Design Sprint

Remote workshops, they’re a thing right?! Remote workshops aren’t a new thing and, with the soar in popularity of tools like Mural (our personal favourite) or Miro (another great alternative), alongside the disparate nature of product teams in 2020, more and more remote workshops, (including full-blown Design Sprints) are being run every day. At Pack, before the pandemic Read more »

This article (Part 2 of a trilogy) is all about introducing elements of the Design Sprint in a manageable way, to get your teams working better together. It encourages adoption of the process from the inside, out. So, you’ve heard of Design Sprints?! The week-long framework originating from Google Ventures to solve challenges and test Read more »

If you’re a product manager or working on a product team, you’ve probably heard of Design Thinking. But have you used it? Do you know what it is, apart from a buzzword everybody likes to use? And, more to the point, how can you start to use it to build better products? Product managers are, Read more »

Taking a break from the always entertaining/sometimes informative podcast Jake & Jonathan (formerly known as The Product Breakfast club, which he co-hosts with Jake Knapp), AJ&Smart CEO Jonathan Courtney joined us to chat about Design Sprints, workshops, and how to get groups of people collaborating. Quote of the Episode One of the best things about Read more »

Kai Haley is Google’s Lead of Design Relations, but in her spare time she also looks after the company’s internal Design Sprint Academy. Jake Knapp (late of Google Ventures/GV) may have written the book, but Kai has run the sprints, trained the trainers, and has spent the last few years in the trenches. We had a Read more »

Team issues can have a negative impact on a project and your people long term. There are a bunch of ways they might manifest themselves – and I’ve written them down as I’ve heard them over a decade of building digital products in cross-functional teams. I’m not touching on the upfront issues like bad sales Read more »

More and more enterprise businesses have embraced multi-sided marketplaces to extend existing business models and explore new territories for growth. For example, in 2009, Walmart launched its own Marketplace to connect third-party merchants with Walmart customers partly to catch up with Amazon’s already established third-party marketplace. General Motors launched Maven, a peer-to-peer marketplace that connects owners Read more »

Do you ever get tired of being asked, “when will it be ready?” Are you always hesitant to commit to a deadline so you can avoid being accused of being “late” when you don’t hit it? Because let’s face it, when you start to build a piece of software or a big feature you can’t Read more »

Let’s assume you have a great idea that requires some of your colleagues to take action to move it forward.  You introduce it and they agree that it sounds good.  A couple of weeks later, you ask how things are progressing and they haven’t had time to start yet.  A few more weeks pass… still Read more »

At the outset of 2018, there are already over 50 million voice-based devices shipped, up from 1.7 million in 2015 (see footnote). Consumer adoption of voice-based products has grown to the point where businesses need to understand what voice-based experiences can mean to them. But, as I’m sure we’re all aware, exploring new business models such Read more »