 Thank you So I'm very happy to be here, and I'm happy that you are here, too And I hope that you'll be making a lot of friends here at work and pure op 2017 a few words about myself Among other things. I am a product manager for captain form, which is a WordPress plugin for building forms and This plug-in is almost two years old now And it has been launched by one to three conic form which is a platform with almost ten years of experienced in the market and I joined one to three conic form back in 2011 And although this hasn't always been the case I'm currently a lover of data driven decisions so two weeks ago I attended an event called F up night and In case you are not familiar with the concept It's an event that takes place in various cities across the globe in which people who have achieved something tell the story of how they failed in different occasions and That got me thinking about the various times when such failures happened or happened to me and Then I found this cat to express how failing felt so I was Preparing really hard to take on a new challenge and then taking the aim with great focus and finally shooting right off target and Most of the times there wasn't something romantic about the failure There wasn't some deeper layer to explore and I was left staring at the ceiling and wondering What's the level of intelligence? I'm really at When I joined one to three conic form. There were just the co-founders and myself. I Wasn't making coffee. I Was writing blog and documentation entries testing stuff doing support and Occasionally making coffee because I was a nice person not because I had to and Now the company has 76 employees we have grown quite a lot and received two investments in the process and Transitions they haven't always been that easy. There was a lot of trial and there were a long good the way So speaking of failures, I am proud to show you today some of the ways in which we failed Back then in the beginning We developed many integrations with third-party services in order to help users Automate their processes but there were so many third parties to choose from and We made quite a few choices based on what one of us had heard on What one specific user was looking for? We never based our decisions on the phases of the moon, but from time to time that seemed like a close call So currently we have Hundreds of thousands of active users and there is still one third-party app that is being used by the great number of two people We spent six months Implementing a complex piece of interface that was amazing It gave you quick access to all of the features in that section It had a beautiful design and it was highly intuitive for myself and for my colleagues Because users on the other hand they were puzzled and nobody knew how to use it So we had a scratch six months of development and come back to the drawing board We did custom work Without fully understanding the user scenario and it was like spending a week preparing for your holiday Only if you find out the night before that it won't be at the seaside But at some lake in the mountains so there is still water involved, but things are quite different than what you had assumed So we ended up doubling the development time Now despite such occasional failures We were doing a good job and our product was already growing fast but such situations were causing us a lot of frustration and We understood that we have to change our approach in order not to waste resources and to make things work even faster And that's when the user centered approach came into the picture At first we were like Sounds interesting. How do we implement it? Well, you focus on the user Right, right, right, right. So what does that mean just to be extra sure? Well, it means that you have to place the user at the center of your efforts Got it. That makes it crystal So basically we had little idea of what we were doing, but we started reading and Asking for advice and it was at that time that we found out about Validating assumptions before acting on them doing a bit testing launching minimum viable features and using other techniques to get user feedback And our feeling of frustration magically disappeared it didn't Actually, it amplified because we were collecting a lot of user feedback and it was throwing us out of our comfort zone We were used to having our way of doing things and suddenly we had to Analyze and filter so much user input and take it into account We used to have assumptions that we were confident of and that were completely Contradicted by our actual users behavior We had to deal with difficult users whom we had asked for feedback and for a while the simple term of Users was making me feel unsure about my life choices and I was thinking why Why do we need to do this because we're making enough money already? But by that time the user centered approach was no longer Optional because with all of the competitors that the product has in this day and age One can't afford not to put the user first so we kept pushing and kept letting this Diverse mass of users rearrange the way that we saw the world and step-by-step everything did fall into place and Today, I'm sure that I wouldn't be able to do my job or to be happy about it Without taking the time to really listen to the people who are using my product and whom I dearly appreciate for explaining most of my failures and For keeping me from failing multiple times in the same way So here are three of the ways in which ever since then Users have made me a better professional and a happier person They have given me the gift of building solid roadmaps the gift of teaching efficiently And the gift of working in a happy team about a gift of building solid roadmaps the roadmap is your Products journey from point A to point B and C and so on and each of these points Represents a new feature that you are going to implement or a new opportunity that you are going to take now often in the early years of a product this road map is not really a road map but rather an open field where there isn't a specific trajectory and The choices of what goes inside your product and in what order may not be backed up by data and may be based on personal assumptions like This one for example, it reads ice cream if you follow the letters But sooner or later You realize that you can't pay your developers with what those two users pay to use your third-party Integration and as much as we'd like to we do not have unlimited Resources and here's where the concepts of value and effort come in What is the value of an item on my road map and what kind of effort what kind of? Resources does it require? In order to assess the value of a possible new features Here is a list of useful questions that you can ask go How many users are we targeting with this feature? Is it just one lonely rider or are we addressing a wider segment? And if we don't have this information, how can we obtain it because as I was mentioning before Investing resources into a personal assumption can easily end up as wasted resources What is the profile of these users what types of businesses do they have and why are they using our product? So the user profile is relevant to the commitment of these users towards your product and to their average lifetime value How much will users pay for this feature is it a feature that comes in cheap But addresses a wider segment or is it an expensive feature that? addresses only the fewer enterprise level users Does this feature match the scope of our product? Because trying to be a Swiss army knife that can solve any type of need Remotely related to what you set out to offer is usually not a good idea and you might end up cluttering your Product so if you want to build a solid product try to stick to the Initial promise that you made to users and when you do decide to take on a new and different challenge for your product Planet carefully beforehand Can we extend this feature in the future does the feature have perspective? Because usually the healthiest features that a product can't have are those that leave room for further Development based on user feedback Now in terms of assessing the effort here's another list of useful questions How many developers do we need for the implementation? Is it one or two or the entire dev team? how much time will the implementation take and At this stage it is best to already try to split the feature into its sub tasks Even if roughly so as to get a better understanding of what ramifications it has What other departments are involved because usually it is not only the development team that is involved though How easily can we promote this feature? How easy is it to express what this feature does? And what kind of maintenance will this feature require? So every resource that is invested into something is not invested into something else that might be more valuable to our users Now after you have answered such questions always having the user in mind you can start to Prioritize possible new features based on the value versus effort ratio So in this case so feature number one comes in first because it provides the greatest value It also requires a reasonable amount of effort Feature number two comes in second because it requires less effort the feature number three and Provides the same value and feature number three comes in third for obvious reasons So by following this steps you have a good chance at building the most valuable roadmap for your product Generating ideas which means collecting all of your Personal assumptions and all of the feature requests that you receive Validating them and finally Prioritizing them based on the value versus effort ratio and referring to users at each step Moving on to the gift of teaching efficiently Several months ago. I was trying to get one of our sub products listed into an app directory And I received this message. I'm gonna read it Alexandra Thanks for the note. So the app in SR is that an SC app or an MC app I assume it is not your current HX listing out because we still need paperwork for that app to get submitted in SC as MS app in a X So After I read this message, I wasn't sure I could spell my own name anymore I had no idea what those abbreviations meant and I felt angry with the sender because he knew what those letters meant And instead of using full words. He was being so cryptic but I had a strong interest in Understanding this message because I had to get our app listed. So half a day later. I finally made sense out of it And I felt like this Yeah, but users on the other hand they don't have The time or the patience to work so hard through something they don't understand and they always have the option to move on to a different product and Users they come in all shapes and sizes Their product know-how is different. They might already be Experienced with your product or they might just be starting to get familiar with it They have a different set of technical skills. We once had a user who was Convinced that we had stolen his wedding photos from a personal folder on his computer Which wasn't by any means possible Terminology is often a challenge. So some users do know that The term of sandbox refers to a testing environment Whereas others may think you're taking them out on a picnic party The cultural backgrounds are different some users are very Passionate about the way in which they express themselves They could write essays to describe their needs and they will use three exclamation marks to emphasize each key point and Then there are users who can express the exact same thing in three sentences in a calm and condensed way and using only full stops and Finally users are different people and lead different lives on Live chat we have users who must go because they are going into a meeting and Users who need to leave because their baby is crying in the other room so there is quite a lot of diversity and Don't worry because you will not be able to make everybody equally happy But what you can do is try to understand your users and try to make the greater part of them happy enough by putting yourself into their shoes and embracing their diversity and Here is another list of questions to ask in disrespect Do I really understand what this specific user needs and if I don't how can I get a better understanding? What is the minimum information that the user already has at this point? So I can know what to build on further Am I using the simplest words or interface elements to explain things because nobody likes unnecessary complexity? Are we working towards the goal and a logical way without skipping steps? And have I managed to establish a pattern for the future? Because patterns they allow users to come back to them later on and they allow us to educate them and Growing user retention which is essential for the success of a product It means teaching users how they can get value from our product and achieve their objectives using get them And coming back to my example with the interface in which we invested six months of development What we did different the second time was test and validate our assumptions using specialized services like usability hub or direct interviews with our users which made the feedback loop a very quick one No, and we also refer to all of the communication that we had with users on On that topic so each step forward was being backed up by data and was proving reliable So it only took us two months the second time to build a good solution that people knew how to use The failure from the first six remains one of the toughest lessons that we had to learn about Not taking the time to understand the user perspective about not putting ourselves in the user shoes And about not speaking the same language Because being a good teacher means Communicating valuable information in a way that relate to the person who is receiving it And the more you let yourself dive into the user diversity The better you can understand your users and the quicker you can find Solutions that will be helpful to the greater part of them And finally the gift of working in a happy team This is a gift that users have given me in a more subtle way So before we turn to the user centered approach. We were all Great people doing great things, but quite separately from one another And when we had to put our work together sometimes something wasn't clicking and We realized that the bigger picture was not available to everybody or was understood in different ways The context was missing or was different and in a team Understanding the context is usually what gives purpose What exactly are we trying to achieve? Why are we doing it and with what constraints? Apart from that as a team leader the pressure is sometimes high between keeping your Clients happy on the one side and keeping your team happy on the other and I spent quite a few nights trying to figure out What I was going to do in order to deliver what was expected of us and at the same time to not let the pressure get to the team and Eventually, I realized that I didn't have to find separate solutions for the two issues But that I could easily let one issue be the solution to the other So our clients scenarios could become the strongest drive for the team's good work So every endeavor started to have a well-defined Scenario attached to it and a human being attached to it who was counting on that scenario to work out As a brief example Who are we doing this for? Harvey and what does Harvey do? Well, he's a successful lawyer and What makes him successful his brains and his efficiency and Why does he need our forms to automate contract generation and spit up his work? So we can't affect his brains, but we can help him on the efficiency side of things How will custom PDF templates the thing we are working on help him He'll be able to design contract in any way he needs to So with such questions answered the team had a tangible purpose Helping Harvey succeed them and also while answering such questions other ones were popping up like what degree of Flexibility should these templates have and constructive debates were starting on what's the best way to roll out the Implementation now so the team was directly involved in discovering all of the relevant details So our performance was better and the team was feeling better Because knowing the details makes things predictable Predictable things make us feel safe Filling safe makes us comfortable which in turn creates a good environment for speaking up and Finally speaking up helps us feel valued though so our team got more united more productive and proactive because The goals that we had started to be very explicit and they will were built around The people at the other end of our product who were counting on those scenarios to work out So it was not only about being involved But about being involved for somebody else whose lives we could impact in some way you And now there are days when I'm a bit under the weather not really in the mood for anything and then somebody from my team comes and asks So is half Harvey happy with the feature is he already using the form does he need anything else from our side and I can see the Enthusiasm in their eyes and that overwhelms me in a positive way and makes me Think time and time again that user scenarios really do bring us together and help us do great work together as a team And I keep hearing how I shouldn't let work become family But I believe that I'm already doomed because this is what we look like nowadays when we are Celebrating a company achievement in this case one successful year of captain form So I believe this brings me to the end to sum it up Users have shown me how to be a more confident road map planner by welcoming their feedback and using it to Evaluate and prioritize items on my road map They have shown me how to be a better teacher by embracing their diversity And they have shown me how to be a part of a happy team by Discussing user scenarios and letting them bring us together So I would like to encourage you to listen to your users as much as you can Just stay responsible towards your product to stay kind towards the people who are using it and To stay in love with your daily activity Because beyond all of the failures in the world there is just so much light and you might just be doing a wonderful job Thank you Thank you so much. That was such an inspiring talk just before lunch. Are there any questions in the room? anybody There is one question there. Could you walk to the mic? There's a mic or you can say to me and I'll repeat it. Hmm. Yeah, so The slide with the team once again Oh Please yes, okay This one this one. Okay. Yeah, sure, please Thank you All right, anyone else question. Yes, please walk to the mic. Hey, my name is also Alessandra. So nice to meet you Nice to meet you. I have a question. How are you handling for example user feedback when they Request a feature where the value versus effort is not that good. How are you communicating with them? Basically letting them down Yes So we try to be very Direct, but of course not in a rude way. We don't want to set to expectations that we cannot match afterwards So especially when you get to establish a Bit of a relation with a user and you like what he's doing and you want to help him You have the tendency to say sure we'll not be able to do it this week But just wait until next weekend will get it done for you But unfortunately, that's not how it works and we have a very long list of requests and as I was saying personal assumptions and If it doesn't match the ratio then we cannot implement it and we will tell the user that Sorry, there is nothing we can do at this point if we have a workaround then we help him Set up that workaround But if not then it just remains an item on our road map and possibly it never gets done But the thing is that if we communicate Quickly with users and if we are honest then Usually we don't receive an aggressive reaction back We don't receive bad reviews or stuff like that. They understand. That's just how it goes All right. Thank you any more questions Yes, please come to the mic if you have a question if you think of a question just walk to the mic and You can ask your question when she's finished answering the former question Hi, a lot of what you're talking about is based on user feedback and I'm just wondering how you guys collate that feedback Particularly with user scenarios. How do you come up with these? Okay, so how we collect user feedback about the user scenarios Usually they come from direct interaction with users. So we kind of Get involved in in their scenarios Of course, it can't be all of them as I was mentioning before But we try to you know to identify the scenarios that might be more representative for a larger segment not that just particular user So that's how we how we identify user scenarios and about the other feedback Of course, it comes from direct communication as well, but it also comes from Service that we place on our website It comes from reading a lot on the internet We read not just about our product what about competitor products and we kind of get a feel of it and Information that we collect from the web is also valuable feedback that helps us validate certain assumptions And I can go on afterwards Thank you All right, and this is an ongoing process. You just keep going back and it's collecting information and then Just keep moving Yeah, so it's kind of the the basis of our state of mind. Yeah Awesome. Thank you very much. Give her a big applause. Thank you