Sunday, January 21, 2007
Full-Day Seminar, 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Sarah Bloomer and Susan Wolfe

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Product Strategy and Planning Tools for Web Applications

Peter Merholz and Brandon Schauer, Adaptive Path

The world of next-generation web applications requires that development teams take some new approaches to design. What are the new design methods that will ensure success in your work? Join Peter Merholz and Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path for a one-day tutorial where they will share proven steps instrumental in the development of web applications, both for clients as well as Adaptive Path's internal projects, such as Measure Map.

In this in-depth tutorial, Peter and Brandon will share tools for developing the strategy and planning for your organization's web applications. Drawn from time-tested techniques of product strategy, the design experts at Adaptive Path have evolved these approaches to suit the expedited pace of web application development. You will learn:

  • Business Problem Prioritization. You'll see how to focus your web applications on the factors that truly matter to your organization. Business prioritization will prevent the development team from building unnecessary functionality and provide guidance as to the metrics worth measuring within your organization.
  • How to make a solution with stakeholders. Too often, internal discussions with stakeholders lead to conflicting priorities within an organization. Peter and Brandon will show you different ways to quickly prototype solutions with stakeholders that allow you to get on the same page with them, identifying their presumptions and desires for your web applications. By bringing these latent ideas out into the open, you can get all of your organization's stakeholders oriented around the same goals.
  • How to create and articulate an elevator pitch. Many development teams build applications without a clear understanding of the problems they will solve or the competitive landscape they live in. This can lead to the development of tools with a lot of functionality, but no real focus. In other words, tools that go unused. To combat this, you'll learn how to develop a strong Elevator Pitch for your application. A successful Pitch provides a clear direction for the product's development and a vision that guides every design decision.
  • Scope Planning. Web applications often involve an increase in complexity and development time for the team. These factors call for an even tighter control over the scope of functionality and greater alignment with the product strategy. Successful web apps are "feature stingy," doing a small set of things well rather than boiling the ocean. You'll practice methods for controlling the scope of your application, including concept mapping and road mapping.
  • Conversion modeling. Every web application is intended to change the behavior of its end users. For example, the target audience may need to change from non-users to regular users, from call-center users to online-channel users, or from passive viewers to active participants. Identifying, planning, and designing around these conversions is a powerful way to connect your web application's design with meaningful business outcomes. You'll learn to model and generate design ideas and metrics to improve these customer conversions.

Peter and Brandon will end the day with demonstrations of how the insights gained in strategy can lead directly to design solutions. They will walk you through the development of an Experience Strategy that serves as a guiding document for all of your design decisions.