Empathy

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home The modern landscape of consumer technology is defined by a paradox: products are simpler than ever, yet the processes used to create them remain arcane and reflect outdated thinking. Just years ago, consumers struggled with complexity, symbolized by the blinking, unset clock on the VCR. Today, companies like Nest produce simple, beautiful innovations that elicit “startling joy,” even from a mundane device like a thermostat. This fundamental shift signals the end of product development dominated by linear process, feature matrices, and outdated artifacts such as the product requirements document. ...

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home Achieving commercial success requires aligning a product with the nebulous concept of “the market,” a complex space encompassing competitors, laws, suppliers, and trends. In a world obsessed with speed, innovators are often urged to run loose and think lean, yet true success demands a methodical understanding of this external ecosystem. When tackling product-market fit (PMF), the design-led process emphasizes gathering subtle signals to carve out a viable opportunity space. ...

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home Product development success hinges on a critical pivot: zooming past broad market trends to focus intensely on individual human behaviors and aspirations. When Joe McQuaid, the LiveWell chief product officer, observed a yoga instructor, he sought data on physical tracking but unexpectedly uncovered a prevailing theme of mental health and anxiety. This qualitative turn illustrates that understanding what people do is secondary to grasping how they feel and why they act. ...

The Engineering Journey ← Series Home The Shift from Specification to Sympathy In the previous post, we established that successful engineering design is a rigorous, multidisciplinary, and often iterative decision-making process that applies science and art to meet a societal or market need. We also noted that traditional or conventional design, often characterized by the “over-the-wall” approach, frequently leads to costly missteps because technical teams become isolated from the ultimate user. ...

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home Once deep behavioral insights have been uncovered, the central challenge shifts from knowing what to build to ensuring the development team builds it with the right spirit and soul. Joe McQuaid, planning the LiveWell app launch, realized that features alone would be insufficient; the product needed a specific sensibility to succeed. This sensibility is formalized through the design strategy, a long-term plan focused on taming technology and realizing the product’s value proposition. ...

The Bounded Mind ← Series Home The Fatal Assumption in Influence When a manager attempts to secure funding, convince a client, or persuade a colleague, the process is often hampered by a core, false assumption: if I myself am convinced of something, I can easily convince others. This belief leads managers to rely too heavily on their natural eloquence, arriving at crucial meetings unprepared with only a barrage of arguments supporting a “yes”. ...

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home The final phase of the design process, “shipping,” demands that product managers translate the abstract strategic vision into tangible, executable steps. Even after defining a product’s soul and strategy, the vision remains fleeting until its boundaries are solidified through specific artifacts. The modern PM’s work is less about enforcing code specifications and more about generating and socializing visual tools that manage complexity and foster team consensus. ...