The Innovation Equation: A Blueprint for Disruptive Products with Ashley Nicodemus - Productized 24 TalkInTen

Productized 2024 is our third conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you exclusive bonus episodes straight from this dynamic event!

 In this special TalkInTen series, we dive into concise conversations with industry leaders at the forefront of product and business agility. Packed with fresh ideas, innovative frameworks, and real-world stories, these episodes offer actionable insights to help teams adapt and excel. Whether you're looking to improve your product management or enhance team agility, this series has something for you. 

Our guest in this episode is Ashley Nicodemus, Senior Director of Design at UE Group. Ashley specialises in mission-critical products that require innovative, user-centred designs where failure is not an option. In her workshop, "The Innovation Equation: A Blueprint for Disruptive Products," Ashley shares her expertise in crafting disruptive designs even in high-stakes environments. She walks us through how to create innovative products from scratch, focusing on behaviours and human-centred design rather than just iteration. Her process encourages teams to challenge assumptions, rethink product visions, and drive meaningful innovation.

Episode Highlights:

• Disruptive Design for Mission-Critical Products: Learn how to innovate in industries where success is non-negotiable.
• The Innovation Equation™: Discover UEGroup’s tool for user-centred innovation that redefines product experiences.
• Challenging Assumptions: Understand how testing polarising concepts can lead to unexpected and impactful solutions.

Whether you're working in mission-critical industries like healthcare, aerospace, or cybersecurity, or simply looking to create truly innovative products, this episode is packed with actionable strategies to help you rethink your approach to product design.

Ashley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-nicodemus-23632867/

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and stay tuned for more great TalkInTen episodes!

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Sheev - https://www.sheev.co.uk

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Product Agility Podcast

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to a very special series of episodes of the Product Agility Podcast, broadcasting for two days, direct from Lisbon Portugal and product ties 2024. This year, we're bringing you more exclusive bite-sized wisdom with our Talks in 10 format, where we're going to be diving into actionable insights from some of the best and brightest minds in product leadership. And attendees this year are being spoiled with talks and workshops from the likes of Radakadat, creator of radical product thinking and rich Moronov, author of the art of product management, helping us all find some joy in what we do. But it would be a pretty shitty conference if it was just two people. There are so many more people here, and we're going to be getting as many of them as possible on here to share their talks in 10. Now before we begin, a huge thank you to our sponsor, Sheev Limited. Sheev is the company which has bankrupted this podcast pretty much since day one. I want to take an opportunity just to share with you and make you aware we do some awesome stuff. Whether it's training your product teams or coaching your product teams with clarity and alignment, or you know just a simple thing, of actually making OKRs work in organisations, these are all things that we are very good at. So do head over to www.sheev.co.uk, see what we do and get in contact with us. Also check out the show notes for a tasty little discount code over any of our courses. Grab a notebook, because the next 10 minutes are going to be packed with action tips from the best in the business. And here begins a talk in 10. It's got rather noisy. That product is 24, and this is one of my favourite times to record an episode is when there's stuff happening around us. And so we are joined now by somebody whose workshop is this afternoon. Yes. I say that like really tentatively. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Sure. So my name is Ashley Nicodemus. I'm the Senior Director of Design at UE Group, which is a design, a product design consultancy out of the Bay Area. So we've been doing product design and research for, well, me personally, over 10 years. So been all throughout this, we specialise in what we call mission critical products. So it's not your general app. It's going to be specifically areas that are really hard to design for. Things that if things go wrong, then people can be injured, massive data loss. You need to be more concerned about performance. But then it's also industries where the newest technology is being used, and being used in new and different ways. So we're dealing with critical situations and high tech applications of things. So it's a really unique intersection that is formed our perspective. When I looked at your workshop title, the innovation equation, a blueprint for disruptive products, one thing my brain couldn't quite tell me back was mission critical and disruptive products. So are you saying, and the answer is no, we can move on, but you can both be mission critical and disruptive? Well, yeah. So mission critical is more of our umbrella to talk about the different industries that we work in. So medical device design is one of my areas that I really focus in. So we did a project for brain surgery. That is one of those that's probably more well known. And then spine surgery as well. So a lot of stuff that's happening in the operating room. But then we also do stuff for companies like Lockheed Martin in aerospace, Boeing, those kinds of companies. So again, situations where if something goes wrong, it's going to be a problem. So communicating critical information. Also things like cybersecurity, maybe a little bit more familiar to more people. You just want to keep people safe, informed, and having the right data they need to make instant decisions. Excellent. So you're buying some of my an old friend called Luca, who used to work in the pits for Ferrari. Okay. Yeah. And he was in his talks always made the point that the software in the Formula One cars was like it was mission critical. It was life or death. If they did something wrong, then someone would die. Many, maybe a few people would die. And everything is really interesting when you begin to consider what this mission critical means. What are they going to life for? Death situations of things actually is more, there's more products out there which have that on their shoulders than you would first expect. However, however, the innovation equation, a blueprint for disruptive products, what are people going to get during your workshop? Yeah. So I think what it really is boiling down is this process that we've developed over the years having to work in these industries where there isn't something that you can look to to say, this is how that's done and how I'm going to copy it. So because of that, we had to come up with how do you make something completely from scratch? And when it comes to thinking about like disruptive design, which is applicable outside of mission critical industries, I think people really struggle because there isn't an education platform or a process that's built specifically for that. A lot of processes out there are built for iteration. You have something out in the world, it could be made better. Let's talk to people, understand why, what the pain points are, fix them. That's only going to help you get that next step up. What happens when you want to do something completely new? You have a new technology, you want to apply it in a different way. Our talk is going to help people figure out how to do that. And it's a user-centered process. So focusing on basically behaviors and different perspectives and how you can use that to inspire completely new approaches to things instead of starting with a product, you start with a behavior. Could you give me an example? Sure. So we've recently worked on this product for, it's called Home Site. And it was an award nominee. So for Home Site, this is a product that is supposed to be in people's homes as you're aging and you're starting to lose some of your independence. So you need a little bit more support and that can be a really delicate time in people's lives. So this product that Home Site's releasing is a system of sensors around your home that can help monitor all of the basic functions. So a little bit more advanced than your classic life alert warning. Basic functions. Do you yet be in bodily functions? Well, it has microphones. So it's not picking up or recording your voice, but it can know you flush the toilet this morning. Those types of things. Or hey, you're, they hear your microwave go. So, okay, they're eating food. Those types of things to make sure that just everything's going to plan. And it can even sense that you've drinking water, something as delicate as the sound of a gulp. It will be able to detect those types of things. And so it has that along with a camera that is something that you could use for video communication. It's not watching you when you're not using it to talk. But it's basically this system that is meant to help people stay connected to their loved ones, get better, easier access to medical staff, and then just have general monitoring to make sure they're okay. Now, originally, the system had hit the market in a different kind of way with a different name. And they were having adoption issues because people felt like it was too simple to get to have any kind of value to them. So we went through this process with that team. And one of the things that we like to do as part of this process is we test what we call polarizing concepts. So we test two approaches to the same features, but they have a completely different tone to them. And so one of the concepts we tested was the product that was existing, which was highly simplified. And the company had this notion that it needed to be extra simple because if it wasn't, then people couldn't use it that were degrading in cognitive function or physical ability. But we created another version of it, which was very efficiency-based. So it felt more like an assistant to help you through your day and an optimization of just like, hey, you got a lot of stuff on your plate. We got you. Here's a thing that's going to remind you, take your pills. Oh, I noticed you didn't have breakfast yet. Do you want it? Oh, you've got an appointment. Hey, did you think about talking to this person? Just something to support you through your day. Much more complex than their original design. We specifically made it that way because we wanted to see how people would react. We show the two together and the assumption by everyone was that the simplified version was going to be preferred. But people were actually offended by the simplified version because it made them feel like they could handle more. And instead of feeling like the efficiency-based version was about health care, they felt like it was just like a life tool that was going to make their life easier. So they were excited to use it instead of feeling like, oh, I don't need that. I'm not that old yet. I can still do it myself. So really, by exploring those opposite tones, we're able to challenge assumptions and figure out what's really going to be desirable for people where people will embrace new technologies instead of being skeptical, being in this case offended, whatever it is, it fits into their life better because we're going off of behaviors and desirability and taking our own assumptions out of it. So you could say that the first option, the first version of that product didn't take into account those factors. And they were running on these hypotheses and the assumption that simplicity is what would make it a success. But they hadn't, well, I mean, they had testics, had gone to market and wasn't being the success they thought it was going to be. So they knew that there was something in that hypotheses, which was not correct. And then, then, part of the process you took them through was to then come up with a polarizing option to then really kind of test the really that hypothesis to the core by testing a polarized hypothesis. And then from there, you found some great opportunities. Exactly. And that speaks to just the flaws in our current process that a lot of product teams do. You come up with the hypotheses and then you do usability testing. And okay, that usability testing can tell you what's confusing or what's difficult to use or whatever. But it's not going to tell you that your whole product vision you created in the beginning is not the right product vision. So in this case, we're able, well, we had to catch it after the fact, right? They came to us because it wasn't working the way it was and needed a new way to package this. But if you integrate this process as part of your product development, then you can catch that before you've gone to market, before you've put so much investment in, you know, and it doesn't need something that developed to be able to have that conversation. Awesome. Awesome. But our time is running out. Really annoying. Really annoying. Maybe think that it's a radical product thinking was a book that I read, which helped me hugely in actually figuring out why I'm doing it and what problem am I solving. And there's a huge different number of people doing it by no valid cuz here. And so what you're saying really reminded me of her work as well. So yeah, lovely synergies there. Great. If people wanted to find out more about you or what you do or what you we group do, how could they go about doing that? So we're on LinkedIn, of course. So that's a good way to connect. And then we have, of course, the productized podcast, which we go much more into detail of the talk. We do this lesson, this workshop, at multiple conferences. And so I'm sure they'll see it around. But yeah, always reach out. I mean, is the best way to get ahold of us. We're happy to have individual conversations and companies have also hired us to teach this within their company and do like a partnership project. So that way people can learn how to do it themselves, but also get the benefit of our team's knowledge. You've been doing this for many, many years. So that's my opportunities. So many opportunities. I'd say I would love to go to a conference and fill the workshop for myself. Unfortunately, I'm not going to get the opportunity. So I wish you all the very best with that. I'm sure it's going to be fantastic. I'm sure everyone here is going to love it. If you're listening to this at home and you're thinking, ah, you know, it sounds great. And they check out Ashley on LinkedIn, see if you can find out where the next conference is. Oh, yeah, just coming on to productized next year. I mean, you won't be doing it again, but I'm sure there'll be something worth coming here for. Who knows? Yeah, maybe it's so good. We'll do it again. Everyone, thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. And we'll be back again soon.