Envisioning the future of handheld computing at Palm

In 2003, Palm could see the end of the PDA business coming. It was time to reinvent their offerings. We worked closely with them to envision the future of handheld computers.

We combined the analytic modeling of Formal Needs Analysis with creative ideation to generate dozens of ideas, followed by rigorous scoring of the ideas:

The strongest handful of ideas was played out in a series of day-in-the-life storyboards that followed a day in the life of six personas:

This flagship product vision project successfully predicted dozens of ideas that we now take for granted, and several others that are still to come.

As a follow-on, we were asked to draft a presentation to envisioning the coming convergence of mobile technologies. It was delivered by Palm CEO Todd Bradley at the IX 2003 conference in Singapore.

Segmenting the market based on needs at PalmSource

At PalmSource, we synthesized user research into a map of segments based on needs in 2002. (Segmenting by scenario and needs is more directly actionable than by demographics and psychographics.)

We also applied our Formal Needs Analysis method to model customer segments and competitive solutions on the same basis so they can be directly compared. This approach makes it crystal clear what products (existing or envisioned) would appeal to what segments, and why.

Giving away product visions at StealThisIdea.com

We have a lot of excess ideas lying around here that we weren't doing anything with. And they keep multiplying. So to clear out some space, we've been publishing them at StealThisIdea.com since 2005.

There are over 45 designs and visions to steal, including an improvement to the Google search UI, Thumbs up/down button on music players, Multiple mobile phones per line and lots more.

Exploring Video-on-Demand for NTT Data

NTT Data, a major Japanese IT company, hired us back in 1997 as a think-tank to investigate the interactive TV craze. We prototyped what TV might be like if made interactive.

For the most part, the premise was flawed (a story telling medium is best experienced passively, not interactively). But one concept that emerged and which remains viable is an interactive TV news interface that lets you custom-tailor your news by queuing up only those segments that are of interest to you, then sitting back and enjoying. (We still haven't seen this done yet!)

Using our Formal Needs Analysis method, we discovered that a set-top box with a hard drive for automatically capturing broadcast programs would be a major advancement over the VCR. TiVo, which produced the first such device years later would agree.

Developing a vision for digital photography at Broderbund

At the dawn of consumer digital photography in 1997, Broderbund needed to figure out what it meant for its PrintShop business. We formally analyzed the needs of customer groups and competitive products.

We then worked with the team to sculpt a product vision document for the next version of Print Shop that guided the requirements and design effort.

Thinking through interactive TV set-top boxes for Matsushita

Back in 1997, Matsushita enlisted our help as a think tank to investigate interactive TV. We again used our Formal Needs Analysis visualization technique to capture the profile of needs satisfied by different types of set-top boxes.

Inventing a vision process at Claris

In 1997, Claris was trying to figure out what products they might do for the small business software market. Several attempts at tackling this problem had been made in prior years. There just hadn't been a good way of systematically understanding and generating product visions, so we invented one. The work culminated in a handful of prioritized product concepts.

CEO Bill Sudlow told us, “I was very impressed with the careful, thoughtful, objective, thorough analysis and synthesis. I like the possible product ideas a great deal."

The techniques we started here in 1997 evolved into a couple of the tools we use today: Formal Needs Analysis and the product concept scorecard. They are two of our secret weapons for conducting systematic product vision.

Reinventing the user experience architecture at gap.com

Back in 1998, the early days of e-commerce, we did the first site rearchitecture of the Gap online store. Our solution, which started out as a skunkworks project, was considered radical at the time. But it resulted in big spikes in time-on-site, conversion rate and size-of-order metrics. The approach was eventually copied by competitors and used as a case study in the popular book, Don’t Make Me Think:

The underlying user experience architecture still stands today, over 11 years later, and is shared by the Old Navy and Banana Republic online stores.

Deeply investigating current usage at Opsware

In 2004 we helped Opsware do a reality check on their product. We interviewed customers and sales engineers, discovered over 200 issues and synthesized the findings into prioritized, concrete action items. It set the stage for the next major overhaul of the platform.

Our work was well-received by CEO Ben Horowitz and Chairman Marc Andreessen, and we were invited back for another project. (Opsware was acquired by HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion).

Re-engineering a major business process at Intuit

In 2006, after Intuit purchased small business incorporation service MyCorp.com it was time to automate the slow and error-prone paper-based workflow.

We deeply interviewed the stakeholders and modeled the existing process. This clarity enabled us to rearchitect the workflow, resulting in a more efficient, parallelized process flow that would slash processing time and expense, and lend itself to automation.

Full client list

The list above is just a small sampling of some of our projects.

We have had the privilege of learning from a broad span of over 35 wonderful clients over the past two decades:

Contact us with your questions.