This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The Pitch
Arrange a formal meeting with the stakeholder(s) to present the proposal. In your accepted design role, you’ve probably had many chances to earn the trust of your product program and senior executives within your company. However, the first time you approach the creation of a product vision might be seen as stepping outside your “lane.” It may sound counterintuitive, but a good way to set yourself up for success is to make in-person attendance a priority for both the presenter and the key stakeholders. Face-to-face human connection can be an invaluable asset, especially when pitching. Achieving this may mean working with each stakeholder’s executive assistant to coordinate when everyone is in the same location.
Be aware that the price tag might scare off even the most open-minded leader. How can you convince your employer that putting in the hard work to assemble a strategy-driven product vision is a worthwhile investment? Arm yourself with this book’s case of the devastating effects a business will suffer due to absence of proper product vision. If you see that complete success is not in the cards that day, negotiate for a partial win, such as a trial period. Be sure to document the agreed-on decisions, no matter what the result.
Pitching Etiquette
If you are new to pitching, the first greenlight may take a few tries. Be patient, but persevere. The more you pitch ideas, the better those proposals will become. Here are a few quick scheduling wins that could tip the odds in your favor. Be mindful of the day of the week and time of day you’re scheduled to pitch. On a Tuesday, that mid-morning slot should be golden. Everyone has time to settle in first thing, send emails, and then give their full attention before they tackle the rest of the week. Choosing your timing is an easy win that will set you up for success. Avoid early-morning Mondays and end-of-day Fridays, always. The stakeholders will either be just waking up or already checked out for the weekend. Lastly, be sure to avoid the week right before a big holiday or the weeks that have department conflicts such as a multiday conference.
Documenting Result
No matter the result, the conversation at the pitch meeting should be documented. The proposal should be amended with the stakeholders’ contributions. Send the adjusted proposal to the contributing stakeholder for formal approval. You must request and secure a firm commitment to dedicated resources before the product vision work officially kicks off. Strategic designers conduct all product vision efforts one hundred percent above board, no exceptions. And always favor written approval with email receipt over a verbal response.
Trial Period
Here’s the rub: all stakeholders may not be so easily persuaded by the power of a strategy-led product vision. In this situation, try to convince them to sign off on a trial period. A trial period is the time required for a full product vision completing each of the four phases (see Figure 4.1). If necessary, break your work week into three or four contiguous blocks—that way, you can be flexible and fit in other projects and responsibilities, both yours and those of your stakeholders.
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Not Vision Ready?
Maybe your senior leadership team isn’t quite ready to invest in a fully funded product vision. Go back to basics. The most common need is to transition products from business-centric to user-centric. The digital products created by many large enterprises tend to reflect internal organizational structures and can be bloated with unnecessary features. Your initial proposal may simply be to demonstrate, “What if . . . ” showing how a product could be more effective if solving customer needs took top priority. Here you are simply aiming to better understand and better focus on delivering value to customers. Challenge yourself and your fellow designers to focus on identifying opportunities and making improvements doing what they do best: interaction and interface design. Get the ball rolling by redesigning a feature that’s already on the market. As an exercise, ask the team to consider whether they’re truly considering the user’s point of view and to think about how they could create an alternate approach:
Are we doing what we’ve always done?
Is there another way of thinking about this?
Rethink how the user interacts with the product at a high level and how you could make it more user-centric, and then present the concept to your product team. For example, suppose your company still has a website that resembles its organizational hierarchy chart; consider how might you get started with integrating design at a more strategic level by redesigning the website (or a section of the website or an application) to make it more user centric, and then measure the results. With each tiny victory—learning about and designing for user needs, delivering hypotheses to test solutions, and measuring how they’re working—you and your fellow designers will continue building the trust and credibility needed to move towards earning your first product vision initiative.
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FIGURE 4.2 You Are Here, the first phase after approval: assembling your team.