But I'd like to show you next is a case study of a
team that works in this collaborative. Cross-functional way. This is
a
Widely available video of the Nordstrom Innovation lab, there an RD team.
And they're focused on finding new products for the Nordstrom, a organization to
invest in. Now, the two things I want you to keep in mind, as you watch
this video are that this team Works in one week iterations.
Their project length is one week, and they're tasked with failing
80% of the time.
Okay, so watch this video and then we'll discuss what we saw in the video
itself.
I'm JB Brown the Nordstrom Innovation lab manager and this is the lap.
We work on one week experiments. Somebody will have an idea and we'll find a way to
figure out how to prove if the idea is going to work and this week, The Innovation
lab is going to be building an iPad app with customer feedback as we go
through the week. We wanted to work in the store to make sure that we were getting customer feedback
as we work. So that we were never working on anything that wasn't valued by the customer, and
only doing things that are delivering value. So, we'll be building a
feature and testing it till we get to the point where we have something that's
good enough that we can.
Leave and leave the iPad at behind and have this new
thing that customers can use, this is the world's first flash build, it's
a flash mob. We're a software team shows up and built an application and it's
priced location. So the Nordstrom Innovation lab and we're at the flagship store in
downtown Seattle right now, the team is just setting up their equipment to get started. We're going to
build an iPad app that helps customers pick the best pair of sunglasses for
them. We really don't know what the features are yet. We're going to use customer feedback
as we go along throughout the day and the rest.
Rest of the week in order to build the best thing. So the next thing we're going to do is use
your story map. So we're going to sit here and together outline, all the
steps that custom would take and actually beforehand how they buy sunglasses like what are
the different things that they might do and how that process might change if we have this
application? No actually dig into what we have to build in order to support that process.
So now that we've done a card mapping, we're going to do a paper prototype and this is
something that we commonly do in The Innovation lab. It's a great way to show.
What we'd like to do in a ref
Prototype that we can easily throw out, change, alter based
on feedback from the customers, I'll continue building individual, paper
slides, and our user experience specialist at what L will bring the
prototype to a customer and say, okay, I have this app and this is a paper
version, I'd like you to kind of use it, like you would normally use an app and you can
press things interact with them and then she'll change out the pages, based on how the
customer uses it. So, it's a similar experience to the iPad,
only an analog version,
And so it's day two and we have our first working prototype of this app and how
it works. Is it take my first pair of sunglasses, it on
the picture, Alright? And then I want to compare it to this other pair of got right
here. Put these on
The picture. I can just fill these up like this and see which one I like better.
Tell him Kim having talking to people and doing paper prototypes. We've been coding,
building an iPad. We take a stab at something. We look at the paper
prototypes, they put together, we might take one at a time.
Usually we come to the board and we grabbed the most important feature
and we start implementing it. The really cool thing with this flash build is that we have
actual real customers just today, we delivered four or five different separate features.
And I deliver it swap. The iPad would tell. She would go and talk to a
customer and 10 minutes later I had feedback from real customers about this thing that I
delivered and it changed how we did the next. And it's been really, really great watching
day-to-day. What they've been doing the team to get all the feedback from the salespeople
that feedback to sales people gathered in the customers. And it's a really interesting process
to kind of come in on Tuesday. We had no idea what this would look like. There's an
idea that somebody had to say people take a lot of pictures themselves, the
sunglasses. It be cool if we could show them Side by.
My side to help them make the process better. And that was the idea that was it. They came in at nothing
built and they've been building this literally on the spot throughout each day. And by
now, we actually have an app for functioning after they can go through. It's very
intuitive to help. Look at themselves and make the sunglass, selection process
easier, which is pretty cool to watch. So, yesterday, the sunglass, buyer for Nordstrom came down to
check out our progress, and she happened to put on polarized glasses and then held
up the iPad and portrait View and was surprised that she couldn't see anything because it's
black. We figured out that hole.
Relation of the iPad running up and down and the polarization of the glasses running
vertical. Cancel each other out, you don't see anything but if you turn the iPad to
landscape, you see perfectly fine because the polarization of the two items lined up and
it's okay. So it was pretty good, find to be in the store and she just
happened. Put on polarized glasses. And so today, first thing we're going to do is switch it to a
landscape design and then lock in the aspect ratio of the iPad. So,
customers and sales, people just naturally pick it up and use it in landscape and not try and go to
Portrait, okay? So I'm going to show you
You what we've been working on the last five days, we've added quite a few features of the week.
You take a picture multiple pictures of the customer and then pull them up
to have the first one, you can see it larger. And then tap the second and do a
side-by-side comparison of each glass next to each other. We also added a
feature where you can rename the picture because we heard from sales people.
If a customer is trying on quite a lot of glasses, it's helpful to be able to know what
order they were taken in and also rename if you want with the brand
or some
Distinguishing feature of the glass. Another feature we added was the ability to
zoom in zoom in and really get a good detailed. Look at the frame
side by side. Also the see one of the pictures
larger, if you want to just better view of one frame, you can put the
camera view as well face it forward. So the sales person could take a picture of
it like this or you can click the camera. So
take the picture yourself facing and then at the end of it all, we have
a button called
Customer which just erases all of the images and allows the
salesperson to start with a new customer. We just try to put the final touches on the app and tell
talk to a lot of users and they said that when we went into the compare view,
it was unclear where the pictures were coming from and which picture was which. So the
animation here is trying to solve that problem, make it more clear, what's going on?
One of the challenges with software is when you're done, right? And I think the answer is really,
it depends on how much time you have at least the most boring things got done. So
this was time box to a week.
We did a week's worth of work and it seems like what we have now is something that makes customers
happy and addresses the main problems and something that we can track, we have metrics on.
So weird call that a day. The
application has developed so far. Everything's finished everything that we've
asked for and even the little roadblocks and glitches that we kind of stumbled across as
we use the app during the week has been solved. I think that it's going to be really easy
to be able to implement into our sale. And I think there were going to find a lot of
success with application. Whether it's be
Be a selling tool for us or if it goes public into a
downloadable format, whatever happened that he was generally quite success.
So what did you see in the video? What was interesting, what was different? What
was unique about the way this team works?
I think the speed in which they were just releasing the
application, I'm kind of constant feedback. I mean, they were pushing iPad
belts back and forth. Like every 10 minutes of seeing that I started on the first day, I thought
that was very impressive. The speed is amazingness and what enabled them
to move that quickly. Yeah, it directs you
feedback from customers so that actually could see what's you customers.
Like, what do they don't like
It was parked in the feedback loop with customers was was very quickly because they have a
direct line to the, to the end user. And then get that feedback very quickly,
how did they get access to the customers? I think, one of the things that
really helped is that the whole team was there. The design team was there constantly rolling
out iterations. The programmers were willing a Tinder iterations. The
client was there, and the you end-user was there. So, you had a full
collaboration between every aspect of the project.
Yes, everyone that needed to be on the team was on the team and was
present and participating in that process. Where were
they physically?
Yeah, in the shop they were in the store right? Baby. They planted
themselves in a place that would allow them to get that rapid customer
feedback at a pace that allows them to push builds every 10 minutes.
Right? What else is interesting about that lets you find interesting about that.
One of the things that was clear is they had a long list of things they could
do. But obviously emphasized, the most important things to allow them to get
features out. It's hard to see a little bit from the story, all the things that
they didn't do. But as you can imagine, there was probably a lot of things they were thinking about
doing, but did a great job prioritizing, which as
we know, can certainly Aid in the speed of releasing product.
How did they pick, how do they prioritize?
I think one of the things that helped us is they had a week and
they figured out what the most important items were for the user and the customer
first and they had a, they had a timeline. Yeah. They
say that the end there. How do you know when you're done? You're done. When you run out of
time and so they, the reality is in
software is that you can fix one of two things you can fix scope, but you
can fix time,
And in this case they fix time and they said we're going to build the best product that we can
in a week.
And they made prioritization decisions based on that customer feedback
and take it back a step for a second. How did they even decide tool to tackle this
particular product or this, this this, this
business problem, how do they even get there?
Why were they even solving this particular situation?
It was a, it was a question from the store
planner but today could help customers in a
certain way of comparing losses. So there was, there was store
staff. That was observing customers and
recognizing that there was a certain behavior that customers were engaging in
when they were shopping for glasses which there was an opportunity to
improve so. By observing customers, contextual observation and
customers.
In the wild and in the natural habitat of doing whatever it is that
they do with our within their case, with the sunglass, purchase process. But whatever
your business is, they discovered
Opportunities for improvement. They saw people come in and they saw them taking cell
phone photos of themselves and if you've ever been to buy glasses or
sunglasses and you actually wear glasses, right? What's the first thing that you
do? When you walk into the sunglass Department, you find a pair that you like,
right, you blind yourself,
And then hope that you can see what you look like from one pair to the next. So they
recognized an opportunity simply by observing customers.
Now Nordstrom in the United States is a brand that is
associated very heavily with amazing customer service.
They have case studies after case, studies about how great their customer
services. Now, all of a sudden this team just setup
In the middle of their flagship store in Seattle and started running these
iterative experiments on customers. How do they stay on brand? How do
they save the Nordstrom brand? Protect it.
In reality, everything that they did in this video was
on brand.
First and foremost, the inclusion of customers in the design process, tell us what will make this
better for you. Help us make your experience better. We want to
serve you better at the philosophical level. If you look at
the tactics that they used,
They they, they made a sign for the team
and the sign wasn't poorly designed and didn't have the yellow triangle with the guy
digging in the dirt saying under construction, right? It was a beautifully designed sign that
said Innovation and progress in a van who doesn't want to be a part of
innovation, right? They brought out.
They didn't bring out, you know, the old white board that sitting in the office with the markers that have been
burned into it for 12 years, right? They brought in a glass board.
And posted notes. They put out a series of Max, everything was
well designed was well, thought out and was on brand as
part of that experience. Now what are the things we talked about a little bit
earlier was the fact that everybody was there.
What roles did we see on the team? What roles did you see on the team?
You had the iterative designer who was drying up
screenshots, essentially them in paper version so people could press buttons
and test and you had programmers.
Yeah. You also had sales associates and
customers. Yeah, researchers as well.
What else was the team working on
besides this project?
During this week.
That was that? Nothing of a trick question. Nothing.
That's exactly right. So, we've got a self-sufficient team that can
design build and test
It's ideas.
They're focused strictly on solving a business problem that has been
contextually. Observed are not being pulled aside to fix some bugs over
here, they're not being pulled on to other projects. The designer isn't shared between
teams
Focus strictly on solving this problem. And what else? What's the last piece of the
puzzle there? So we've got a cross-functional team that's dedicated to this effort for
a week solving a clear business problem.
And what was the, what's the last component?
That makes this team so effective and able to move so quickly and make those
prioritization decisions.
The feedback feedback really helps them to forms the decision but most importantly, they're
empowered. They're empowered to make that decision. They don't have to run
every idea up a bureaucratic chain of decision makers.
Right. Not only, can they make any changes that they want? But they are
allowed to make them in again. Why think about
the Amazon statistic? Think about moving from doubt to
certainty because the risks that they're taking or tiny,
We're going to make a paper prototype and we're going to test it. If we get it wrong, we'll
just tear up that paper prototype and do it again.
We're going to put a build out there, that has one feature in a day and a half. We can see how
that works out. If it doesn't work out, put another feature on
there through that customer feedback.
Loop Final question on. That's why does this team?
Have an 80% failure Target, why do we give? Why do
their Executives? Give this team and eighty percent Target of
failure.
That their mandate is to fail 80% of the time.
Yeah well certainly to take some risks to take risks, that's exactly right. They will
not they will never push the envelope as
hard as if they're challenged with failing 80% of the time and it
forces them to really push their thinking into new
ways and new avenues to improve the brand.
Now, again, the feedback that they were getting was qualitative, right? They're
going back and talking to customers and getting that qualitative but they say it in the
video. Again, they've built analytics into this
platform so that when they leave it after a week and they leave that
iPad in the store, they're going to get the continue to get the qualitative feedback from the sales
staff, about how this is being used, or if it's being used. But they're also going to be able to
see which features are being used and how long they're being
used. Because there will be
Quantitative data in the application as well. And that paints a
360-degree view.
Of the situation for them, which then informs decision making.
And so, what you're seeing in this is the principles for lean teams. These are
nine principles are not the only nine, but these are the principles that this team
embodied. You're seeing design business and Engineering, everybody's on
the same team together. Everything they're doing is
external. It's on posted notes, it's on whiteboards, it's in sketches,
it's in conversations, they're focused on a specific goal
and a specific outcome. We want to improve
the sunglass, buying
Success. How do we measure that? That's a good conversation to have as a team but that's our goal,
everything they're doing is repeatable and it's route, nice. So that they can push builds
as quickly as possible, because they've got this cycle, this feedback loop
cycle, right? The researching with customers, and they're
using that as the best source of information to understand whether their products
makes sense, or don't. And it helps them focus on solving the right
problems.
They're generating many options as a team. You saw all those
options on that board and then they're focusing. They're deciding quickly what to
pursue and they're making stuff and then they're figuring out
whether it was the right stuff to make or not because their ideas are
hypotheses hypotheses that need to get validated and they're working
quickly through this think make check cycle.
And these are just the methods that we just saw in that particular video and that will practice in this Workshop
lightweight low Fidelity. Low-tech artifacts
external conversations face-to-face collaboration with our colleagues
and with our customers, creating lots of ideas, Divergent
ideas, first, and then coming together converging on something
doing that quickly and focusing on
specific outcomes that serve as our
Success criteria.
And this builds nicely into era creases build measure.
Learn Loop the lean ux cycle, fits very nicely into this Loop. So, this is
Eric Reese has Loop and Eric again says that you have an
idea for your startup, for your product, for your service.
You build the smallest thing that you can then represents that idea, that's the
first version of your product. You then measure.
The efficacy, the performance, the success of that product against explicit success criteria, so you're
collecting data and then you're learning from that. And then you're
iterating again and the goal is to get through this loop as
many times as you can as quickly as you can and the lean ux cycle
speaks directly to that state. Your desired outcomes, that's our first
task. What is success? What does success look like? We will know. We're
successful when we see customers behaving in a particular way.
Then we declare our assumptions. We assume that if we build this feature
for this person, it will affect their behavior in a certain way. And we
use those assumptions to write hypotheses. We write the test first.
Essentially, this is, if you're familiar with test-driven development, this is test driven product development.
We're writing the test first we then make an MVP, a
minimally viable product.
The first version of our product, we get out of the building and talk to customers.
We collect that data. We synthesized together as a team to
build that collaborative shared understanding and then we repeat and we go through
this over and over and over as fast as we can. Because
every time we get through this loop, we're moving from doubt to certainty
and we're nudging ourselves in a more accurate direction for our product would be
risking what we're building.