, learning about all the roles, not just the product manager roles, but all the roles, that you'll be interacting with, sort of, day-to-day.

"What does it mean to talk to a developer? What does it mean to help a product marketing manager get the information they need? When would you talk to that person?" Because if you come into a particular as a young sort of vantage point, and it's like, "I'm a strategic thinker," and you probably are, and you have this big vision of how you could re-design a service or a product, but if you can't communicate that well with the people, that it's really gonna take to make that happen, you're going to stumble pretty hard.

So, making sure you're fully aware of the context of all the roles around product management, I think is something to really strive for. But it's also, I think, cool is that a lot of people come to product management from engineering or from marketing, or from a business degree. And so, you've already got a really good grasp on one of those conduits.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Jonathan: And I think building on that. 'Cause there's lots of great programs. General Assembly, these kind of like bootcamp programs, but making sure you're fully aware of the context of everyone, you're gonna be working with, I think, is really helpful.

Suzanne: We just built a quiz, actually, I'm pretty excited about. It's a pmquiz.100productmanagers.com and it's the 12-point product manager inspection quiz and we spent a lot of time in the analysis piece to make sure we could give meaningful feedback, and that was one of the pieces was, "Congratulations! You've got a great business acumen." And, here's a whole other array of skills and perspectives that it will serve you well to get to know.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: That's just a little plug, but what I love about hearing you speak, you're so genuinely about empathy. I know that you're very active here in the Chicago tech community. You speak about empathy at a lot of product events. You brought it up here in this conversation a lot, and in particular, not just of course empathy because of your researcher background, but how important it is to have empathy for the colleagues, the internal stakeholders. You practice what you preach.

Jonathan: I try.

Suzanne: Consistent.

Jonathan: Yeah. That's nice to hear. Thank you.

Suzanne: Tell us about the hardest lesson, either that you've had to learn, as a PM, or just what you think are typically the stumbling blocks that PMs have as they get to be ... this is kind of the learn the job piece, right?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Suzanne: How do you learn to be a PM the hard way?

Jonathan: Ooh. I mean, the hard way, I think is really making sure ... like you always have to keep communication open. And, if you don't, and it kinda breaks down, that is, at least for me, the hardest lesson I've learned of just getting kicked in the shin. Completely on my own, because of ... and it can even just be a few weeks. There are teams, costly teams, motivated teams, and if they're not focused, if they're not being fed the right diet of smart, lean product, or the right information, something's gonna break.

And so, sort of back to the good news, bad news, whatever it is communicated, be as clear as you can. Be respectful of how people wanna be communicated to.

Suzanne: Yeah. I mean it's a really, I think, great observation, because once people shut down, it's very, very hard to get them to open back up. And, if you're lucky, and maybe if you do the pre-work that you prescribe, which is get to know people and their point-of-view kinda coming in. If you're lucky, you started an environment where it's open to begin with. It's kind of yours to lose, so to speak. And then, just don't lose it and that requires staying empathetic, staying connected, staying communicative.

Jonathan: Yeah. Exactly. I agree.

Suzanne: Well, what do you love so much about product management?

Jonathan: I love that it is sort of that fulcrum in the moment of bringing an experience to life. And there's that pivot from, "I have a lot of ideas." And people ... a good idea is a dime a dozen, executing and delivering a good idea is ruthlessly hard. And, that kind of challenge, and the reward of seeing it happen is really fulfilling. I would layer on top of that, finding a subject matter for my career, this idea of this research space, whether at Euromonitor, with sort of forecast consumer good data, or here at dscout about these texture-driven insights, and all of the qual insight. That quest for knowledge. I really enjoy this space, because people are really striving to learn, and I think that's just a good goal for everyone, to always be ready to learn more.

Suzanne: Yeah. We can't take the creators out of us, as PMs. I think that much is, for sure, proven to be true.

What about recommended resources to add to our growing list? Blogs, podcasts, books, and it doesn't have to be product management-centric, but just things that have inspired you or you think might inspire others.

Jonathan: Sure. There's the First Round. Their blog, you can get it on our mailing list. I think it's great 'cause it's a little start-up-ish focused but the subject matter is wide-ranging, and back to that point about understanding everyone's roles, it's nice and fresh to be reminded every third week, to read what it means to seek funding, or what it means to, you know, the paralysis of over-designing an interface, or what it means to have really lean engineering.

And so, they have a nice mix of content and well-written and beautiful website. So, I appreciate that as a resource.

I think another resource I'm enamored by, and maybe, again, you know being 16-17 years into my career, is young people. I think that young people are such an awesome resource, because they're just like guns blazing eager. They're wide-eyed and they're, "Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Check this out. I just saw this," and it's really important to listen because, you know, for me, when I graduated Arizona State with an industrial design degree, product management didn't exist. Smartphones didn't exist. Flash just been released. And-

Suzanne: I can't save you from-

Jonathan: No, I know. I'm cool with it. I'm comfortable. But this real issue that young people bring just that eagerness and that curiosity. You know, they uncover the weird corner of the internet that you didn't know existed.

So, you know, I think listening to them, they have a lot to bring.

Suzanne: Yeah, that's a good insight. One of our guests, Bettina, shared exactly that sentence, she's like, "I just gotta try all the cool stuff that people are doing because that's how I stay connected to a different point-of-view."

Jonathan: Totally. And I have this folder on my phone of just weird apps that get sent to me, you know, from my brother, and his younger friends, or people I work with, or young designers, and I've had some pretty hilarious moments trying to-

Suzanne: Trying to figure them out.

Jonathan: Trying to figure them out or make the sense like, "Wow. This is a cultural change."

Suzanne: Yeah. Things are different. That's for sure. This is my last question for you, I mean I'd love to sit here and chat with you all day, but I'm aware we can't talk forever, Jonathan.

Do you have a saying? Do you have a quote? A side of the mug? A belief system? Something that drives you as a leader, as a father, as a guy in the world that you wanna share?

Jonathan: Yeah. I have a saying that's probably cheesy, and I'm not sure it's super work-related, but “if you're not having fun, what are you having?”, I think there's certainly one.

I think maybe more to the point and sort of from the career side, of course you should enjoy your career, but is this idea of using civility, in respect in everything you do, give people the benefit of the doubt, make sure that you're treating them respectfully.

They don't know who you are yet. They don't know what you're capable of. And, certainly, everyone is capable of really amazing things. You know, be prepared to be surprised by them, because if you're not, if you don't give someone that kind of opportunity, or if you're just gonna shun someone from the beginning, you're gonna miss something amazing that they could've done for you, or with you.

Suzanne: That's a beautiful sentiment. I just wanna reflect to you as well, I imagine your team is very lucky to get to work with you as a leader. You don't always hear such generous perspective from leaders, and so, I hope it's inspiring for our listeners to know that we can all grow up to become great leaders, and empathetic beings, and in an environment of collaboration and inspiration. So, I'm sure you have a lot to do with that.

Thank you for being on our show. It's been really such a treat.

Jonathan: Oh. Thank you so much. Yeah. I echo your sentiment.

Play audio interview
No Comments
Keep Listening

dscout

It's hard — very hard — to consistently understand what people are experiencing in the moments that matter. It's even harder to know how to apply those insights when you get them. dscout's mission is to change that by helping customer-obsessed companies see and feel how people experience their products and services in everyday moments that matter.
About Chicago

Chicago, on Lake Michigan in Illinois, is among the largest cities in the U.S. Famed for its bold architecture, it has a skyline punctuated by skyscrapers such as the iconic John Hancock Center, 1,451-ft. Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower. The city is also renowned for its museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago with its noted Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.