Designers, developers, marketers, operations and finance are just a sampling of the parties that are coming together to make digital products for enterprises. As you can imagine (and have probably experienced), getting these often separate groups of people to march in the same direction can be difficult.

On this episode, we talk with Director of Product Design, Christy Ennis-Kloote & Connected Products & Data Analytics Practice Lead, Aaron Kamphuis about the pitfalls some digital teams face as they attempt to organize and make something great.

From team size and deadlines to communication and agile process, Christy & Aaron break down these common issues and suggest some alternative ways to assemble and work toward a common goal.

Christy & Aaron mention a few recommended books in this episode, including:

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

If videos are more your thing, the author has 40-minute talk that summarizes the content well.

The Trusted Advisor

The Phoenix Project

Enjoy!

If what you’re building today is front page news tomorrow, how are you going to feel about that?

As business models evolve and data becomes a primary method of currency, the decisions we make as product creators become ethical considerations. What data are you collecting and why? How do your users know what you intend to do with it? And most importantly, how does that align to your company’s values? It’s 2019 and this is a necessary, emerging conversation in the world of product design.

On this episode, we chat with Design Leads, Molly Hillstrom and Brian Hauch who have plenty of experience helping companies strategically and practically create digital products. Molly recently spoke on this topic at World Usability Day, if you’re interested in hearing more. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ssOfgLf8s

While ethics can feel ambiguous and a bit abstract, Molly and Brian share some relevant examples and give you a few considerations as you build out an ethical framework for your product teams.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the Pilot episode of 10,000 Feet!

As a technology firm, we've been helping companies launch digital initiatives for more than two decades. Throughout that time, there’s been several waves of change across organizations, but none quite as strong as the digital transformation facing enterprises today.

On 10,000 feet, you can expect us to talk through the issues organizations face as they make the shift to a technology company, regardless of their industry. We’ll talk with knowledgeable guests and each other about the successes, the failures and some hypotheses on what changes are coming next.

we kick off our first episode with Chief Executive Officer & President Meredith Bronk. While Mer is not a technologist, she has been with us from early on and has a deep understanding of what technology means for an organization and how that continues to evolve. Her ability to understand the technology and the business provides her with the unique capability to come at things from a more challenging perspective: human behavior.

Mer is joined today by host, Lizzie Williams, Experience Lead, focusing on employee experience and communication. We will mix up hosts from time to time, but Lizzie had a really great pilot hat, so we had to take advantage of that.

On this episode, you’ll learn a bit about why we named this podcast 10,000 feet and why the key to driving change is actually people. Mer also shares some tips to change hearts and minds to move in one direction.

Thanks for tuning in! We look forward to sharing more conversations with you. If you have an idea for a topic or guest, feel free to reach out.

As companies build deeper connections to their customers through IoT, a whole new world of customer data opens up to them. And while data is valuable, we can’t forget that the only way to get data is through people consistently using your product. And the only way to get people to consistently use your product is through making something that people want to use.

On this episode, Lizzie Williams talks with Jim VanderMey, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer and Alex Jantz, Solution Architect with plenty of experience in IoT.

Together they discuss the value of data and the fine lines of user experience you walk to obtain it. They also share some interesting connected products on this episode we wanted to link for you. Here are a few mentioned:

Upright, the posture device
A comical twitter account of uselessly connected devices:

Enjoy!