Just call him Mr Joe. A UK-based consultant, Joe Leech has built a reputation for managing change (for both users and stakeholders) and as the guy to call when a product launch has gone wrong.  Joe gave one of the most entertaining and engaging talks at Mind the Product in London 2018, so we followed up with him to get to the stories that he didn’t get to share on stage – including the surprising difference between purchasing a fridge and a washing machine.

Quotes of the Episode

Often I see interesting ideas that come from user research failing A/B testing because they’re not given enough time to iterate and improve on those designs over six months before they’re on parity or better than the existing stuff. A/B testing can often kill big, existing ideas because [it] expects results quickly – and you can’t get results quickly from big, important idea changes.

People will hate change, even if it’s infinitely better than it was before.

The biggest challenge I face is people trying to do too much in one go… people trying to do a rebuild and a redesign at the same time. They're introducing too much risk, spending too much money and too much time.

The biggest mistake I see – the thing most people do when something goes wrong, is they revert to the old thing they had before… They’ll turn it off and put the old one back on again. That’s the biggest mistake they can make, ’cause they will never turn that new thing on. They’ve wasted all that time and effort, and all that confidence will be lost.  Let’s take a stock a little bit here and not revert to the old thing.

Listen if you’d like to learn more about

* Troubleshooting a poor product launch

* Managing change with users and stakeholders

* Considered vs non-considered purchases

Links mentioned in this episode

* You can find Joe at his site and on the Twitters

* Hotjar

* The Kano model

Hosts

The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.

Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast.

A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media & entertainment, retail and financial services. He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community. He’s also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  & Brighton… so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Music

Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass.