Adding YouTube Videos To Your Axure Prototype

Many software products, mobiles apps and websites now-a-days have video embedded in them. So it is necessary to prototype features that show the experience of playing a video. Your prototypes will be far more realistic, if you can show video playing inside your prototype. You can do this in AxureRP.

Here is a video showing how to do it.

The Concept Behind The Cover Design by @EnricGili

The cover of our book "Look and Flow" was designed by my friend, co-author and colleague @EnricGili. The photo is a sparkler in motion. Enric said that this evokes both the spark of creativity, the allure of its flow, and the ability to draw in the air. We hope you enjoy it more, now that you know the story behind the cover.

We encourage you to draw, to make and use that to trigger your thinking.

My Colleagues Believe In Look And Flow

A few months back my employer acquired another company called SuccessFactors. I shared the philosophy of look and flow with the product team there and suggested that they build prototypes to convey their ideas to customers and development colleagues. After a few weeks of watching me do it my colleagues there have started prototyping. They even bought a copy of my book, look and flow. A very satisfying day for me.

Why we like to make things rather than talk about them

“If you need to explain something, try getting real with it. Instead of describing what something looks like, draw it. Instead of explaining what something sounds like, hum it. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction. The problem with abstractions (like reports and documents) is that they create illusions of agreement. A hundred people can read the same words, but in their heads, they’re imagining a hundred different things.”

- Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – Authors of the book Rework

Conversation is the most powerful learning technology

Conversation is the most powerful learning technology ever invented. Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation. Encouraging open, honest conversation through work space design, setting ground rules for conversing productively, and baking conversation into the corporate culture spread intellectual capital, improve cooperation, and strengthen personal relationships.

- Jay Cross

Keep track of the topics discussed and the people who brought them up

Once you engage with a customer, you need to make sure that every single conversation session is documented. It is important to track what has been discussed and who said what.

Such documentation will be very useful for the product manager who plans and manages conversation with customers. It is important to keep track of the people who attended and what specific ideas and thoughts they shared during work sessions. Document the questions customers pose and make it a point to cover them in subsequent sessions.

Keep track of the person who asked a question or shared a thought. It is not enough if you just associate the thought with a customer. It is important that you associate a thought with a person. A technique you can follow to keep track of this is to always write down the name of the person who shares a thought and then write down the thought. This way, you can always associate that thought with a person rather than a company.  It is much better to say  “Jane from ABC Corp, who manages their warehouse operations said this” than to say “Someone in ABC Corp said this”.

Guidelines for conducting a product conversation session

There are some basic principles that you can follow while telling your story to your customer.

1. Show up at the customer's office, if you can. It shows respect. It tells them that you care for their thought. It is money well spent. As a product manager or product designer you are the voice of the customer and that is your only advantage over every other function. So customer visits should be your number one priority. Nothing else is more important than that.

2. Always show a prototype or draw a picture on the white board. Don't show a set of slides. This forces participants to think differently, look at the prototype and imagine rather than go into a passive finger-pointing mode. The prototype must include a list of concepts that you want to confront them with for feedback. Organize those concepts in the form of a story you can tell by going through the different screens in the prototype. Pause for a few seconds after each concept is outlined and let the interviewees share their thoughts. Acknowledge any interesting thoughts that come up and move on to the next concept in the story.

2a. After introductions, ask them what they plan to get out of the session and write that down on the flip chart. If the crowd is large, ask everyone they plan to participate or if they are merely there to observe. Differentiate between the participants and observers and direct the conversation to the participants.

3. Listen more. Speak less. You should be talking for about ten percent of the time and listening for the reminder of the time. If you have a hard time keeping quiet, take on the role of the writer on the flip chart. This will help  you talk less and listen more. It will force you to keep quiet and will nudge customers to think aloud and direct you writing.

4. Write or draw on a flip chart. Don't sit down in a chair and write in a notebook where no one can see what  you are writing. Writing on a flip chart, conveys to customers that you are listening, synthesizing and are open for comments. They can see your thought process, point out gaps in your thinking and, if necessary, correct what you write. So take notes publicly. Not privately.
Tip: Avoid total silence when in a conference
If you are running a workshop via conference, while taking notes, please avoid silence. Tell the customer your taking notes so they know your are listening.

4a. Display all the flips charts all the time.
Do not flip the chart over and go to a new page. Tear the paper you wrote on and tape it to a wall. Do not worry. Customers do not mind you posting 4-5 flip charts on the walls of their conference rooms. Pausing to tape the flip chart paper on the wall will give you a logical break after about 15-20 minutes of conversation. If your colleagues are present, it will give them an opportunity to chime in. It will also give  you a minute to collect your thoughts.

4b. After your paste the flip chart on the wall, underline the key words in the notes, recap the conversation, point out who said what, and ask participants if you missed anything. It gives participants an opportunity to point of simple errors that are bothering them.

5. Document while at the session. Not after you come back to the office. Use a (phone) camera to take a picture of all the flip board charts. That is you documentation. You don’t have to write elaborate notes after you come back from the session. Post the pictures to a collaboration site, such as Streamwork, SuccessFactors JAM, Yammer or SharePoint, along with the notes and share it with customers.

6. Capture customer quotes and share them with colleagues rather than write elaborate reports. Your colleagues will appreciate the quotes from customers and users.

How often should you schedule your customer conversation sessions?

Product managers and product designers need to balance the time they spend designing the product and the time they spend having conversations with customer. After every customer conversation session, product managers will need time to digest the inputs, come up with ideas and incorporate them in the prototype.

Start with one or two customer conversation sessions per week. This should result in at least one iteration of the prototype once a week.

Once in every 4-6 weeks, plan to have a full week or workshops with multiple customers. Call this the customer conversation week. The advantage of this approach is that you will be able to validate an idea with multiple customers within a few days and take important decisions. The disadvantage is that product managers and designers will have less time to incorporate feedback into the prototype. So you may end up talking about certain ideas rather than showing them in the form of a prototype.

Timing of your product conversation sessions matters a lot

One of the key responsibilities of a product manager managing customer conversations, is to determine the timing of the product conversation sessions. Multiple feedback loops with customers is a key advantage product conversation sessions have over traditional requirements gathering sessions. You should recognize this  advantage and make the best out of it by determining the number, timing and frequency of your sessions with customers. To do this well, work with the rest of the product team side by side, participate in product design sessions, understand what they are building and assess when the time is ripe to gather feedback on the newly prototyped ideas.

You might need additional feedback approximately every 4 to 6 weeks. If you are in charge of customer management, you need to develop and master your skills to assess this need for feedback and determine the timing of the conversations.

You also need to ensure that the conversation sessions actually happen. Once feedback is collected and analyzed, you need to nudge product managers and designers to incorporate the feedback into to a new and evolving prototype. This will help product managers and designers arrive at some decisions  as well as give rise to some brand new questions. By nudging fellow product managers and designers to have repeated conversations with customers, you can ensure that the feedback is actually incorporated into the prototypes. The fear of going before a customer will force the team to iterate the prototype quickly and bring it to a logical conclusion.

As a customer advocate, you need to make sure that in every session a new version of the prototype or a new idea is presented for discussion. This will showcase the evolution of the product and keep customers engaged.

Set Clear Expectations With Customers During Product Conversations

It is important to set clear expectations while engaging customers in a product conversation. In the first conversation you should clearly convey the amount of time they need to spend in work sessions every month, the type of people who need to be involved from the customer organization, the kind of product team members who will be involved from your organization and the time frame for product delivery.

You must be very frank with the customer and explain what the engagement means. One of the critical pieces of information you need to convey is that the product engagement is not a custom development project where all customer requirements are incorporated into the product without debate.  You should also acknowledge that the product design effort may not result in a product that will be released to customers. Prepare the customer for that outcome and be very forthright about that.

Being honest with your customer is the best strategy to earn their trust. Such trust will earn you a receptive customer who teams up with you to achieve the common goal of building the best product possible.

Type of engagements to have product conversations

We identified four types of engagements. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase:

• Asynchronous
• Unstructured Engagement
• Structured Engagement
• Cumulative Engagement

Where To Start When You Are Building A Customer Pipeline

While building your customer pipeline for product conversations, start with your current customers. You can also start with companies considering your products. Existing customers, who have already invested in your product portfolio, might be more inclined to give you time compared to a prospect. It might also be easier to get a legal non-disclosure agreement signed from a current customer. Some of your current customers may already have a non-disclosure agreement with you. But do not rely only on current customers.

In order to get around 10-15 customers you will need to start with a much bigger list of customers. Aim for about two hundred target customers. As your product hypothesis evolves, the list of potential customers will shrink considerably. Also, customers are normally busy running their own businesses. Not everyone is going to agree to share their time. Customers may decline the engagement for any number of reasons. So start with a long list of customers and expect the list to shrink rapidly.

Talk to experienced product managers in your team. Normally product managers have good working relationships with many customers. Rely on that relationship to build your customer pipeline. Another good approach is  to team up with colleagues from the sales or pre-sales teams. Sales teams sometimes will have a need to showcase future innovation to customers and prospects. These are good opportunities to extend an invitation to customers to participate in product conversations. Mastering your network is necessary to develop a healthy customer pipeline.

You cannot afford to be picky in the beginning. Starting with a mind set of “any customer is a valid customer” is good. Adjust the target customer description as your hypothesis and product evolves. You need to explain this approach to your colleagues in the product team to avoid a disconnect.

Building you customer pipeline for product conversations

For product conversations, ideally, you need to have about 10-15 customers engaged with you at any given time. Based on our experience, this number will allow you to get the right amount of feedback and will give you a good idea about the market you want to reach. To reach that number, you need to start with a strong customer pipeline.

When building customer pipeline for seeking feedback, you are not just looking for a list of customers. You need to consider many factors that determine the fit of such customers for your project.

There are three factors that determine the choice of customers.

• Product maturity: Is it the product at a vision stage or is it already in the market? Is it closed to being generally available for purchase?
• Customer Profile: What industry is the customer from and how big are they? What does the customer already own from your company product portfolio? Is the customer using a similar product from a competitor already? Is you customer looking for specific products?
• Value Proposition: Is your product solving a current problem that the customer is facing or a potential problem that they are yet to face.

All these factors evolve with the time. Such evolution is not a bad thing considering the fact that your hypothesis is evolving as well. The wider the knowledge funnel of the product you are going to build, the bigger the uncertainty about the type of customer you are looking for. The closer the product is to general availability, the easiest it is to get a perfect match.

Customer engagement is all about execution. So all this uncertainty cannot stop you from moving forward. As evolving factors interfere with your pipeline building process, you will need to build your pipeline step by step, where each step is a discovery.

Selling the value of product conversation to fellow product managers

Selling the importance of getting customer feedback to product teams is as important as convincing a customer to engage in an ongoing conversation. It is in fact tougher than convincing a customer. If you are the product manager designated to manage customer relationships, you need to treat other product managers and product designers as internal customers. You need to articulate the value of  customer conversations to them. It is not easy to convince a product team to engage in a structured ongoing conversation with customers regularly when they have internal deadlines to meet. You need to earn their trust and respect. No matter how busy you are, showing up in product workshops is a good way to start earning their trust.

The product manager who manages customers, needs to participate in product design work sessions with his or her peers and identify problems that can be solved by talking to a customer. Participating in a product design workshop and brainstorming sessions is the best way to understand the challenges faced by the product design team. Just concentrating on arranging customer conversations without an understanding of the purpose of the product or the current challenges is not good enough.

Understanding the challenges faced by product designers will help determine the type of customers to reach out to, the type of concepts that need validation and the timing of such conversations. Product managers who manage customers will also benefit a lot by gathering feedback from his or her peers on past customer conversations and course correct where required.

Selling the value of product conversation to customers

Engaging a customer in a formal product conversation requires some preparation. You need to be ready with three things.

1. The general hypothesis
2. The product value proposition
3. The specific value your product will bring for the customer you are talking to.

The most important thing the product team needs to have is a general hypothesis. For example if you are building a product that helps a company become more sustainable, you should be ready with empirical evidence that supports your argument about the need for a more sustainable world. The next step is to articulate how the idea you have will make the world a more sustainable place. The third step is to demonstrate your knowledge about your customer's specific needs and convey how your proposed product will make their organization more sustainable.

Finally, wrap all these points into a message that you can convey in different time durations. You should be able to convey the message in two minutes, in five minutes or in fifteen minutes. No matter what the duration, the message should come across clearly and succinctly. Practise it. You may not get it right the first time. So fine tune it as you go.

It is important to note that you are not selling a product. You are only asking your customers to invest their time in product conversations. From our experience we have learned that customers always make time for stimulating conversations about new products and ideas. It is your job to ensure that the conversations are stimulating and stay simulating.

The Right Person To Manage Customer Conversations

Attracting customers, engaging them in a conversation at the right time and keeping the conversation going is critical to the success of your product. So getting the right person to do the job is key.

Dedicate a product manager as the customer manager
Sharing your product design to gather feedback from customers is as important as designing the product itself. When formal feedback is needed, you need a person to dedicated 100 percent of his or her time to reach out to potential customers of your product and lead this exercise from beginning to end. There are many reasons why having a dedicated person for this job is critical for the success of your product.

First of all, seeking the right customers and keeping them engaged is a full time job. It is not possible for one person to design the product as well as manage the customer relationship. So we recommend that you dedicate a product manager to find customers, attract them, manage the conversations and ensure an ongoing dialog with them.

Among other responsibilities, this product manager should be able to:

• Identify customers that are a good fit for the conversation
• Explain the value of the conversation to the product team
• Organize and facilitate feedback sessions
• Keep the product team on a schedule, like a coach manages a team of athletes
• Capture and share the feedback collected during the sessions

Select a customer manager with the following skills

The product manager you select to manage customer conversations should have the following special skills and experience.

• He or she should be able to develop a strong customer pipeline. Therefore a former role in sales, consulting, market development, or a similar customer facing experience is a must. Such an experience brings a strong understanding of customer pipeline development.  
• The customer manager should be able to present a value proposition that works for both product designers and customers. This person should also have a deep understanding of how to manage customer expectations, how to be a customer advocate and nudge the team towards meeting those customer expectations.
• Empathy for customers must be in the blood of the customer manager you select.
• The customer manager must know how to develop a network within your organization. For example, the customer manager should be able to convince internal stakeholders such as account executives to get access to customers. It is also important that this person knows how to manage customer conversations without disrupting current account activities with the customer. Networking skills are important because customer conversations may require executive sponsorship on both sides.

On-Going Customer Relationship For Gathering Feedback

We identified four types of engagements to gather product feedback. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase. The types of engagements are

1. Asynchronous Engagement
2. Unstructured Engagement
3. Structured Engagement
4. Cumulative Engagement

Let us look at the Cumulative Engagement type

Cumulative Engagement

Duration: Multiple sessions every 2-4 weeks, each one lasting from 1 to 3 hours.

Cumulative engagement, is about establishing an ongoing relationship with a person or organization in order to get continuous feedback. This is a formal relationship to get consistent and evolving feedback from them. You do this with customers or prospects who might be interested in potentially adopting or buying your product. You can also have such a relationship with thought leaders who can commit to engage periodically and review a prototype every time there is a new one.

Structured Engagements To Gather Product Feedback

We identified four types of engagements to gather product feedback. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase. The types of engagements are

1. Asynchronous Engagement
2. Unstructured Engagement
3. Structured Engagement
4. Cumulative Engagement

Let's look at the structured engagement type in this post.

Duration: One session lasting from 30 minutes to two hours

When to use this: This feedback gathering method is ideal when trying to test a big module of the prototype and not just a simple feature or mental model.

This session is conducted in a very structured way and requires planning. It will help to do a dry run of the session with your colleagues before you conduct this session with a customer. Because the time of your interviewees is limited and you want to get the most out of every session, you have to plan and structure the session  so that you cover all mental models of the prototype you need feedback on. You do not need to have a list of questions. But you do need to have a list of concepts that you want to present for discussion. Organize those concepts in the form of a story you can tell by going through the prototype.

While telling the story at the work session, make specific pauses after each concept is outlined and ask the interviewees to share their thoughts. Once participants share their thoughts, acknowledge their feedback by repeating what you heard  and move on to the next concept within the story. This style of discussion will help you keep the conversation at a concept level and avoid getting into a feature function discussion.

Interviewees: Find people who are familiar with the activities affected by your prototype and expert in the problem space.

Reward: If you don’t have a professional relationship with this person, consider gifting a kindle e-Book or a gift card as a token of your appreciation.

Unstructured Engagements To Gather Product Feedback

We identified four types of engagements to gather product feedback. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase. The types of engagements are

1. Asynchronous Engagement
2. Unstructured Engagement
3. Structured Engagement
4. Cumulative Engagement

Let's look at the unstructured engagement type.

2. Unstructured engagement

Duration: One session lasting from 1 minute to 15 minutes.

When to use it: This is a very effective way of getting informal feedback. This is ideal when you are trying to test a small part of the prototype, when you are stuck, or when you have a debate within your team about a specific idea and want to do a quick check with someone who is not fully immersed in the problem you are trying to solve.

Interviewees: You don’t need to arrange a formal meeting for this. Find a friend or a colleague in your office and ask them if they have 15 minutes for you. You can also do such feedback gathering at conferences, industry gatherings and informal meet-ups. Don’t be afraid of asking people on the spot; these sessions stimulate the mind and you would be surprised how many people are willing to take a break from their daily routing to talk about something as exciting as a new product. Show just the specific portion of the prototype that you want to have feedback on. Start with a short introduction about the business problem you are trying to solve with the prototype so they get into the context. Walk them through the prototype and ask for their quick reactions.

Reward: For these kind of small interactions you don’t need to offer a reward. Conduct such conversations with people who are willing to provide feedback as a favor. If you find yourself going over and over to the same kind of people, think about offering a small thank you gift as an appreciation of their time.

For customer conversations, pick a style that suits your needs

The kind of feedback you want to collect and the type of conversation you want to have will vary across your product design and development stages.  If you are in a very early stage of your design, where you are shaping the vision rather than building a product, you may want to collect your feedback via informal sessions. Once resources are allocated to design and build the product, we recommend that you collect your feedback in a more formal forum with customers and potential users.

Informal feedback is usually collected from friends and colleagues who share their reactions to your idea. They may or may not be potential users of the product you create. In such early stages, you may want to get the inputs of experts who know the product space. Their expertise and thoughts are useful, even though such experts may not be potential users of your product. Finally, Customers who care about the final product will provide feedback about the suitability of your product to their needs. With such customers you need to conduce multiple sessions. You do not have to limit yourself to one type of conversations style. You can pick a combination of them depending on the changing conditions of your project.

Before doing any validation of the prototype you should think about the number of people you can dedicate to the activity and the kind of feedback you want to gather.  If you plan to have formal feedback sessions with customers, we recommend that you have at least one dedicated product manager to court customers and manage them.

Types of Engagements

We identified four types of engagements. You can choose the one that best fits your budget, time, skill and product development phase. The types of engagements are

1. Asynchronous Engagement
2. Unstructured Engagement
3. Structured Engagement
4. Cumulative Engagement

Let's look at all there engagement types one by one.

1. Asynchronous Engagement

Duration: One video lasting from 7 minutes to 10 minutes. You will get this feedback by sharing a video. 

When to use it? Conveying the story to a large audience with a video is a very effective way of getting informal feedback. Video is an effective and inexpensive technique to have a product conversation and showcase your product to an unlimited audience. Video conveys much more than a written email accompanied by a static presentation as you can show many details and convey more information. Video can convey a story and the emotion attached to it. Unlike a presentation, a video can show real world objects and convey high fidelity content.

Interviewees: Use this approach when you already know the audience and the audience already knows the context of the video. The interviewees could be people within the team working from distributed locations, customers with who you are already working and acquaintances from whom you want a quick validation.

You do not need a professional production. Just hold a video camera in your hand and point the camera at the prototype on a screen and tell the story as you would to an audience in a room. You do not need to write an elaborate video script for the story. The total time you spend on recording a story in video format and sharing should not exceed 30 minutes.

Making a video and listening to your own story narrated is a good way to experience the story yourself. If you are not convinced by your own story, you will get an opportunity to refine it. Based on our experience and feedback from colleagues we found out that seven minutes or less is the optimum duration for a video distributed to a large audience.

A well made video can replace a one hour meeting and can save several hours of time for you and your colleagues. There are several technologies available for sharing your video privately with a select group of people. YouTube is free and easy. Vimeo is another service that is very good for such sharing. Vimeo charges a fee for password protected videos.

We'll cover the remaining types of conversations in future posts.