Adaptive Path Blog

Part 1 of this interview.

Margret Schmidt is among our speakers at MX 2009, taking place 2-3 March in San Francisco. You can register for MX 2009 using the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off. Prices increase January 31st.

Peter Merholz: In your earlier discussion of the departments involved in product development, Marketing was not mentioned. In many organizations, User Experience is located within the Marketing Department. What is User Experience’s relationship to Marketing? Marketing clearly has an impact on your customers’ experience, whether through advertising or your Web site. How do you achieve a holistic user experience that spans all these touchpoints?

Margret Schmidt: Marketing is outside of the Product Development organization, and User Experience is inside Product Development. The VP of Marketing is very engaged in the executive reviews of all products and designs. The feedback from Marketing is frequently about how the feature affects the marketing of the product, and what impact it has on the brand. The “user experience” of tivo.com is owned by the User Experience team. Marketing is the “business owner” of the site. Basically, UE is a service organization with the task of designing a site that best meets the needs of the marketing organization. Marketing sets the requirements (like product management does for product) and they are heavily involved in reviews. Once again it really comes down to collaboration and iteration. Whether it is a new feature, a new DVR, or an update to the web site, we involve many different roles, each with their individual responsibilities, but all welcome to share their feedback and ideas on any area. Of course, the most valuable feedback comes from our user research.

PM: You’ve made it pretty clear how collaboration occurs internally, and how that’s lead to consistently high quality experiences. When I asked my colleagues what they wanted to know about TiVo, the most common question is how TiVo interacts with external partners, particularly broadcasters and television service providers who might not share TiVo’s cusotmer-oriented mantras. How have you handled these relationships and maintained TiVo’s personality and elegance?

MS: In general, our relationships with partners start because they believe the TiVo experience will add some goodness to their brand. That means at project kickoff they already have quite a bit of confidence that we know what we’re doing. We keep that confidence intact by actively engaging with our partners throughout the design process. We listen to their requirements, we design experiences that meet the requirements, we review the concepts together, and we are very open about feedback and research findings. Sometimes our partners have wacky ideas, and we educate them by sharing research and experiences. Sometimes our partners have great ideas, and we take them! It is important that we don’t have an ego in this – we need to ship a great product *together*.

PM: You make it sound so easy! I want dirt! I want the messy details! Well, I know there are probably limits to what you’re willing to share, but I think those who read this would benefit from more specifics as to how you created that kind of alignment with your partners. I’m thinking there are two areas where this is key — at the outset when you establish a project’s vision, and throughout the project when reality prevents elements of that vision from being realized. So, have some follow-on questions: How do you establish a common vision at the outset of a project? (Documentation? Special types of meetings?) How do you educate them along the way? What works best, and, perhaps more importantly, what hasn’t worked? What mistakes have you made that we can learn from?

MS: Surprisingly, there really isn’t dirt. (Which is probably why I love my job so much.)

The relationship typically starts with a project kickoff meeting. It is attended by program, engineering, and executive leadership from both companies. These are one to two day meetings where much is shared on both sides about requirements, logistics, communication, etc. A portion of the meeting is dedicated to the user experience. We walk through our current UI, show them some designs in the works, have them walk through their product, and we talk. We talk about what they like (and don’t) about our UI, and what they like (and don’t) about their own. We hear their hopes and dreams for the product, and we share ours. We explain our design and research process. Our goal in the meeting is to listen, build trust, and learn the personalities of the players. This is the beginning of a long relationship where we need to be responsive, accommodating, and continue to show leadership in the design-for-TV space.

Sure, there were times when it got sticky. At the beginning of one project, a partner seemed most interested in creating an experience that had some areas that looked like our UI, and some areas that looked like theirs, so as you went from feature to feature you would have a different look and feel. Through patience (and lots of examples of what that experience would look like) they were eventually won over from what I called “the Frankenstein UI” to an intact TiVo UI. We had to do it in a way that they actually believed it was going to be a better experience and not that we were bullying them into it. We understood their motivation for wanting to maintain some of their experiences (brand and consistency with other devices in the home) but we needed them to really feel what it would be like for a user.

As far as documentation, there is typically a PRD from Product Management detailing requirements, but we often get high-level agreement earlier based on a set of UI Concepts. We use PowerPoint to show screens and walk through typical use cases. It is SO much easier to explain features by showing them. The team will engage better and have a deeper understanding if they see a few screens showing what a feature might look like instead of reading some bullets about its functionality. We use these concept decks throughout the design and development process. If we’ve had to change a design because we ran into a challenge, we send them a deck that shows the new behavior. Our partners are typically remote, so once we’ve had that initial face-to-face meeting we review concepts over the phone. Once you’ve met the personalities involved, you can understand the feedback they are giving. Trying to explain your designs, design philosophy, and that you are really open to feedback — when you’ve never had that personal connection — is one of my worst nightmares. If you don’t connect well in the beginning of the relationship, everything else is harder. You need to establish mutual trust.

The discussion will conclude in one additional post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Conversations, Product Design, Product Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.