Design takes many forms and shapes. It is an art, a science, and a method for problem solving. For Bob Goodman, a product management and design executive, the way to view design is as a story and a narrative that conveys the solution to the customer. As a former journalist with 20 years of experience in consumer and enterprise software, Bob has a unique perspective on enabling end-user decision making with data. Having worked in both product management and UX, Bob shapes the narrative on approaching product management and product design as parts of a whole, and we talked about how data products fit into this model. Bob also shares why he believes design and product need to be under the same umbrella to prevent organizational failures. We also discussed the challenges and complexities that come with delivering data-driven insights to end users when ML and analytics are behind the scenes.

An overview of Bob’s recent work as an SVP of product management - and why design, UX and product management were unified. (00:47)
Bob’s thoughts on centralizing the company data model - and how this data and storytelling are integral to the design process. (06:10)
How product managers and data scientists can gain perspective on their work. (12:22)
Bob describes a recent dashboard and analytics product, and how customers were involved in its creation. (18:30)
How “being wrong” is a method of learning - and a look at what Bob calls the “spotlight challenge.” (23:04)
Why productizing data science is challenging. (30:14)
Bob’s advice for making trusted data products. (33:46)

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“[I think of] product management and product design as a unified function. How do those work together? There’s that Steve Jobs quote that we all know and love that design is not just what it looks like but it’s also how it works, and when you think of it that way, kind of end-to-end, you start to see product management and product design as a very unified.”- Bob Goodman (@bob_goodman) (01:34)

“I have definitely experienced that some people see product management and design and UX is quite separate [...] And this has been a fascinating discovery because I think as a hybrid person, I didn’t necessarily draw those distinctions. [...] From product and design standpoint, I personally was often used to, especially in startup contexts, starting with the data that we had to work with [...]and saying, ‘Oh, this is our object model, and this is where we have context, [...]and this is the end-to-end workflow.’ And I think it’s an evolution of the industry that there’s been more and more specialization, [and] training, and it’s maybe added some barriers that didn’t exist between these disciplines [in the past].”- Bob Goodman (@bob_goodman) (03:30)

“So many projects tend to fail because no one can really define what good means at the beginning. The strategy is not clear, the problem set is not clear. If you have a data team that thinks the job is to surface the insights from this data, a designer is thinking about the users’ discrete tasks, feelings, and objectives. They are not there to look at the data set; they are there to answer a question and inform a decision. For example, the objective is not to look at sleep data; it may be to understand, ‘am I’m getting enough rest?’”- Brian T. O’Neill (@rhythmspice) (08:22)

“I imagine that when one is fascinated by data, it might be natural to presume that everyone will share this equal fascination with a sort of sleuthing or discovery. And then it’s not the case, It’s TL;DR. And so, often users want the headline, or they even need the kind of headline news to start at a glance. And so this is where this idea of storytelling with data comes in, and some of the research [that helps us] understand the mindset that consumers come to the table with.”- Bob Goodman (@bob_goodman) (09:51)

“You were talking about this technologist’s idea of being ‘not user right, but it’s data right.’ I call this technically right, effectively wrong. This is not an infrequent thing that I hear about where the analysis might be sound, or the visualization might technically be the right thing for a certain type of audience. The difference is, are we designing for decision-making or are we designing to display the data that does tell some story, whether or not it informs the human decision-making that we’re trying to support? The latter is what most analytics solutions should strive to be”- Brian T. O’Neill (@rhythmspice) (16:11)

“We were working to have a really unified approach and data strategy, and to deliver on that in the best possible way for our clients and our end-users [...]. There are many solutions for custom reports, and drill-downs and data extracts, and we have all manner of data tooling. But in the part that we’re really productizing with an experience layer on top, we’re definitely optimizing on the meaningful part versus the display side [which] maybe is a little bit of a ‘less is more’ type of approach.”- Bob Goodman (@bob_goodman) (17:25)

“Delivering insights is simply the topic that we’re starting with, which is just as a user, as a reader, especially a business reader, ‘how much can I intake? And what do I need to make sense of it?’ How declarative can you be, responsibly and appropriately to bring the meaning and the insights forward?There might be a line that’s too much.”- Bob Goodman (@bob_goodman) (33:02)

Links Referenced

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgoodman/

083 -Why Bob Goodman Thinks Product Management and Design Must Dance Together to Create “Experience Layers” for Data Products

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill