Chapter 4:

Prototype, Test, Learn, Iterate

Apple, Inc. cofounder Steve Jobs is credited with discrediting the value of market research.¹

After all, since people cannot describe what they need, or do so only relative to what already exists, what is the point of asking? Leave it to the product people and designers to tell users what they need.

Maybe that is not exactly what Jobs meant.

For sure, traditional approaches to market research have limited value to uncover the insights that fuel disruption. That is why the concept statements and storyboards of the past are being replaced, or at least complemented, with iterative prototyping processes that engage users. Prototyping opens the door for users to co-develop concepts. A good prototyping process focuses on:

• ➤ Creating models,
• ➤ Letting users engage with them,
• ➤ Learning from the interactions, and
• ➤ Creating versions that are progressively closer to being market ready.

A good process may look and feel informal but is disciplined and based on principles.

Most people have an easier time reacting versus creating from scratch. Not surprising, since we live in a world where the volume and complexity of choices make reacting a practical necessity. So expecting others to envision how you can help them, with no stimuli beyond questions, is less constructive than giving them something to which they can react.

Interpreting Jobs’s take on market research as justification to build products without user input misses the point. Change makers already know they can get clues about needs by examining the workarounds people create to solve problems on their own. Users may not be able to verbalize needs, and are less likely to imagine innovations that step far away from known experience. But behaviors and emotions transmit signals. Engaging users in prototyping puts you in a position to intercept these signals and witness direct feedback.

Engaging users in iterative prototyping means embracing new ways to validate product and service constructs.

A major newspaper publisher wanted to stop a readership slide. The circulation team felt the problem was that content did not address readers’ interests. They conducted interviews to find out what people wanted to read. The feedback was “more local sports.” So a weekly section on local sports was added.

The management of that newspaper probably added an ounce of weight, and cut down thousands more trees. And guess what? They didn’t get one new subscription. That’s because people don’t really change behavior based upon how well their interests are satisfied.

Matt Foley, introduced in Chapter 1, says, “It’s the job of the users to tell you their problems. It’s your job to create solutions.”

Prototyping defined: Tinkering meets purpose

The origins of prototyping are rooted in everyday activities of daily life that we all experienced during childhood.

Prototyping is a way to learn. Engaging users in a live rendition of a product or service, however rough, narrows gaps between a great idea inside your head and a tangible, functional and sought-after real world product.

For anyone innovating in the sciences, technology, or manufacturing sectors, prototyping describes the first and subsequent pre-production expressions of a product or experience that guide the specifics of usability and feasibility. Building prototypes and letting users play with them begins to uncover answers to questions like:

• ➤ Does it function?
• ➤ Does it do what it was intended to do?
• ➤ Does it hit quality standards and expectations?
• ➤ Can it be replicated at scale and at what cost?
• ➤ Does it solve the problem it was intended to solve, and does it do so effectively?
• ➤ How does it perform relative to existing alternatives?
• ➤ What reactions does it evoke for potential users?

The process works for a deceptively simple product like a spoon, a complex medical device like a dialysis machine, or a digital experience powered by algorithms and big data. Prototypes allow the abstract to become concrete and the imagined to become real. As models are exposed and repeatedly modified, concepts move closer to market readiness.

Prototyping is in play in everyday processes that advance learning. Think about tinkering, a habit that has existed throughout history. Thomas Edison, our hero inventor, was arguably one of the great tinkerers of all time.

Seen through the lens of child’s play, prototyping is just a way to figure things out. Contrary to being a domain of technically trained experts, life experience proves that even a child can do it. So, barriers to prototyping are low. Because it is such a familiar, intuitive practice, creating and sharing prototypes also offer a way to build user, team, and investor buy-in.

Art Chang, founder and CEO of Tipping Point Partners, sees it like this: “A prototype is the minimum product that enables the creator to generate real feedback from real users. It’s the basis for ongoing iteration.”² Such iteration moves a concept one step at a time toward launch

The When, Why, How, and Who of a Prototyping Process

The When

When to begin to prototype is a judgment call. In principle, prototyping best begins as soon as you can put something tangible down on paper, in code, using materials on hand. Capture the intention as soon as you start to see elements of your idea. Artistic skill is nice, but certainly not required.

Ben Zombek is an industrial designer and entrepreneur whose career began with companies including GE and Kodak in his hometown of Rochester, New York. He shifted toward startups, in order to experience greater innovation diversity. In 2010 he launched BZ Design, a product, user interface, and marketing firm that helps clients shape what he describes as “the total package” — design, hardware, user experience, and marketing.

Ben believes in engaging early when the widest range of innovative possibilities is open for consideration. He prefers to initiate prototypes while underlying technology is being defined, before there is even a commercial application. He says, “There is a lot of amazing technology that isn’t fleshed out yet into a product. We like to work on building the ‘believable packages’ at the earliest possible stage when scientist and designer can join forces.”³ Once patents are issued, commercial product restraints emerge.

Ben engages with universities, and develops working relationships with scientists in campus labs, enabling his goal of early involvement.

The BZ team starts by sketching as many ideas as possible on paper. Soon, designers also work with foam, to brainstorm in three-dimensional space. Their principles:

• ➤ No idea is a bad idea.
• ➤ Simpler is better.
• ➤ Feature overload craters prototypes.

Ben says, “The goal is just to get something out on a piece of paper. We use a very fast and loose process. We go for volume. We’ll start to see that some attributes of one sketch work well with those of another. The sharpies are moving fast as the team fills more and more sheets. We pin things up on boards, all around the work area. Then afterward, maybe the next day, we reconvene and evaluate. No one shoots down ideas. We naturally work to see the merit in each sketch, each foam model.”

By working together, team members inspire each other, and end up creating “our” ideas, not piles of separate ideas where each thought, each sketch belongs to an individual.

Aliza Freud founded SheSpeaks in 2007 to elevate and amplify women’s voices. With 250,000 network members — and monthly social media reach of over 300,000,000 — SheSpeaks is a powerful tool for brands to connect with women for insights, user-generated content, and to magnify their messages.

Among SheSpeaks’ innovations: creating a virtual and limitless alternative to generate consumer insight, debunking the orthodoxy that study participants must be paid, and demonstrating the power of users-as-content creators to partner with brands.

Speed is survival in the social media space, so Aliza and her team never stop iterating the SheSpeaks experience. The goal: to go live with each new version of the platform as soon as possible, to view the latest prototype and the in-market experience as one and the same. The company develops enhancements, pushes them out to see what works, then changes or scraps on the fly.⁴

Not every business has this flexibility. But any change maker should aim to iterate toward a minimum viable product (“MVP”) that meets two criteria:

1. Solves for the original problem statement
2. Motivates users’ interest strongly enough to get them engaged

No matter the business or sector, “early” and “fast” must be the rules of thumb for prototyping. Art says, “When and how to begin is subjective but always situation-specific, based on a defined use case grounded in real-world needs.”

The Why

There is nothing like seeing and interacting with the real thing to:

• ➤ Identify functional requirements. Translating vision into concrete form forces execution details to be acknowledged. What will product dimensions be? What materials will be used? What will the user experience navigation be like? Can partners deliver on promises? Does the prototype meet or defeat hypotheses about whatever user assumptions have been made until this point?
• ➤ Trial and error is the only way to figure out how to make new concepts work. Drew Lakatos’s story in Chapter 3 shows how even junkyard materials can become mock-ups of what in final form will be a highly sophisticated medical device.
• ➤ Spot and avoid easily missed mistakes. Ben’s team worked on a wearable device for asthmatic children. Ben says, “What looked fine in an initial prototype turned out to be way too large when we had an eight-year-old in front of us. We immediately realized that the engineers had to shrink the electronics components.” The team avoided a near-certain failure point. Component sizes were reduced, thousands of smaller wearable devices were sold, and production ramped up.
• ➤ Understand user emotion. Emotions shape perceived value and utility — drivers of commercial potential — that otherwise would be hard to predict at this stage. How a physical product feels in a user’s hands, what interaction is like, how intuitive the product is to use and whether size, shape, and weight are right for different use cases are best determined by engaging users. These interactions produce data on how people use products, and reveal via body language, verbal intonation, and facial expression how products make users feel. The same holds for digital products where product dimensions lie in navigation elements, messaging and imagery.
• ➤ Foster collaboration. Prototyping nurtures creativity, and motivates rallying around a concept to make it real. Teams that embrace prototyping stimulate innovation — testing and learning, engaging with users and with each other, and experimenting without fear of failure. These behaviors become essential for raising money, too. Whether investors are corporate executives, angels or venture capitalists, “show and tell” builds understanding between founders and funders.
• ➤ Move faster. While adding multiple steps of iteration to test and refine feels like a slowdown, prototyping speeds up getting to market with an offer that works and that people want. Think of the difference between a fully unfurled piece of string and a string of the same length, compressed into a coil. Prototyping is like the coil — more gets done in a lot less time.

The How, Part One: Inspiration, Purpose, and Strategy

Sameer Vakil and Summi Ghambir are cofounders of GlobalLinker, a Mumbai-based startup born at a New York City Starbucks.

These cofounders are motivated by a need they have witnessed over years living, traveling, studying, and working across the United States, Asia, India, and Japan. Their insight: small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the global economy. Around the world, SMEs create more jobs, grow faster, and demonstrate greater capacity to innovate than larger enterprises. Yet they face disadvantages largely due to lack of economies of scale and limited access to funds. Larger companies have these advantages, and take them for granted, while SMEs spend a lot of time and effort to address needs that are not core to their businesses.

“SMEs are beloved as a totality, but at a unit level, as a practical matter, they are neglected,” says Summi.⁵

The two asked a simple question that led to a massive vision: Why shouldn’t a small business have big company advantages? What holds them back, irrespective of sector or geography? Small and medium businesses would all like to grow.

Or, as Sameer likes to say, “While we refer to them as small and medium enterprises, their dreams are never small or medium.”

GlobalLinker has set its sights on how to make the big dreams of small business owners attainable. The experience integrates the essentials to run a business — the to-do’s that should not distract from generating sales, developing products, and building relationships. GlobalLinker makes it easy and fast to:

• ➤ Find people, services, capital and deals,
• ➤ Plan travel,
• ➤ Design and launch a website or ecommerce store, and
• ➤ Access a host of services, products, and benefits on pre-negotiated terms.

“Small business owners never stop working, from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep. Whatever their device, you will see about nine windows open as they chase multiple demands. They work so hard. Yet they have told us that when they leave for the day, the most important tasks they started the day wanting to do end up neglected,” Summi says.

Sameer and Summi credit their progress to immersion in the small business owner persona and problems. Their move from the back of a napkin to global platform has happened by:

• ➤ Identifying exploring a big and deep unsolved problem for a large, growing market segment;
• ➤ Defining their purpose and positioning;
• ➤ Executing and advancing successive prototypes shared in labs, closed pilots, and then small-scale live trials;
• ➤ Having commitment to execute.

The How, Part Two: Step-by-Step Prototyping

The GlobalLinker team prototyped methodically. Their step-by-step path:

• ➤ Segmenting the market. Three clusters were defined: service, product, and service plus product. For each, hypothetical solutions, starting with words on paper, were developed.
• ➤ Text-only prototyping. By spending time in workplaces, they saw the problems firsthand and used their observations to create these first prototypes. Three priorities were set: business networking, efficiency tools, and access to economies of scale.
• ➤ Low-fidelity prototyping. Also produced on paper, based upon conversations with users about what their days were like.

Summi says, “We let users mark up paper models to show what changes would make the experience better. Then we asked for details. We focused on finding the most meaningful use cases.” Next steps in the process:

• ➤ Thin prototyping. This meant developing an on-screen experience with no backend — a clickable prototype to validate how users expected to interact, and what words and phrases users found most meaningful. This phase made it possible to get rid of jargon and internal speak, and use relevant, common sense language.
• ➤ Getting to the alpha phase. Because the GlobalLinker developers were so methodical in gathering and applying user feedback through each prototype, there was little rewiring to do. Now, one hundred users had access to a live site with a functioning back end.
• ➤ 24-month in-market beta. Unlike the alpha, which included business owners considered to be “friendlies,” the beta included self-selected users who came across GlobalLinker and chose to participate. The beta goal was to be sure that everything functioned smoothly and that users saw utility.
• ➤ Redesign. The team combined beta feedback and the prior several years of effort, undertaking a significant redesign.
• ➤ Results. Big usage and engagement upticks occurred, including performance gains 300 percent above predictions for a key partner. The hard work also translated into cobrand partner contracts. As of this writing, GlobalLinker is preparing to expand across nine markets and is already live in three countries.

The best advice about prototyping from Summi and Sameer:

• ➤ Begin with a clear and well-articulated vision. “We have always been passionate about building the best small business community. Our vision: To make the growth of small and medium enterprises simpler, more profitable, and enjoyable,” Summi says. The team focuses on what matters most to users.
• ➤ Decide up front what kind of organization and culture you want. Summi and Sameer see team and culture as their secret sauce. Sameer says, “In 2009, we spent forty-five minutes at that Manhattan Starbucks writing our plan, and we are still sticking to it. We spent three full days deciding what kind of organization and culture we wanted, and how we would create both. We truly believed that culture and co-ownership would allow us to multiply our own dreams, not just ensure productivity.”
• ➤ Dream big and stay the course. Have conviction about what you seek to do, but flexibility about how you do it. Avoid the temptations of the short term, or you will short-circuit your plans.
• ➤ Recognize what prototyping is really about. First: the technique — the skills of building the iterative models toward product-readiness. Second, the purpose you set for your business that got you to be a change maker. Clarity of purpose aimed at a big market need is most of what defines prototyping.

The GlobalLinker cofounders believe that their success has resulted from vision and purpose first, method and mechanics second. “The difference between innovation and adaptation is this: If you want to adapt, it’s more about technique. But if you are innovating to disrupt or transform, don’t go anyplace without first knowing your purpose,” says Summi.

The Who: Users

Never take users for granted, or underestimate their input.

Users may not be sitting at the worktable or standing at the white board with sticky notes in hand, so it is every team member’s job to keep users’ perspectives present.

“Users,” Ben Zombek at BZ says, “are overwhelmingly interested in co-developing.” They will give generous feedback if they see you are at the early stages. But if you bring them in too late, and a prototype seems too finished, users will be more likely to go along with whatever you present.

That is why the GlobalLinker team opened up user participation a bit more for each new prototype, moving from limited non-public, to limited and non-publicized, to limited public access to their experience.

At SheSpeaks, there is barely a distinction between testing and launching. New code can always be released, and the upside of leaning forward outweighs the risk of error.

The commonality between the two companies is that the teams decide how, when, and to what extent user engagement with prototypes should occur.

The Team

Resources are always tight and there is no formula to assemble the right prototyping team. The sector and the concept itself are factors. Individuals with wide skills may be able to wear multiple hats. What about user experience, marketing, sales, legal, data security, compliance? Concepts must ultimately meet non-negotiable standards, and also meet user expectations for privacy protection.

Follow this principle. “Include all of the stakeholders whose buy-in is going to be necessary for approval of my prototype,” Art Chang says. “It is just common sense that the timeline to production will be shorter if everyone is brought into the process at day zero.” Be clear about who is most important to get to a valid MVP. “Valid” means proving feasibility and showing evidence that there is market demand.

Sometimes teams take a narrow view of whom to engage to build that first working model. There are natural biases at startups toward tech gurus. Founders live with resource constraints, so they must be tight-fisted about paying for more than is absolutely necessary. Big companies contend with a different risk: allowing too many cooks into the kitchen. The politics of achieving consensus drive team membership and roles. Well-intentioned people weigh in and water things down.

Either path can be fatal. The best case is to walk the fine line of insane focus and inclusiveness. Be a cheapskate, putting just the right people on board. Invite those who have core, constructive roles. Ensure anyone who joins is bought in to the purpose.

When technology was driven by waterfall development, teams operated more as rows of individuals working along an assembly line. The steps came one at a time: document requirements, identify features and functions, create paper-based prototypes for user tests, and hand off to a designer to create a highly polished piece of work, then hand back to developers to build to the design specs.

This linear process is being abandoned as product managers and designers become collaborators. Designers are evolving into positions of greater influence and impact. They are moving away from creating designs implying surface finish, to delivering intuitive, sensible products and experiences.

“The more influence the design people have, the better,” says Ben Zombek of BZ. “You cannot just put people in a cubicle farm and say, ok, time to be creative. Team interaction is crucial. You cannot say they are important to success, and not give them power or authority.”

To traditionalists used to waterfall development, modern prototyping’s all-hands-on-deck approach may look risky. But, the truth is, any diverse and collaborative team that quickly and iteratively builds and tests improved prototypes has a better shot at success. Why? When the people who create are also those who maintain and operate what goes to market, accountability is built in.

Thoughts on capabilities

Prototyping decisions are driven by data and qualitative insight. Any web-connected offering is a source of data about how users navigate. Look for indicators of likes and dislikes, what they understand and what causes confusion, what is most important versus unnecessary. Combine behavioral data with qualitative feedback about users’ needs and how they confront problems in daily life.

Determining what capabilities are best for prototype development depends on the context. Product prototypes demand different capabilities than those that are digital only. “Say you are dealing with a physical product,” says Art Chang. “You will throw away each successive prototype. There are limits to the number and role of testers because each has to have the product in hand.”

But there is good news. Wider access to 3-D printing and declining costs are redefining product prototyping to become more like software development. This has tremendous implications. One of the biggest benefits is the declining limitations on user engagement in prototyping. The philosophy of software development has long been that the only legitimate feedback comes from users using the software in live environments. This philosophy is now edging into the physical products domain.

The Three Cs of Prototype, Test, Learn, and Iterate

Capabilities:

We’re off to see the wizard … to build early prototypes.

At the beginning of the change maker’s pursuit, resources are especially tight. Feedback is essential, and depends upon a prototype. But building a prototype takes resources and requires feedback. There is a way out of this loop.

Having a shareable prototype doesn’t require much if any code early on. The Wizard of Oz technique gets its name from the film classic, in which the wizard behind the curtain injects manual support to create a realistic, immersive experience for his visitors. The technique was named by Johns Hopkins University PhD student Jeff Kelley, who noted the analogy in work he was doing as he worked on his dissertation.⁶

Accordingly, the technique uses artifacts such as paper drawings, presented with a voiceover, or backed up by a video-supported user experience simulation. Together, these elements can create a sufficient sense of the user interface to get early direction — prior to putting effort into a more polished design. Look for free content online including specific examples of how to take advantage of this technique, which is faster, cheaper, and easier than putting effort too early on into the real thing.

Constraints breed creativity

• ➤ Develop a prototype in under twenty-four hours. Exaggerating a behavior can help reach a goal. So, give yourself just twenty-four hours to develop a prototype and see what you can create with a few collaborators who share your passion. You will be amazed at the progress that is possible. You will also challenge preconceived notions of how much time is required.
• ➤ Contain scope of V1.0 to the top three features. The Rule of Three, well practiced, never fails. Avoid feature creep. It’s an unfortunate by-product of smart, creative, energized teams. A simple technique: make a list of the features you believe should be included. Then, circle the top three. A team can use a simple voting process whereby each person gets three votes. The features with the most votes make the cut for the MVP. Stick to it.
• ➤ Abandon perfection. Being a perfectionist will crush your ability to create the V1.0 prototype. Perfection seekers inhibit risk-taking that leads to innovation, and inculcate a fear of failure. The standard for measurement is how users see the ideal, not how you see it.
• ➤ Don’t wait for the exact right timing. Timing is never right, and there is never enough time, enough money, the perfect mix or level of talent, or the best workspace. Rise above these self-imposed constraints and make the liberating leap that getting your prototype into the hands of users reduces obstacles.
• ➤ Build momentum by iterating. “Fail fast, fail cheap” is easy to preach, hard to do. Failure occurs when learning is not applied to the next prototype.
• ➤ Use free and low-cost tools and resources. Modern prototyping capabilities are within reach on a per-use basis. Online platforms are reducing the limitations of traditional research methods, and allowing sharing of visual prototypes or private URLs with invitation-only user groups. There are many options to support a live alpha or beta, especially for software-based products.
• ➤ Take specialist skills off the critical path. Use every resource, from your own network to crowdsourcing platforms, to close short-term talent gaps. Warning: be clear on what skills, self-sufficiency and judgment are needed, and don’t compromise on talent quality. Be willing to admit that not finding the help you seek through your network may signal it’s time to expand and strengthen relationships.

Connections:

The change maker cannot go it alone for too long. Creating and testing prototypes requires multiple skills, likely in advance of securing funding or establishing a formal team. So, a network of relationships to tap into may be the bridge to progress.

Within an existing organization, individuals who believe in the concept will go above and beyond whatever their job descriptions are. Seek these people out. Recruit a volunteer army to get started.

More on networking

1. Tips Learned Through Trial and Error:
   • Don’t make excuses. Effective networking does not require you to be outgoing, extroverted or famous.
   • Ask for help. We all have a need to be heard. When asked, others will help. Some won’t, but most will. Reticent about admitting you have a problem? Just reframe the request from “I don’t know what to do” to “I’d love to know what you think.”
   • Much networking value happens serendipitously. Networking value doesn’t grow on a neat timeline. Investment over time in an always-expanding, cared-for network produces amazing, unforeseeable benefits.
   • Be authentic, and see networking as the chance for you to give. If you are a giver, the best people in your network will give in spades. Remember, giving is in the eyes of the recipient. Giving means no strings attached.
   • Have fun. Viewing networking as a burden makes it a burden.
   • Embrace it. Networking is not a distraction from what you want to accomplish. It is a means to accomplishment. Feel you don’t have time to network? Only meeting others immediately helpful to your goals? You are cutting off opportunities.
2. Eight Networking Boosters
   • Set goals. What gets measured gets done. Set a weekly goal of a number of networking interactions.
   • Have a strategy. Create a communications brief for yourself — define goals and tactics to build and enrich your network, including outbound and inbound tactics.
   • Always bring value to the other person. Too many people call upon others to ask for something they need, at the moment of need. Offer new insight, content, information, or a beneficial introduction.
   • Balance targeting and volume. Don’t overthink networking prospects. Sometimes the best people turn out to be those whose value is not obvious based on professional labels.
   • Stay in regular contact. Don’t expect anyone beyond your tightest inner circle to know what you are up to much less care, without you making an effort to keep them in the loop. Meet people in their environments, not yours. Match the cadence, tone, and type of any digital updates to meet your network’s needs.
   • >Listen. Networking is about encouraging others to share with you, not to download to them. Imagine that for each conversation you have, your audience should do 70 to 80 percent of the talking.
   • Don’t assume LinkedIn is the core platform for your network. LinkedIn is fine as a source and is one of many sites where you might post your content. It’s an entry point to bring people into your network, and to join others’ networks. But remember your control over targeting, content distribution, and timing is limited, as is the opportunity to obtain metrics.

Culture:

Cultural attributes for successful prototyping include:

• ➤ Always proactive, never waiting until tomorrow
• ➤ Passionate about purpose, aspiring to serve users
• ➤ Fast, setting aggressive deadlines, and connecting speed to quality
• ➤ Accountable to deliver outcomes, not activity
• ➤ Collaborative, including actively listening, and team
• members with diverse backgrounds and skills
• ➤ Open-minded, exploring non-obvious thoughts raised by others
• ➤ Objective about redirecting by giving feedback without getting personal
• ➤ Not perfection-seeking, focused on getting to what is good enough for the current phase
• ➤ Values and creates a motivating environment full of creativity, curiosity, and urgency to succeed
• ➤ Listening, including actively encouraging others to contribute, acknowledging what they have to say, and accepting diverse communication styles.

Chapter summary

• ➤ Prototyping is a way to figure things out and learn by showing and engaging users with models of an offering. Building prototypes and engaging users for feedback is the best way to understand a concept’s viability, usability, and desirability.
• ➤ We all tinkered as kids, so we all have some prototyping DNA. Prototyping is tinkering with a special pace and purpose, discipline, and principles.
• ➤ Prototyping leads to answers about the product itself, clues and insights that inform the business model, and evidence of viability and commercial opportunity. Prototyping creates momentum to win investor support.
• ➤ Prototyping starts with vision and purpose, and is fostered by a culture that enables and expects collaboration between product, design, other experts, and users.
• ➤ “The sooner the better” is a good rule of thumb for when to build and share the first prototype. Early and tangible is far and away a better goal at the start than finished and perfect. Users will be more candid reviewing a rough cut than one that is too polished.
• ➤ Artistic skill is not required. Pull out paper and pencil, and start to sketch.
• ➤ Common principles of prototyping apply across sectors, products, services, and experience offerings.
• ➤ The ideal team to create prototypes includes those who will be accountable to produce and operate the final product. Design talent is most effective when treated as a true partner.
• ➤ Resourcefulness is tested to produce great prototypes. All around you are your relationships, and free or low-cost tools to help get traction irrespective of your budget.

Notes

1. Walter Isaacson, “The Real Lessons of Steve Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, April 2014.

2. Art Chang, founder, Tipping Point Partners, technology entrepreneur, and civic activist, in discussion with author, November 2016.

3. Ben Zombek, CEO, BZ Design, Inc., product design, UI/UX and marketing expert, in discussion with author, December 2016.

4. Aliza Freud, founder and CEO, SheSpeaks, in discussion with author, December 2016.

5. Sameer Vakil and Summi Ghambir, cofounders, DigiVation Digital Solutions Pvt Ltd and GlobalLinker, in discussion with author, December 2016.

6. Usability Body of Knowledge, Wizard of Oz, usabilitybok.org.