Product Strategy for Designers
Learn to bridge business strategy and design to create products people love
June 9, 2016
10:00AM – 4:00PM PDT
In just one day, Benjamin Yoskovitz will teach you the principles and practices of product strategy. You’ll learn business mapping, pricing models, effective use of metrics, Lean Analytics, and product management, and more so you can communicate and champion the critical role of design in the success of every product and service, then create the optimal product-market fit.
What you’ll learn—and how you can apply it
Product strategy for designers is a daylong, interactive, online course designed to help product designers learn more about the strategic side of product development. In just six hours (including a 40-minute lunch break), designers will understand how their work can have an impact in achieving business goals and learn how to collaborate more closely with product management and engineering teams to deliver the right products to market.
By the end of this hands-on course, you’ll:
- Learn how to integrate design with business model planning and business strategy to build better businesses and products
- Understand key concepts of product development and management, such as pricing models, business models, data analytics, and product roadmapping, to be sure you’re designing a product that meets the needs of your target market
- Be a better, more effective partner with your colleagues—from the start—in product management, business strategy, and achieving business goals
This course is for you if…
- You’re an experienced designer in a leadership position who needs to understand product strategy to direct and manage your team’s design efforts
- You’re at the top of your game in design, but you realize you could make greater contributions to your organization if you learned more about the strategic side of product development
- You regularly interface with product management and business teams and you need to know their concerns and motivations—and to speak their language—to achieve greater success together
About your instructor
Ben Yoskovitz is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and author with 20 years of experience in the technology industry. Most recently, Ben was VP Product at VarageSale and VP Product at GoInstant (which was acquired by Salesforce).
Previously, Ben ran a startup accelerator, Year One Labs, which provided funding and up to one year of hands-on mentorship. Year One Labs followed a Lean Startup program, making it the first accelerator to formalize such a structure. Three of five companies graduated from Year One Labs and went on to raise follow-on financing; one of those companies, Localmind, was acquired by Airbnb.
Ben is the co-author of Lean Analytics, a book that combines Lean Startup best practices and analytics to help people build businesses and products faster. He regularly writes about Lean Startup, product management, angel investing, scaling startups, and other topics on his Instigator Blog.
Schedule
- Introduction: Understanding the business context of design (10:00AM–10:10AM)
Framing design within the context of a business is critical. Mapping design to business goals helps clarify the value of design to other parts of the organization, and helps ease the tension between design, engineering, and other functions. We’ll engage in an open discussion of these issues to set the stage for a productive day-long dive into product management and strategy. - Business mapping (10:10AM–11:00AM)
Learn to define, describe and lay out the key components of a business and how they interrelate. Using Business Model Generation and Lean Canvas, we’ll look at how to visualize a business, identify the areas of strength and weakness, and tie that into how design can help. - Metrics: The fundamentals (11:00AM–12:00PM)
Much of product management and strategy is based on understanding how data helps a business succeed. A core understanding of metrics will help designers speak a common language with product managers, engineers, management and more. You’ll learn about different types of metrics, correlation and causation, what’s a good metric, and what’s a vanity metric (and why it’s bad). - Lunch (12:10PM–1:00PM)
- Measuring success: An introduction to Lean Analytics (1:00PM–1:40PM)
Lean Analytics is a framework for using data to build better products and create startups faster. We’ll cover how to figure out what to track and when, the One Metric That Matters (KPIs), the 5 stages of product development, measuring product/market fit, and the Lean Analytics cycle, along with a discussion of business models and how they dictate what metrics you should track, and when. You’ll gain a better understanding of how businesses can use data to be more successful. - Product roadmaps and prioritization (1:40PM–2:20PM)
Understand the role of product managers, how to define product roadmaps (both short-term and long-term), how to manage feature prioritization, and best practices for deciding what to build and how to build it. - Applying data and product management best practices to design (2:20PM–3:10PM)
Learn to drive more experimentation in design and, by extension, through product development. We’ll cover the application of Lean principles and product management best practices to design, determining the level of user testing and feedback required, deciding on the right fidelity (mockups, prototypes, etc.) for designs, defining KPIs for design, understanding risk and product development timelines; measuring efficiency and managing projects, and deciding what to test and how. - Fitting product design into the product development process (3:10PM–3:40PM)
We’ll tie everything together, ending up with a clear picture of how design fits into product development and supports business goals. We’ll see how design can influence product and project processes and discuss the need (and means) for designers to communicate up and sideways to ensure they have a “seat at the table” in making the right decisions for success. - Final Q&A (3:40PM–4:00PM)
Ben will remain available for Q&A during breaks.
Participants receive
- Video and PDF companion references
- Post-workshop video