Thunk

Alongside you, and your teams, we create, improve, and reimagine digital products, and services. Sharing our design-led processes, and acting as UX strategy consultants, we work in close collaboration with your company to get tangible results. We don’t just swoop in, disappear for six weeks, and return with the goods. This is a collaboration, and we’re here for you in the long-term (in a non-scary way).

Co-Founder & Commercial Director

Ryman Limited

Implemented Ryman’s strategic product shift towards a comprehensive integrated in-store services offering. Directed large-scale operations across Ryman, Robert Dyas and London Graphics Centre.

Group Head of Business Services

Epson UK Ltd

Channel Development Manager

Samsung Electronics

💥 Don’t let your customers fall into the 70% that abandon their journey due to bad UX 💥

Imagine not investing in the design of your digital product? The best user experiences are design Thunk…


Hello! I’m Andy and I help connect our awesome digital product designers and researchers with organisations at various levels of design maturity as they look to co-create, level up or fill gaps in digital product design resources. 

► About Us
Thunk was founded by experienced pros who’ve worked in-house for international tech giants. We’re not an agency, we’re a collective - knowledgeable, hands-on, and honest. 

We collaborate with ambitious, forward-facing companies, helping them outperform their peers by becoming confident, design-led companies, turning out market-leading digital products, and services. 

► How Can We Help you?
Alongside you, and your teams, we create, improve, and reimagine digital products, and services. Sharing our design-led processes, and acting as UX strategy consultants, we work in close collaboration with your company to get tangible results. We don’t just swoop in, disappear for six weeks, and return with the goods. This is a collaboration, and we’re here for you in the long-term (in a non-scary way). 

► Good Stuff People Said. We Thunk They Like Us.

“…Boosted our customer research, and defined our product roadmap for the next 12 months…”
– Michele Battelli, Chief Product Office, Sensat. 

“…Left a lasting impact on processes and principles that continue to drive our design efforts…”
– Eddie Pecker, SVP Engineering Product & Design, Reed.

“…Great product design, professional, so fun to work with, and delivered actual results…”
– Felicia Williams, Design Director, Twitter.

“…Totally transformed our product, and our design process, at a critical time for the project…”
– Rob Lenihan, Head of Design, NHS.


Think we might be able to help? Or perhaps you’re ready to outperform your peers with design-led processes that get results?

Either way, send me a DM or click below for more information 👇

▶ www.thunkbomb.com

Heading up product is a tough job. But why do chief product officers leave their jobs earlier than colleagues?

Research reported on Business Age has found that CPOs tend to move on faster than other senior leaders. The average tenure was just 2.6 years. Compared this to 3.9 years for CEOs and 4.6 years for CTOs (according to Datarails). Such such short tenures impact the product roadmap and innovation. There's no two ways about it. What's going so wrong?

This is what CPOs had to say about the challenges they faced.

• It can be lonely fighting the good product fight
• There's a lack of focus in the business on product innovation (mindsets are focussed on digital transformation, not products)
• With sole responsibility for the product, their priorities often clash in the C-suite
• Expectations that are set too high when they are brought in to turn around a struggling company 
• Struggles communicating the value of design
• A lack of understanding about what it takes to deliver effective products, and how these skills don't always transfer as those needed to drive transformations

Ouch. What are your thoughts?  How do we overcome these challenges?

Andy Wardleworth

Co-founder @ Thunk: Designing Better Digital Products

How can challenges in product innovation be addressed?

What are the key challenges faced by Chief Product Officers?

What is the importance of a product roadmap?

Here's a 60-second primer on how to build a roadmap for e-commerce platforms.

Businesses that weren’t born ‘digital-first’ can feel like they're constantly playing catch-up with the rest of the market. 

A digitalisation roadmap can bring your e-commerce offer up to speed, fast— and with control. Here are a few points to start with - hope it's useful. 


👉  1. Define a strategy

Try to answer three questions:
- Where is the friction in your current customer journey? 
- In what areas are your key competitors seriously out-performing you? 
- Which technologies, integrations and APIs could add value to the customer experience? 

Build your strategy around your customers’ needs, wants and expectations. Ask yourself, how do we integrate customer feedback and insights into the process? 


👉 2. Uncover ideas and test them

Pin down specific ideas for accomplishing your digitalisation strategy. Bring users back into the process. Test your ideas and prototypes. 


👉	3. Scale up what works

If something is bringing value, then do more of it, and if something isn’t, figure out why or cut it altogether.


For context, here's a link to an example of some work we've done which addresses the points above:

What is the significance of defining a strategy in e-commerce digitalisation?

How can e-commerce platforms benefit from a digitalisation roadmap?

Why is integrating customer feedback important in e-commerce strategy?

Open article: Transforming B2B ecommerce with user centered design by thunk.co • 1 min read

Transforming B2B ecommerce with user centered design

We've not done these for a little while... 

Nice for us because it means we're busy, but perhaps not so good for the goats (must do better and keep these monthly) 🐐 🐐 

Here's the deal:
 
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀. We're offering a 45-minute UX and digital product strategy session with our Design Partner (ex-Google senior designer). There's no catch. But there are a couple of goats. 
 
If you find the session valuable, we'd love it if you join us in donating one goat each to support ActionAid's campaign to help farmers in Burundi improve their soil quality. 
 
That's the plan. One session. Two goats. 
 
𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲: UX insights, digital strategy, and the profound joy of supporting the start of another burgeoning goat family in the Great Rift Valley. 
 
Book your slot – we've got limited spaces. 
(Goat donation optional) 
 
Drop me a message to find out more :) 👍 

What impact does goat donation have on farmers?

The Double Diamond design process - a 90-second primer 

👉 What is it?

As with all processes and models, they assume we live in an ideal world where everything plays nicely. We know that the world doesn't work this way, which makes for a messy process - and design should be messy, that's where the gold is! The process is just there to guide us back on track and keep us focused on what's important. 

The model puts users first. You visually collaborate on ideas and the emphasis is on iteration. 

The process is a visual design model in the shape of two “diamonds” (squares rotated 45 degrees) touching at the corners. Each diamond represents a divergent and convergent thinking cycle .

👉 You throw out a plethora of ideas and end by narrowing down on the best ones.

There are two different kinds of ideation.
• The first diamond is for defining and understanding the problem you want to solve
•The second is for creating and deciding on a solution

What are the four stages?

1. Discover
This is part of the first diamond and is a divergent thinking process.
During the Discover phase, your team will collect and outline insights surrounding the problem you want to solve.
The team will dig into questions like ‘Why does this problem exist?’ and ‘Who does this problem affect?’ to get a grasp on what they will be tackling.

2. Define
This is a convergent thinking process, wherein your team will take the ideas and insights from the Discover phase and start to narrow in on them.
Essentially, you’ll be seeking to pinpoint the problem. You may start the Discover process knowing that you want to focus on improving your product’s accessibility.
However, during the process you want to find a specific accessibility problem to solve.

3. Develop
The second diamond begins with the Develop phase. This phase is another divergent thinking exercise, where you’ll come up with potential solutions to the problem you’ve honed in on.

4. Deliver
Here, you’ll sift through your solutions and settle on the ones that work, are practical, and generate the most value as a solution.


There are more nuances to it than this, and we have our own process honed by experience and time, which guides us through the essentially messy journey towards a great product.  


👉 DM me to chat some more on how the Thunk team can help you apply a design process to your product. 


What impact does the Double Diamond design process have on product development?

How does the Define stage contribute to the Double Diamond design process?

Fancy a no BS guide to increasing design maturity for product leaders...

👉  A lot of people have been saying they want more ideas on how to become more design-led.  

Making sure design is seen as a “business thing” not just a “design thing” is a problem that even the most seasoned CPO or design lead will have had to overcome, or will have to. All too often, the role of design is just not understood, let alone valued. 

👉  So we put this guide together. If you get a couple of minutes to have a quick read, it might help or reassure you that you've cracked the code. Even if you have, don't stop there. You can always go further.  

I don't want to make assumptions, but if these challenges sound familiar to you...
• You're not making real headway in the digital space due to team experience, tight budgets and funding or lack of understanding at senior leadership level
• You don't have time to work out how to use design as a competitive tool and deliver better outcomes – for customers and the business
• You're constantly facing short-term pressures and plate spinning. There's little time to take a strategic view about how good design makes you stand out and helps to drive customer-led growth.   
• You struggle to communicate the value of your design, especially with constrained resources
• Your team is stuck working on tactical design projects and short-term fixes
• You need to move the needle on business critical KPIs but nothing's worked so far.

👉  Grab a coffee and click on the link in the comment box to find some answers.

How can increasing design maturity benefit product leaders?

How can design be used as a competitive tool in business?

How important is senior leadership understanding in driving design-led initiatives?

UX research is often seen as an investment tap that can be turned off when budgets get cut and hatches get battened down. It's tough out there. But if your business is re-evaluating your research strategy – there's a compelling reason to keep the tap on. 

Companies that continue to invest in user research will keep more customers. And it's pretty expensive to find new ones (6x more). 

User insights help you:

• Continue to create products customers need. You're not facing the prospect of creating customers for your products in better days. We all lived through the pandemic. No need to go over old ground on how customer knowledge, agility and adaptability were the loyalty currency.
• Share knowledge across the business. It helps marketing, for example, communicate how your products are what your customers need (not just what they want). If you're addressing a need, the person feels seen and heard.  They feel more loyal.  
• Avoid costly redesigns and improve time-to-market
• Improve accessibility and inclusion, making your products more usable for everyone.

UX research can be the key differentiator that sets your product apart and helps you emerge stronger from a downturn - with your customer base intact.  But the research has to deliver business value and drive decision making. 

DM me to chat more. 

How can UX research benefit businesses in retaining customers?

Why is improving accessibility important for product usability?

What is the importance of user research in driving decision-making?

If you're struggling to prove the value of your design take a 5 minute to listen to this podcast with Brian Balfour @ Reforge.

'North Star product metrics are leading you astray'

TLDL:

👉 Too many companies go about establishing their North Star metrics in the wrong way. 

They end up:
• Copying the metrics that competitors use to try to benchmark across
• Leaning into revenue metrics – this is the most misleading metric
• Clashing with colleagues - finance thinks it should be one thing, product thinks it should be another and marketing thinks it should be yet another – the department with the most influence determines which metric gets used – spoiler alert, it probably isn't the CPO

What metrics should you use? Balfour suggests retention, engagement and monetisation. What metrics do you use?

👉 Click on the link below to listen some more.
https://lnkd.in/evgkgzpk 

What impact do North Star product metrics have on companies?

Open article: What are the best product metrics to measure long-term growth? by roadmunk.com • 10 min read

What are the best product metrics to measure long-term growth?

Impact eats product metrics for breakfast.

We all get stories in our feeds and inboxes about the upheaval we're seeing in the discipline (when aren't we, eh?). 

If you're designing digital products one of the biggest question marks hanging over your head is 'how do I prove the value of our design'. 

❌ Old way of doing things – track product and project metrics
✅ New ways of doing things – link digital projects to tangible business outcomes 

Get senior leaders around the table. Your customer lead, marketing lead, etc. Align the project strategy with business goals. How can you measure progress on achieving that outcome? Establish the metrics you should track to prove the return on the digital product – for the company.

Continuously improve through iteration and regularly review your metrics. 

I know, I know, easier said than done...

What is the significance of aligning projects with business goals?

How does iteration contribute to project improvement?

How does continuous improvement benefit digital projects?

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