Download frog’s guide to human-centered product design and delivery

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How to Deliver Impactful Products to Market

With customer expectations changing constantly and dozens of methodologies and delivery tools to choose from, it can be difficult to navigate today’s complex product landscape. Where do you begin? How do you get buy&#8211;in from your organization? How do you assemble the right team?  
At frog, we know there is no single method or tool that will work for everyone when it comes to delivering market-changing products. Instead, you must take a human-centered approach to product design and delivery—one that adapts to your team and your customers. That’s why we’ve honed our own adaptive methodology that not only helps you ship great products to market fast, but sets you up to be a challenger in your market for the long term.

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Through three steps—imagine, make, scale—we facilitate a continuous cycle that keeps cross-disciplinary teams iterating and collaborating in order to quickly scale impact and deliver truly transformational products.   
This virtuous cycle of product design and delivery, combined with key ingredients pulled from our human-centered methodology, has helped organizations across industries—from small startups to large enterprises—create meaningful value for their customers while scaling innovation for the long-term.  
If you’re ready to disrupt from within and become a true product leader in your market, you’re ready for frog&#8217;s human-centered product delivery approach.

Authors
Jona Moore, Global VP of Technology
Cristina Crespo, Principal Product Director
Albert Dang, Design Technology Director
Emanuele Di Saverio, Principal Software Architect

frog's Product Delivery Methodology Playbook

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Jona Moore

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In an increasingly digital and remote world, design is more important than ever when it comes to delivering exceptional digital products 

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Forrester Names frog a Top Pick for Digital Product Development 

Forrester recently released <a href="https://www.forrester.com/report/Now+Tech+Digital+Product+Development+Services+Q1+2020/-/E-RES158016" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Now Tech: Digital Product Development Services [Q1 2020]</a>, a report on the latest and greatest in Digital Product Development, which also cites the best large, mid-sized and small digital product providers. frog was one of just a few design firms included in the list of 19 global technology, engineering and business consulting firms mentioned. Why is this important? Because now, more than ever, it’s crucial that we don’t forget about people when building new products in an increasingly digital world. And we know that a thoughtful, human-centered design approach is the best way to do this. 
As the Forrester report suggests, digital products are no longer a nice-to-have, but table stakes for companies across industries looking to stay ahead of the disruption curve. In addition to adding new streams of revenue and engagement, digital product design is a crucial element in not only fending off competition encroaching from every direction, but in proactively playing to win in the disruption game. 
Here’s the thing: Design is the special sauce to truly disruptive digital products. We know this, because we’ve been helping our game-changing clients do it for the last 50 years. From our earliest days teaming up with the likes of Sony and Steve Jobs, we have made it our business to always keep people at the center of everything we do. And though our definition of “product” has changed drastically over the last half century—from the first personal devices like the Sony Walkman and Apple computers to the hundreds of apps we all carry around on our phones every day—we’ve maintained that spark and curiosity for everything we imagine, build and scale in the digital world. 
At frog, we often say that in order to build the right thing, you have to design the thing right. This comes up in digital product all the time. We get clients asking us about time to market and agile development. We do those things, sure—we can get you to market fast. But the more important thing is keeping you ahead of the market for longer. Cheap and fast is all well and good until you have to keep throwing investments to do cheap and fast over and over again. Instead, we encourage our clients to build the right thing, which more often than not, is the lasting thing, the more disruptive thing, and the more profitable thing. 
Design processes like DesignOps, agile methodology, and design thinking help clients define tangible goals, like adding revenue streams or staying competitive, and keep those goals in sight so that everything they do stays on that path. Our experience working with clients across industries and with all sorts of constantly changing customer expectations enables us to act as a trusted guide, partner and co-collaborator in your journey to delivering the best possible digital product to your desired audiences. In fact, <a href="https://go.forrester.com/blogs/is-bigger-better-midsize-digital-agencies-lead-to-experience-success/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forrester</a> confirms that companies find greater success in their experience strategies with small to midsize firms like frog, which are more likely to be “a great cultural fit, big enough to do complex projects, more agile than the ‘big guys,’ and ‘an extension to [the] team.’” 
We are proud to be among 2020’s top Digital Product Providers. At frog, we are passionate about the things we make, the way they work and the people who use them.

For more on how you can use technology to become a disruptor in your industry, download our recent report

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Jona is the Global VP of Technology at frog. Jona brings over 18 years of experience in bringing new innovation, user experiences and products to life for many large Fortune 500 clients. With a passion for managing large complex cross-functional (UX, technology, product, business strategy) teams to collaboratively meet their goals, Jona has successfully led many large organizations through transformational changes while influencing cultural change in their businesses.

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There’s no more time or money to waste on “innovation” that leads to nothing—call in the experts to help your team score early wins.

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Surviving the Valley of Dead Ideas

After 50 years of delivering products to market, we at frog have seen an evolution in what our clients are asking for. They want to understand who their customers and end-users are to better empathize with them. They want to know what products, services and experiences they can create to help grow their business and fend off the competition. And most importantly, they want to know how to bring these ideas to life.
The fact is, most companies have no shortage of good ideas. Innovation teams regularly share spreadsheets with us containing hundreds of excellent ideas for disruptive products, services and experiences. So why don’t these ideas make it off the page, despite the imperative for companies to be more “innovative”? These ideas don’t go anywhere because innovation, while imperative, is also at odds with how companies operate. New ideas tend to unleash the corporate immune system, which neuters or kills disruptive ideas on contact.
In our latest insight report, <a href="https://go.frog.co/en/from-innovation-to-impact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">From Innovation to Impact</a>, we discuss six strategies for helping your company get tangible products to market that create real value for your customers. Below, we elaborate on the challenges that await your team as they try to move from ideation to execution—what we call the Valley of Dead Ideas—and outline the qualities of the battle-ready team you must assemble for your products to see the light of day.
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<h4>The Challenge: Traversing the Valley of Dead Ideas</h4>
Anyone working for a legacy organization knows there’s a vast valley to cross between new idea generation and actual development and execution. On paper, you think you’ve done everything right: you’ve assembled the right team, cobbled together the budget and put in the work. Yet this may not be enough to traverse the Valley of Dead Ideas, which is filled with obstacles.
The Valley of Dead Ideas is where teams face the realities of getting executive buy-in and funding to move the idea forward to execution. Some companies invest in “turnkey” fixes that they hope will be enough to deliver innovation. This can involve training their teams in design thinking or hiring a chief design officer. Some set up a corporate innovation lab—there are at least <a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/research/corporate-innovation-labs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">70 such labs</a> in major companies in the US, and certainly more are in the early development stages. Others invest on the execution side, adopting an agile development methodology.
But these measures are not enough. Even teams that employ all of these strategies still face the challenges that all innovative ideas encounter. There are business unit leaders who kill off ideas that require experimenting with a departure from the core, and finance teams that kill off ideas that can’t show desirable gross margins quickly enough. Not to mention the corporate immune system that locks up your idea in a whirlpool of endless socialization and approval processes, halting momentum and making way for a more nimble company to get your idea to market first.
In addition to a corporation’s own immune system, there are also untrustworthy “guides” hoping to cash in on your team’s motivation to bring new ideas to life. Seemingly low-cost system integrators may promise to meet your goals, but need all the requirements defined up front before committing to a budget. Given that their own business model is to sell your company hours (and not outcomes), they’re just as likely to turn your idea into a platform to sell the CEO on a merger, than to help you deliver your product to market. And huge technology conglomerates who promise that a magic technology like blockchain will solve all your problems for a low up-front service fee can end up charging expensive long-term licensing fees to continue using their proprietary platform. By 2025, companies globally will spend nearly <a href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-system-integration-market" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$600B</a> on these system integrators. But how many of those dollars will translate into products in market for their clients?
Even the most prepared teams can be overwhelmed by these obstacles—they fail to meet key internal deadlines, they lose funding, and eventually lose the traction needed to launch. Frustrated organizations cut their losses by cutting the idea, the team, the innovation lab, or even the chief design officer, leaving the innovation to die.
Innovation is ultimately survival of the fittest; <a href="https://fortune.com/2017/06/27/startup-advice-data-failure/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">80 percent of new products fail to launch</a>, and only <a href="https://review.chicagobooth.edu/entrepreneurship/2017/article/surprising-numbers-behind-start-survival-rates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">20 percent of startups</a> manage to return a dollar of profit to their investors. But when innovation is an imperative, those odds for survival are unacceptable. How do you improve your company’s odds of bringing your innovative idea to life?
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<h4>Bring in a Battle-Ready Team</h4>
So how do you get through the valley? The answer is to hand-select your battle-ready team, and provide all the resources and support from the top to enable them to traverse and, ideally, construct their own bridge that avoids the valley entirely.
What is a “battle-ready” team? It’s a highly effective and collaborative team that moves at venture speed using an agile method or design sprints. It’s the special forces team that you call whenever you need a job done, and done effectively.
The battle-ready team requires an innovative product or idea that drives and sustains engagement with targeted users, and creates emotion and belief that inspires the team and rallies the organization to support—not hinder—their journey.
This powerful belief has to be manifested in the delivery team that consists of:
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<li>Designers who can collaborate with development quickly and effectively</li>
<li>A strong decision maker and leader that has helped establish a clear vision and roadmap with principles</li>
<li>Savvy business leads who have influence and can bridge relationships across the organization to get buy-in on the product vision</li>
<li>Team members experienced in strategy, product, tech, design and delivery that can think holistically through a product and user experience</li>
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Check list for success: What makes an ideal battle-ready team:
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<li>Has launched several products to market</li>
<li>Has several wins and failures under their belt, and experienced projects that have failed or missed deadlines so they know what to watch out for</li>
<li>Knows what it takes to sustain long term customer engagement</li>
<li>Understands how to socialize and get executive buy-in for funding</li>
<li>Knows how to work with technology vendors and partners, and is a build/buy/partner expert</li>
<li>Understands that customer experience is crucial to success</li>
<li>Never says no, and has a passion and tenacity to deliver—no matter what the constraints of the challenge.</li>
<li>Doesn’t need all the requirements detailed out for them at nauseum</li>
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This nimble team has to know all the obstacles they’ll face in the Valley of Dead Ideas and how to avoid and defend against them. They are equipped to make the right decisions—and make them quickly.
Some leaders will be able to assemble their battle-ready team entirely from within their own ranks by identifying someone who has led a team through the valley before. However, most leaders benefit from the introduction of an outside partner like frog to help inspire their own team members and navigate through the valley. frog partners with leaders across industries and around the world to help teams turn their visionary ideas into realized products, services and experiences. We do this by working closely with leaders and their teams to show them new ways of working, help them prepare for high-stakes executive decision meetings, and prove out concepts to gain broad support for new innovation.
When the startup <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/heatworks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heatworks</a> came to us with a proprietary technology that could heat water on demand, we served as the battle-ready team to get the product to market fast. By working in close collaboration with the team across every customer touchpoint—from brand and product strategy to integrated hardware and software design—we were able to launch a completely new internet-connected, tankless, electric water heater and mobile application within nine months.
Our battle-ready teams bring this Venture Design approach to large organization as well. Together with Pfizer Consumer Health, we launched the Design Collaborative to create new health and wellness solutions for consumers in the areas of improved sleep, stress management, energy, aging and nutrition. By leveraging design methodologies for rapid, scalable creation of new product ecosystems, services and businesses, we were able to help PCH bring new products and services to market that empower people to take health and wellness into their own hands.
Innovation remains a corporate imperative—as it should, because disruptors remain an existential threat to legacy companies in every industry. Companies who have tried to deliver innovative products and services to market know the difficulty of traversing the Valley of Dead Ideas from innovation to execution. At frog, we don’t believe that changing your company from the ground up is required to get new ideas to market. Instead, focus on assembling your battle-ready team—whether pulled from internal resources or augmented with battle-tested partners like you find at frog—who can help you deliver not just ideas, but real impact through business outcomes.
For more on creating impact over innovation, download the full report <a href="https://go.frog.co/en/from-innovation-to-impact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

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Ryan Menefee

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Ryan is a Strategy Director based in Austin. He has over 10 years of experience helping companies across industries to frame up problems, identify the questions that need to be answered, and then find those answers through qualitative and quantitative means. He uses this data to craft a story that builds organizational support for new products, services, and experiences that generate value for both the customer and the company.
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A group of designers and strategists from frog’s Austin studio set out to answer two questions: when it comes to leadership in innovation, where are all the women in the room? And more importantly, how do more women get there?

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When it Comes to Innovation, Who’s in the Room?

Close your eyes and think about the people authoring and shaping the future. Think: innovation executives and leaders responsible for managing, growing and transforming their organizations in the coming years. Who do you imagine is in the room? Who’s got a seat at the table?
Now, let’s look at the numbers: Only 1 in 5 executives are women and fewer than 1 in 30 are women of color. Does that roughly reflect the image you conjured? As women in innovation consulting, we often find that when we get in the room with leadership across almost every industry that are working with us to create the future—they look pretty much the same as they did 50 years ago. But as designers we know that we’re never going to reach those peak levels of innovation if we don’t include more perspectives, backgrounds and contexts in the room.

<h2>Origins of Innovation</h2>
It didn’t used to be this way. In fact, many consider the very first computer programmer to be Ada Lovelace, who in 1840 saw the potential of an advanced analytic machine and penned the first published algorithm that made way for the modern day, general-purpose computer as we know it. So, what changed? To uncover an answer, we interviewed trailblazers—women leading the way in innovation as C-levels, VPs and directors in business, design, science and technology—to understand how they arrived there, the challenges they faced, and what they learned along the way. We were struck by how willing these women were to talk candidly about their experience. Some of what we learned surprised us, most was as expected, but all of it inspired to take action and design the change we want to see.

While diverse in industry, experience, race, ethnicity, geography and age – these 25 women innovation leaders had a few common attributes – strength, grit, drive, self-awareness and courage. In a word: superwomen. To earn a spot in the room, they expressed two caveats and four pieces of advice, which we’ll share with you here.

Dr. Karin Lachmi, the Chief Scientific Officer &amp; Founder at Bioz with a double post-doc, left the comfort of her position at Stanford to found the world’s first AI-based search engine for life science experimentation. Despite her accomplishments, she was once assumed to be the Executive Assistant assigned to schedule the next meeting because she was the only woman on an email distribution list.
How might we surface the bias – both conscious and unconscious – that emerges from assumptions like these?
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Assumptions are unavoidable

Lucy Swithenby, Creative Director at frog Design, likes to use her design skills to solve business problems. Of the many problems she sees, she notes that most women “…try to hide how tired [they] feel because it makes you vulnerable,” highlighting the amount of effort it takes to find balance across all the areas that need attention.
Being superwoman is a lot of work, how do we help women conserve energy for what matters most to them?
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Tiredness will be a way of life and balance is everything

Candace Hsieh, VP of Clinical Development and Regulatory Affairs at Aivita Biomedical ascribes to the adage, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ When coaching other women at her organization to advocate for themselves, she advises, “if you apply for it, you might not get it.  If you don’t apply, you definitely won’t get it.”
How do we encourage calculated risk taking in women and girls?

Take risks

Mary Murphy-Hoye, former Vice President, IOT Consulting, Cognizant Technology Solutions, built a career around challenging norms. She notes that women in high tech in the 80s and 90s were alone and different; they had to really believe in themselves and know they were good at what they did. Mary noted that Tom Malone, an MIT Sloan professor with whom she collaborated and author of Future of Work, encouraged her to create her own rules of engagement. “I worked with a guy that spoke about breaking assumptions about the way things are. ‘How long does it take to build a house?’ and he says ‘You can build one in less than 24hrs. You just have to change the rules of the game and ways of thinking.’”
Ivy Ross, VP of Design for Hardware Products at Google, feels her current success stems from her experiences early in her career as an artist and the ongoing practice of being her authentic self. “I just jumped in and continued to be me.”
How can we help people learn and break the unspoken rules of engagement at work?

Do it differently

Superheroes always have help, which is why it’s important to find a team both at work and at home.
Chris Hall, the VP and GM of Customer Experience at Adobe, believes that, “as a leader, you can’t get anywhere without others.” Chris does not see herself as an activist but asks herself what role she can play to help her team and broaden the larger organization. When it comes to gender, she thinks about it more broadly; most of the mentors she’s had throughout her career have been men. For her, it’s about watching out for others and creating environments to invite others into. Lisa Jackson, an Executive Strategy Director at frog design adds that finding a team who can support the multiple layers of one’s life is vital. She notes that, “it is hard to find mentors that have to navigate and balance career and parenthood.”
Aniko DeLaney, Global Head of Corporate Marketing at BNY Mellon, advises, “have your own board of directors. It could be friends, family or professionals. Figure out the people who will help you be your best self and pick you up when you need it.” Aniko believes women need to have strong social support systems that include good daycares, friends and professionals.
How can we better connect women to teams – mentors and advocates at work and home support networks?

Find a team

Kesha Williams, Software Developer, Founder, Speaker, is a committed volunteer and mentor, passionate about getting children and women, particularly women of color, more engaged in technology. “I’m very passionate about increasing diversity within technology because of what I’ve seen and experienced in my career and exposing kids, especially young girls, to technology at an early age.”
Lindsey Mosby, former VP of frog Health and Strategy at frog Design and current Regional Health &amp; Wellness Lead, Gensler, wants to be seen as herself first and as a female leader second. “You don’t have to be part of the movement towards fair practice, but we should all be grateful to those who are putting in the time and energy required to make it happen. Change doesn’t happen without major effort.”
How do we keep the circle going – connecting the women who’ve made it into the room to ones who can one day run the room given the right support?

Pay it forward

The Superwomen

<h2>Up Next</h2>
Thanks to these women, we know what needs to be solved, that there’s momentum to change, and what we can work with to get started. What’s next? We design the change. Over the coming weeks, we will create concepts that help activate the entire ecosystem – women and men, public and private sectors, from early education to delayed retirement – to make sure that the rooms of executives of the future look a lot more like the community, population and nations around them.
We’d like to thank the following frogs for their contributions on this project: Suzanne O’Connor, Laura Scullin, Rachel Moore, Larcombe Teichgraeber, Chisun Rees, Jen Blake, Samara Watkiss, Samantha Nudelman, Alessandra Valenti, Kara Pecknold, Cristina Crespo, Melisa Hinojosa, Courtney Brown, Andrew van Hyfte, Ryan Menefee, Andy Couch, Jayson Truttmann, Emile Hoffman and David Zemanek.

Larcombe Teichgraeber

With over 18 years of experience, Jona Moore leads the North America frog technology team responsible for designing and delivering solutions that focus on innovative user experience. Jona also co-leads frog’s Org Activation practice. She has designed, led and delivered many multi-channel programs for several public sector and Fortune 500 clients such as King County, Marriott, USAA, J &amp;J, Banco Azteca, Microsoft, WA State and many more. She has won numerous awards for her work, including a Kennedy Award in Innovation and a Governor’s Award for Quality and Performance. She enjoys traveling and exploring new cities with her 4 year old son and husband. <a href="http://twitter.com/jonavmoore" target="_blank" rel="noopner noopener">@jonavmoore</a>

Larcombe Teichgraeber joined frog in 2015 as part of the Austin studio’s Strategy practice, and is now a frog Fellow. During her tenure, she worked with companies large and small in Retail, Consumer, Healthcare and Automotive. Larcombe came to frog from General Mills, where she worked in both heritage brand strategy and new product development for the cereal, snacks and yogurt business units. She enjoys the challenge of advocating for both the user and the business and finding creative ways to make what’s old new again. She has a poodle named Kevin John Poodle.

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