Results by Design: UX Insights for Business Leaders

Description: In this episode, UpTop’s Michael Woo is joined by Troy Parke, and they talk about how business and design leaders can collaborate more effectively to generate greater value for their customers.

Troy is the Director of UX How, a resource for UX Design “How To” insights, and Method Toolkit LLC. He has experience at Bank of America, ESPN, Disney, and Alaska Airlines. Troy was previously a design leader on Rolling Stone, Microsoft, Nickelodeon, and Marvel projects.

What You’ll Learn:

• How integral business and UX are to one another
• Why business decision-makers should prioritize UX
• How to leverage envisioning to help influence business decisions
• Tips on how design professionals can better understand the businesses they work for

Interview Participants:

• Troy Parke, Director of UX How
• Michael Woo, Director of UX @ UpTop

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Results by Design UX Insights for business leaders, the podcast that dives deep into the world of UX design, strategy, and insights. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.

Michael Woo:
Hey everyone, I’m Michael, and I’m your host for today’s episode of the Results by Design podcast. So today I have a very special guest. He’s worked at many big brand companies including Walt Disney, Alaska Airlines, and now Bank of America. He runs a blog called UX how uxhow.com, which is a resource for UX designers. He’s a design leader, a former colleague and manager of mine, a friend, and all around great guy Troy Park. Welcome Troy to the podcast.

Troy Parke:
Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate being here today.

Michael Woo:
Hey Matt, how are you doing?

Troy Parke:
I’m doing good. How are you?

Michael Woo:
I’m doing great. I’m doing great. And yeah, I really appreciate you coming onto the podcast. I know it’s about a month ago. You and I sat down, had a coffee, caught up after several years, and I had to do a little bit of convincing in our twisting to get you on the show. So I’m glad you’re here.

Troy Parke:
That’s all good. Pleasure to be here.

Michael Woo:
Why don’t we start by telling the audience a little bit more about your journey and what you’ve been up to with ux, how and this new venture you’re working on.

Troy Parke:
Sure. Again, thanks Mike. It’s really great to be here. I’ve been following along the content from you and Craig on the podcast from the start. So it’s been really amazing. I mean, just to kind of go back to the beginning, I grew up thinking I’d be an architect or an animator maybe, and I ended up being an engineer, and that’s how I found my way into design and product design. And I really feel like in my experience and what I’ve seen and experienced with others is there really is no front door, but you can kind of connect those dots when you look backwards because I wasn’t scared by the technical things from my background.

I was able and fortunate to grow with digital as digital grew and still have the same loves Legos. Hello Kitty. Comic books behind me is my way of sharing what I learned, like our chat today and everything else from the great folks. And then Method Toolkit is something that I’m getting started. The idea is tools, not rules, that idea of focusing on methods over a single methodology.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, I completely agree with you that there is an front door, especially with the type of job that we have, which is considered, it sounds like the Method Toolkit stuff is still a work in progress, huh? We’ll have to bring you back on when that’s done for sure.

Troy Parke:
Yep. Just getting started. Maybe some teasers here today as we unpack all this, but yep, definitely work in progress.

Michael Woo:
Cool, cool. Well, let’s share today’s topic with our listeners. It’s how can business and desire leaders work more effectively to generate greater value for their customers? I think this is a pretty loaded topic, so let’s try to unpack it, break it down, and work our way towards the answer.

Troy Parke:
Okay, that’s a biggie.

Michael Woo:
Yeah. So Troy, tell me, in the past 10 years you’ve had a seat at the table with business leaders from Giants such as Disney, Alaska Airlines, and now Bank of America, how integral business and UX are to one another. So for the companies out there that don’t have business and UX joined at the hip, can you explain why it’s so important that they are?

Troy Parke:
Well, I mean, first off, just being able to grow with digital. I think I’ve been really lucky to work with business and product minded design leaders. Even from your short intro there, I’ve had the fortune of being able to span many different domains and spaces, whether it’s transportation or retail, entertainment, finance, et cetera. And I’ve just learned in that partnership that UX is the business. Now by saying that, I don’t mean UX dictates or the business is subservient to UX in that ways, but it’s just the recognition that there isn’t a business without an experience for those who are enjoying and using those products and services. So for example, I like to kind of sometimes try on the inverse or the reverse. So you cannot not design, everything is designed whether you’re trying to or not.

I even go to examples like generic labels or packaging. It’s still being designed and it has some sort of intent. And that’s exactly what design is. Folks in the industry know a lot more than I do, like Jared Spool, that’s how they define design. Design is the rendering of intent. So even the most generic vanilla, plain, non decorative kind of design is by intention. And so when you think of it that way, really design, UX and business are two sides of the same coin. It’s really a team sport for that. And again, as you kind of look through other examples out there of like, oh, the lean UX canvas or agile tools or problem statements, right? I mean a good hypothesis for example has to address both at the same time the business needs and the user benefits. And I like the mental model I have about that is it’s a Venn diagram and it needs to overlap. And if it doesn’t overlap, you really don’t have a viable product.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, I agree. We referenced that quite often here at UpTop. The closer we pull design business and tech together, the greater the experience we can create for the end user. So I’m glad you referenced that. Can you share an example that you’ve experienced where there was a major disconnect between business and design?

Troy Parke:
Yeah, sure. I mean, you don’t have to look too far for examples, big and small investing in foundational work like a design system versus the next feature or pricing strategies for a service or a product that’s not easily presented. I mean, that’s a disconnect.

Michael Woo:
Can you just expand a little bit more about what you mean by that?

Troy Parke:
Yeah, let me think of an example here. So for example, I try to use an everyday example of pricing for a concert or an event ticket. You have a lot of information to convey that someone needs to confirm. It’s like the performer, the date, the time where they’re playing. And then that biggest factor is like, okay, well where is the seat? What’s the view that is? In order to convey a lot of that, a very typical model is to have a seating chart, but that’s a pretty complex form factor to sort of show all that information. And then when you try and reduce it down to make it less complex to something like best seats, right? It’s like, okay, well what does that even mean? Is that the best seats that there best seats available is price some sort of proxy for view? And so it creates a lot of mental trade-offs for cognitive load.
In that particular example.

In terms of a real personal example for me that I experienced is there was a bit of a disconnect when at the time I was at Alaska Airlines, they had recently purchased Virgin America, and it really was this opportunity, I think in the grandest sense of bringing the best of both together, that idea of Alaska had award-winning customer service version had a really award-winning app, state, technical state of the art technical implementation. It really seemed like, okay, we’ll bring the best of both together. But business was kind of looking this a little bit more of an airline of, okay, well we need to widen our area of service capacity, number of gates, number of routes, those kinds of things. And so ultimately that’s really what governed right, that idea and it logically makes sense, and especially as we started really uncovering, hey, there’s real challenges. I mean impossibilities of for instance, tying in backends together or integrating. And then once the decision was made overall to okay, well the brand going forward would be Alaska, it’s like, okay, that’s the path forward. But I will say in all honesty, even for myself, I was a little bit disconnected from the business, our business mindset from that for some time.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, I actually forgot that acquisition happened. I do remember Virgin having a lot of brand equity. Now I’m wondering it were left up to you. Would you have kept the Virgin brand?

Troy Parke:
Well, I mean there’s a lot to consider more than just the brand. I mean, Virgin obviously has Richard Branson and everything else, but that’s a little bit above my pay grade. But mean, what I will kind of mention is that there’s a lot of, when you think of this industry of airlines, for example, it’s been a lot of great airline brands of yester year and then it’s playing out today, right now, right? Alaska is in the process of acquiring Hawaiian Airlines. I mean, I love that logo, but that I may not continue either.

Michael Woo:
Oh, I hope it does stay for sure. I love it too. You just shared a really great example from Alaska. Thinking back to the organizations you’ve worked for, what are some of the characteristics that you’ve seen that could be red flags and do you have any suggestions for how to approach them?

Troy Parke:
Kind of want to take a few steps back on this one. Every situation and business is really different and really dynamic. And I think tracing the tensions in a digital product space, you can kind of look back to a couple of different reasons how the business started, how it got off the ground, or once it’s off the ground, how does it really ultimately earn revenue or profit and turn profit? I mean, there’s an example in the news today that I thought was really interesting. It’s come out, it’s like Google’s trying to place search on Apple products and there’s a whole significant revenue stream that’s going to Apple to just place Google. I mean, that’s got to affect their product strategy. And so I think that first understanding is just acknowledging how a business really works. And so Mike, I mean we were at big fish games right together and worked for many years, but ultimately we knew being a part of that organization that effectively was a startup and it had a personality at the helm and the company was eventually acquired, and I wasn’t a part of that, but likely that was probably the goal from the start or a likely outcome that they were aiming towards.

But that dynamic shaped everything to be worked on. Everything from what products were offered to what things were invested in to even what pivots were being made against competitors at the time, PopCap or whatnot. I do think it’s worthwhile to, when you’re walking in a situation or you’re trying to assess, it’s okay to put on that engineer hat or thinking like an accountant, it’s not a bad way to start just really analyzing almost like a scientist, is the business profitable? How is it profitable? Are processes pretty ad hoc or is it really defined? Is it really rigid? Is the entity public? Is it trying to go public? Is it just going to stay private, family owned, whatever? So now to okay, with that kind of context then to me the business red flags would be is when what is being said is not how it happens or how it really unfolds.

And then I think there’s also, to be honest, I mean there’s two sides of this. There’s red flags for yourself, red flags for you when an individual is not being honest with themselves about what it is they’re looking for or what it is that they or how they’re trying to contribute and add to this. So then I think the big part here is what matters most is if your values are in alignment with the organization or group or team or not. And so for example, if you’re looking at yourself and you’re like, Hey, I like wearing a lot of hats. I like being able to take on a lot of different things that when we were at Big Fish, Mike, we did not only product design roles, but we also did marketing design roles. I mean, it was very, very kind of expanded and touching a lot of different things, but neither of us got the chance to go dive deep in, okay, I’m going to be a focused expert on something like design systems or interaction design or whatnot.

I mean, it just wasn’t what was needed. And so if you’re looking for example, that kind of predictability and focus in your role and that you’re probably then going to need to do something that’s likely a larger entity, maybe more mature in terms of a business industry, and that’s probably going to be more aligned. So that’d be great from that standpoint. I can be a subject matter expert. I can deep dive deep into these things, but the trade-off is going to be is you’re not going to get that range. You’re probably not going to be able to get to be going blue sky every day with brand new things each sprint. And I recognize too, I’ve been in those situations, it seems like that’s a bit mismatched. How do you cope? And I think the first is you just got to recognize where you’re at, where the business is at.

Sometimes you can then pick up on those signals and invest where you can build that more alignment on things. And then sometimes missing and matching is not a bad thing. One thing that I’ve learned in my experience of being working in-house and working agency is sometimes you got to switch it up a little bit, right? If there’s gaps in the way that things are working in-House, maybe leveraging an approach that you learned in the agency consulting role can kind of help fill that and augment that. And not as longwinded answer, but that’s a little bit of how I personally go through and sort of assess some of these things around red flags that you’re bringing up.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, no, that’s really great insight. And you’re right, organizational culture is often a representation of its leader. And I’ve heard many stories of employees who come in bring a fresh vision, a culture, and our processes to these organizations because of where they came from, but where they’re trying to bring it into our organizations that are very traditional in nature and they really struggle to get anywhere. And at some point end up leaving

Troy Parke:
Takes time. It takes time and investment. Absolutely.

Michael Woo:
So it really does seem like change would need to start from the top if you’re going to see some broad scale sweeping changes. But yeah, it is a very big challenge. I agree. So tangentially a common challenge we see as an agency, our business leaders within organizations that have some level of understanding. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with Nielsen Norman’s six stages of UX maturity, but I’m thinking between stages one to three where UX is absent limited or emergent, and these folks are still needing to justify the value of ux and probably more so research we’ve seen improvement in the past decade, but unfortunately for many out there, it is still an ongoing challenge. What would you say to those business decision makers that do not prioritize UX in the way that they should?

Troy Parke:
Yeah, this is definitely a challenge mean, especially given them economy and things like that. It’s a real big opportunity space also. I mean, it’s been really hard I think on agencies, especially research teams like you were mentioning. There’s been progress, but also I think there’s been a bit of one step forward, half step back. And in some cases, and maybe even more my hypothesis around this, after being through a few cycles and seeing some, like you mentioned the stages of UX maturity. I mean, sometimes you get advanced and then you kind of backslide a little bit. The return on investment or the ROI of UX and design is often really hard to quantify. And so when you look at it from a top level, oftentimes it can get treated like marketing. Or another example is this kind of investment is thought of a cost center like you would think of as tech support.

It’s just a thing to keep the lights on instead of actually being a revenue driver. It’s actually integral to the business. It actually increases revenue. It’s not just a cost on doing business. And so for the teams and designers out there, I would say wanting seat at the table, you didn’t ask about this, but I know it’s often as you talk about this maturity model, that’s what you’re looking towards to do. And so wanting that seat at the table means recognizing it’s a business table from the start. That’s the table you want to be at. And so one of the shifts that I’ve had to make and I’ve learned from folks like Patrick Neiman, is you have to think of yourself as, I am a business person who uses design as a tool, not I’m a designer. And that’s a subtle shift, but it’s really, I think, demonstrates again to that larger point we were kind of chatting about earlier around an experience is part of the business.

So for decision makers, to be honest, if you ever we’re all households, we’re all doing our own budgets week to week, month to month, those kinds of things. Running a business from my exposure is that same kind of over constrained problem. There’s too many things to get and just try and spend money on that you want, and nobody’s happy about that, where you got to make some hard choices sometimes. And so ultimately, I think when you do have the ability to do something or look at something, you’re really looking at it from an investment mindset, where are there going to be returns? And my bitch, my suggestion would be is I think UX can help activate that. And an analogy I’ve used is investments in UX and investments in design or compound interest. It can help build over time and build on top of itself, or to use another analogy as a key to unlock other keys in that sense.

So for example, another way you might frame this idea is you think about designer to developer ratios, and it’s like, okay, depending upon your business or where you’re at or what you’re producing, one to five, one to 10 maybe higher and stuff. And we all know that, hey, it’s really imperative to keep all the developers going and the developers aren’t idle, and you’re continuing to iterate on the product and adjust needs. So that might be a way that you can justify that UX investment because you’re getting that five to 10 X type return, like an investment of activating those other teams. So the biggest takeaway that I would say from this, and the overall key is positioning any UX investment as a business strategy, not a deliverable.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, I love that phrase, position UX investment as a business strategy, not a deliverable. I really love that. Yeah, I’ve always said to my designers that in order to be convincing in presentations with leadership, you need to speak their language, which is the language of business. So when selling a design, don’t focus on how it aligns with the brand or how clean it looks. All that is important, don’t get me wrong, but that’s like Greek to a business leader. They want to know numbers, they want real data on how it will impact conversions or reduce customer support calls. Once you start talking their language, you forgot their attention. So I think this dovetails nicely with your mindset of be a business person who uses a design, uses design as a tool.

Troy Parke:
I mean, the way that designers often approach this is like, oh, it’ll speak for itself, and you have to really put it in that context for people to understand what it means.

Michael Woo:
So in your opinion, what can advocates of design do to help influence these decision makers?

Troy Parke:
I know Craig’s not here, but I mean, he’s the expert on influence and working that I know from working with Craig. So this is its own craft into itself. If you consider design a craft and as I do and things, it’s a very tailored soft skill. So I don’t have the magic elevator pitch that gets somebody writing checks on the spot and that type of thing. I mean, what I’ve found in my experiences is it really takes time. You’ve got to build relationships. You have to earn trust. You also have to give trust. I mean, that’s how you earn it. And I think about things like a shark tank. It’s been on TV for years, and it’s kind of got the same story of rapport, refinement, and work. And that inventor starts with some sort of problem or me, and then they bootstrapped their weight towards like, Hey, I finally figured out this answer that we’ve been looking for, and now it can be shared to the world, and I’m looking to scale and I’m looking for you to do that.

And it’s a total pitch, but it’s based on experience. It’s based on story. It’s this story of this is what life was like before and this is how life can be now, and things like that. So that, I think one lesson I’ve learned is there really is no strategy without envisioning, without painting that picture, without telling that story, without trying to show something that can’t be unseen. It can be very, very powerful. It can be very, very persuasive. Hillman Curtis, a designer from a few decades ago would call this making the invisible visible if we’re giving something some form, this idea of some sort of form. And there’s a couple of things that can happen once something starts to become a little more tangible, people want to know, oh, okay, that’s great. So how do we get there from here based on today? Or they’re going to start, okay, that’s another idea.

They’re going to compare it to other ideas that they have that others have had that are there. And then that’s a good place to be because I mean, effectively now what you’re doing is you’re living rent free in a decision maker’s mind. And that’s where you want to be in that sense. So that’s one technique that I’ve used. Another one is a little counterintuitive, but I’ve started trying to use this one in occasions, and I think it’s been helpful, but it’s not asking why. And it sounds like, well, wait, what do you mean? And it’s like, well, no, it’s instead turning into a how question, turning it into how do we know or how will we know when this strategy is working? And the reason why is asking why just makes people defensive. I mean, just think about it in everyday life, like, well, wait, why are you doing that? Why not? Why can’t we do that? And when you ask a little bit more of these how questions or even sometimes what you get that insight into, understanding the reasons behind it, and then you can offer some potential solutions like, oh, that’s the thing that you’re trying to unpack or uncover or address. So then, hey, we might be able to get to those moments faster with design to help.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you on the notion of envisioning, there’s something very powerful when you visualize and prototype a new idea or if it’s a re-imagining of an existing product or tool. We found that it’s so much easier to gain alignment when everyone is seeing and interacting with the same thing

Troy Parke:
At the same time.

Michael Woo:
So when you say, how do we know, can you just elaborate a little bit more on that?

Troy Parke:
Yeah, I mean, like I said, then this is a new thing I’m trying on how do we know, how will we know? And I think my thought around this is there’s a couple of things it’s really doing right. First is that question, what it’s really asking is, is this based on some sort of data or is this an assumption? And again, if you were to start off with where’s the data or why it puts people on their heels, it makes things defensive. But I think that’s really, really important because as we know, designs, experiences, business is all about trade-offs. So it’s super, super important to understand, okay, we’re working off of existing data or an existing assumption, and that could be completely valid. I think it’s also valid to kind of say, is this a reasonable given going forward? Will this continue being a valid assumption or a valid data point?

Second, it sort of also gives you a little bit of an in and pushing on this threshold of identifying, Hey, when might not this be working? What’s that moment? Or what are we looking for? What’s that sense of information around this might not be turning out to be the path that is going to get us there. And then the third thing that just kind of came to mind here too is I think it’s really important for folks to be curious and demonstrate that curiosity, and you might learn something. I mean, again, you’re trying to learn as much as you can in those moments.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, this is a great technique to try. I know designers are trained to always ask why definitely worth trying it. Ultimately, we want the business to better understand design and what it can bring to the table. Do you have any tips on how design professionals can better understand the business they work for?

Troy Parke:
I mean, again, this is, geez, Mike, you’re bringing the heavy questions here. I’m not an MBA, so I think the way I’ve kind of framed this a little bit is like, hey, the question the last few years was like, Hey, should designers code? And it’s not obvious. My answer to that would be is like, well, they should study business first. Wherever you can from product peers, from online, I subscribe to a lot of product and business blogs, email lists and things, and I think it’s really important to just learn from what you can and invest in it. I think just to kind of unpack a few things that I’ve learned along the way is language matters. It really does matter. I know we’ve been kind of doing nuance things like, oh, think of yourself as a business person who uses design as a tool, but it does matter, and I even caught myself a little bit earlier, but it’s like I’m training myself also to say, not the business once, or we went and talked to the business.

They’re separate entities. You all working in an organization, you’re a partner, you’re part of the business. You’re delivering on that as a business. Organizations like Disney take this a step further, and they specifically to help with some of this mindset, you use user, they say guest is intentional, like we said. And then when you start recognizing that a little bit, I think that you can, I would encourage to use business terms to describe design activities. So leverage ROI conversion, start putting that in that framework. And then the next thing that going up from there and expanding is recognizing that you can think of business frameworks as experience frameworks very, as we talked before, they’re very closely tied together, tied at the hip. So an example, an easy example that I’ve learned is a SWOT analysis, that’s SWOT, but it’s strains, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And we have analogous activities that we use different names for and design and user experience.

Doing a UX heuristic review of your product offering or your experience compared to competitors, same thing, same idea. You’re looking at what could be better, what’s missing, and things. Disney has a practice of following three things, and they’re following the guest experience, they’re following the cast and following the money. You need to track those individual streams, if you will. Well, that’s like doing a user journey map for each of those different domains and how they interact and how they intersect and things like that. And then to take it to the highest, most abstract level possible. An area where I think also playing around with Method Toolkit is this really extends to strategic mental models for business. So many business people, entrepreneurs, they look to Warren Buffett or Berkshire Hathaway and Charlie Munger and things like that, and they use mental models for decades. They’ve had amazing financial returns and have ways that they look at business and what they’ve written about and what they share and what people pour over as these ideas of these mental models in one example is called the availability heuristic.

And that’s kind of fancy for, we tend to, as humans recall what’s important, frequent or recent. And so once you kind understand, again, going back to the idea of a key unlocks other keys, you realize this model really does kind of get to the bottom of many different UX and business behaviors. So there’s the term called anchoring that’s based on this, which is that idea of relying too much on one data point, not looking at all the different data points. Closely related to that would be the Recency bias. You’re going back to that first thing that you saw, right? Pricing uses a lot of, on both of these techniques, you saw this price or you saw this thing, and you keep going back to that mentally because you’re being anchored to it. And you saw it recently, and then it even extends to other things like sunk costs. So s cost is like, well, I’ve spent this much time already, I might as well see it through, or, I’m not going to get that time or my back, so I’ll just kind of keep going. And that’s something that, again, it was kind of like lock-in effect, right? I already got the Apple iPhone, I’ll stay with Apple, or I’m already on Android, I’ll stay with Android. So that’s another example of seeing that from that just model of that availability heuristic.

Michael Woo:
Yeah. Alright. So to sum up, have a business first mindset, having United Front, and I know since working at an agency, I’ve subconsciously always used the word we in conversations with our clients. I think that when you’re invested in your client’s goals and outcomes as much as they are, you feel like you’re on the same team. So you start to use words like that. But I do think it goes a long way.

Troy Parke:
Yeah, that’s a good one, Mike.

Michael Woo:
Yeah. And then third, as you just mentioned, strong parallels in frameworks for both business design, Troy. It’s apparent that the more about the business, the more value you can add. And I’m wondering if we can just tease out a little bit more gems from you today before we wrap up. As a consultant, we always think about how we can provide more value to our clients. So as a design leader within these big organizations, in what ways do you think about creating value?

Troy Parke:
Yeah, well, I mean, you kind of stole the big thunder right there. I mean, it’s value, right? That’s the key. We talked about being a viable product, but it really means, I think for product, for design, for business mindset, it is thinking in terms of value. I mean, again, we talked about what makes a viable product and there aren’t viable products that are currently in use that don’t provide some sort of value to someone, so, so it’s like, okay, that sounds great, but then how do you really apply that and do that? And it’s like you can frame MVP features, right? Again, we can’t do it all framing in terms of value. Great. I think most people do that, but you can also do the flip, which is when you’re cutting scope, talking in terms of value. If we don’t do this, this has this level of impact in terms of value.

Alaska has this, and for example, had this fantastic class of how to start and run an airline is super, super helpful. I mean, I’m not going to go out and start an airline, but understanding the thought process that goes into it and what you would do for a regulatory standpoint and leasing jets and crew and everything, it was super, super impactful to understand from the larger business perspective. I think the other aspect is in this time and place and where we tend to operate right now, everything kind of comes down to time and money. I mean, it’s not as a designer or somebody equating everything in that, but that’s kind of like what we do, whether it’s business or life. It’s also because we need some sort of common denominator for framing those choices and those doing those trade-offs and assessing a risk a business would.

And so simple things like, Hey, I’m going to go to school, or I’m going to go back to school or something, whether pursuing the education, does that make sense? What’s that time value and money aspect of it? Or whether you’re working on a project and you’re debating those kinds of features and stuff. I think one of my favorites that I use all the time, and Mike, we’ve talked about this a little bit, is that idea of starting at the end. I think it’s really, really, really powerful coming at problems from the opposite direction. I’ve done that a few times here. As I think about it today, I learned this from just reading about how Pixar does movies, and the reason why is because endings are really, really hard. You really need that satisfying ending. It’s got to land well, it’s really complicated. And then once you have that, once you can work back to the right start for that, instead of restarting over and over again how the beginning should go.

And that’s a little bit of, we were talking mental model examples earlier, but that’s kind of like what first principles thinking is, right? You’re going backwards. You’re going back to, okay, what are those underlying assumptions? Or you can call it reverse engineering, for example. And UX has it, you talked about it earlier, right? Like the five why’s, right? It might be the UX framing for something like that. And I think the quintessential example of this is the Amazon method of working backwards from press release. It really helps frame and prioritize the start of an initiative by looking at like, Hey, what do we want this to say? When it gets out there? What do we want the press to say? What do we want our users to say? What are the things that we want to say about what we’re doing in delivering as a business in terms of value? And so that’s a strategy I’ve used quite a few times.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, we’re very familiar with the Amazon press release and the start at the end sounds very much like envisioning to me. I do think that’s really great strategy.

Troy Parke:
It really is.

Michael Woo:
So you all just heard some truly amazing insights from Troy about how business and design leaders can come together more effectively and again, ultimately create more value for their customers. Troy, before we wrap up, are there any last thoughts you want to add?

Troy Parke:
I just appreciate the opportunity, Mike. I have the utmost respect for appreciation for the work that you’re doing and always valued our partnership. And I kind of feel like I’ve been ranting a little bit today, but hopefully it’s useful for someone out there to just kind try some of these things. Again, I talked about with some of the work that I’m doing is like I’m just trying to pay back a little bit in how I’ve learned from others and others have invested in me, and hopefully, again, try things on trying on a wardrobe and just see, I’m a big believer in there isn’t just one way of doing things and hope this helps folks out there with their personal toolkit.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I really appreciate you coming on. Do come back when you have time. I know you’re a busy man, but we’ll always make room for you. Maybe then we can talk more about your Method Toolkit. So Troy, please let our audience know how they can get ahold of you.

Troy Parke:
Sure. Yeah. Website is UX how.com, and as we talked about, working on Method Toolkit.com. So those are the ways you could reach out.

Michael Woo:
If you like today’s conversation, folks, please click subscribe. Links to UX how and Method Toolkit are in the YouTube description. That’s it for today’s episode. Please join us next time as we explore more innovative approaches to enhance your products, services, optimize customer interactions, and ultimately drive success for your organization. Tune in, take action and design your way to success.

Outro:
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