Design Tiny, Pilot Quickly, Scale Smartly

Digital product design IS behavior design. The most successful products from a customer adoption standpoint are the ones that satisfy simple, desired behaviors. They needn’t contain he most features. They deliver on a promise to create and support long term behaviors that help people become the person they desire to be. It can be taking photos or taking medication — people gravitate towards the products that solve their migraine-level pains.

I have worked with companies across nearly every vertical and of every size to help them incorporate behavior design into their product work, with obvious and fast results. Please contact me if you are interested in discussing hosting a behavior design workshop for your team or organization.

Priests, Drug dealers, and uber Drivers

I've got a healthy respect for the craft of design research. When done well, a two-month research sprint can yield years worth of work. One thing I learned at IDEO though was to adapt processes and methods, to consider them as springboards but that the ultimate goal was having a genuine conversation. I push myself and my teams to go beyond the methods and to think of research as a moment of performance, one that is only as dynamic as its cast.

For instance, at Capital One, my team was exploring accountability as it related to saving to reduce debt. Sure, we reached out to DJs, independent workers, and people with variable income for whom accountability was often hardest, but we also reached out (via a recruiter) to a drug dealer, an entrepreneurial used car salesman, a kid who sold booze to other underage friends, a priest...you get the point. Research is design and design is research.

And while a two-month research project can yield years worth of insights to drive work, you can learn as much in 3-hours as you can in 3-months when you get creative with the methods, and introduce creative constraints and framing.

Stories today are about immersion, not consumption

I've always loved a good story, well told. As a child, I wanted to be a Hollywood filmmaker, creating memorable cinematic moments that people returned to again and again and again the way my family did to films like Jaws, Christmas Story, and Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark. What I loved most about them was the story, and the way film pulled you INTO the story. I pursued a path as a fiction writer but by my early 20's, became frustrated with the lack of ability for a reader to experience the world beyond the neurons that fired in their brain as they read the words. As I built a career in the world of interaction design, I began thinking of myself as a worldbuilder and less of a writer. If a story involved music, how could I craft real music to evidence the world? If there was a signature object in a story, could I build it and put it out in the world somewhere for an audience to find and experience it? Today I work with brands and entertainment franchises to build worlds around their properties, extending the audience’s engagement into the story in more tactile ways.