Problem To Vision

Deborah Clarke at UXDX Community: Amsterdam. Video: https://youtu.be/QFdtJQsx7OM

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Three things: worthwhile, innovative, nuanced

[00:00:10] I'm going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is the art of building and creating impactful products. For me this really starts with larger-than-life ideas and really quite big concepts and where we're headed, big dream[?] moments. But it needs to start somewhere, like pitching a tent to stargaze.

[00:00:36] Practically speaking though, for me it's about three things. How do we build and create a powerful product? The first thing for me is about worthwhileness. How do I gauge what's worthwhile in a world where there are lots of different things that we could be working on, lots of different priorities, lots of different competing concepts and ideas? How do I gauge which one's the most worthwhile to be working on?

[00:01:03] The second thing is about being innovative. When I say innovative, I think this is like a non-term in many respects, and everybody calls everything innovative. For me being innovative is about thinking a little bit differently. And then the final thing for me is, is it nuanced? What about the product is nuanced? How do I think about the tiny and the small things? Or in other words, WIN. So, really easy to remember acronyms, and particularly winning ones.

Worthwhileness: learning versus risk

[00:01:34] When I think about worthwhileness, I frame this in two ways. The first is, how much will I learn? And the second is, what's the risk? So you could think about it in terms of risk and reward, and sort of a typical framework around how do I gauge what I need to be going after. But for me it's really important to call out the learning component of this, and the learning component of this is saying, how much will I learn as a result of this project?

[00:02:07] And the reason why that's important is because in the world of software product, the world of fast-moving, quick-developing, really ever-changing ecommerce spaces, understanding what changes and what impacts you have on the product is really important. Because if you don't understand those changes or you don't understand what you're affecting, it's either blind success — so you don't understand why you succeeded — or it's blind failure, so you don't understand why you failed. So that understanding component is just so very fundamental when I think about actually creating product.

How CarTrawler works

[00:02:40] I'm going to talk a little bit about CarTrawler, because we live in a world of complex things. As Rory said there, what does CarTrawler do and how do we work? And really this is somewhat complex, because we have two users. So Ryanair is one of our partners. We've got the guys that are sitting around the table, so the internal stakeholders, the business, that is right there. And then we also have the end users that are out there. So we have those guys that are actually plugging into their apps, and we're ultimately thinking about, okay, who are the end users, and then on the flip side of things, what does the business want?

[00:03:22] So in other words, if you think about it in different terms, we have all the suppliers that we connect to, so suppliers being the Hertzes and the Budgets and the Avises, the car rental companies. And then we build the software that sits in between, and then we work with the guys like Ryanair, Emirates[?] and Norwegian, and they plug into our software. So largely that's how it works out.

[00:03:46] And in travel, and in travel tech specifically, one of the interesting trends — it's somewhat not so interesting — is that mobile really didn't take off like all the other spaces, and I'm sure the ones that you're working in, where you saw mobile just shoot up in really exciting ways many years ago. That kind of didn't happen in travel for a very long time, particularly within travel bookings. It was really curious. And so for a long time we kind of didn't invest in it, we invested in desktop.

[00:04:22] So just to give you a sense: desktop was driving 80 percent of our bookings, tablet a further 10, and mobile was around 10 percent. So we're kind of going, that's interesting, and that mobile space really hadn't taken off. But we were starting to see trends that were changing, and so we thought, hmm, maybe we should actually think about building our capabilities in this area and actually think about what that actually means.

[00:04:49] We got this really exciting opportunity when Ryanair approached us and said, would you like to be part of our native app? Like, oh, that's kind of cool. We've got these guys on the side experimenting with all things native, so maybe we should be thinking about this, or actually, how do we think about that as a potential opportunity?

[00:05:09] This concept of going native was quite interesting for us, because literally the definition means taking on the traits of things around your culture, the traits of those around you, and that's exactly what we do in our software and how we build our software. So that's kind of how we were thinking about the problem: we need to build something for somebody else, and we don't have a lot of experience in that area.

[00:05:31] So in the world of riskiness and learning, this is kind of how I thought about the problem. On the one side it was about the propensity to learn, and on the other side we've got the riskiness associated with that decision. So if you think about low riskiness or high riskiness and low propensity to learn, you're sort of playing in these two spaces, which is, you know, what's the point? Why would I take risk and not learn anything? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Whereas if you actually move more into the higher or medium levels of propensity to learn — how much am I going to learn — spaces, and then you move along the dial of the riskiness associated with those decisions, that's where it starts to get interesting.

[00:06:18] And for me this decision very much fell in between solid and bold[?]. I think a lot of these decisions often fall in this space. It's never really the case where you get no risk whatsoever and you're going to learn loads. That just very rarely happens. And so that was really where we sat. We're going, we kind of have a native app, we have a few guys sitting there developing this thing, and we've got the world's second largest airline approaching us about being a part of this. That's really exciting, really risky. How are we going to go about actually going after this decision and thinking about it? And that was what was exciting.

Starting small, and what we learned

[00:07:01] So what we decided was that very concept that I alluded to at the start, which was, we started small. So we said to Ryanair, right, okay, so we're going to build this thing in phases. We're going to create a number of different features associated with this, we're going to build at a pace, we're going to work with your guys and try and figure out actually how do we develop this app, how do we learn in that process, how do we learn about not only the mobile space, how do we learn about how to develop native apps, and how do we do this in not necessarily the perfect way?

[00:07:34] So when you turn around to some of our engineers at the time, they're going, well, you don't really know the architectural structure, we don't know how we're going to go after these things, it's a really exciting opportunity but I'm not so sure. And then on the flip side of that, we're going, well, how stable is this thing going to be, and how are we going to go after these different opportunities?

[00:07:52] And the exciting thing about this decision, while it was risky, as I said, that propensity to learn was huge, both in terms of how we learned to develop that capability in the mobile space, but also in terms of how we learned about the mobile space. So mobile is up now for the company as a result of this decision, over 50% there, and it's continuing to grow in that space. Because we made that leap, it's like, wow, we're learning loads about the mobile space, we actually developed some of this capability, and we've done so in phases.

[00:08:26] Now what's interesting about that is that we haven't done so perfectly. So we don't have this perfect model, and actually one of the big projects that we're investing in at the moment is scaling this out, thinking about actually how do we work back from some of the decisions that we made really quickly to be a part of this space and learn from this space.

Innovation: knowing the why and the when

[00:08:44] So it's not all about worthwhileness, it's also about thinking through things differently. And when I say thinking through things differently, what I mean is two things. One, knowing why you're doing something, and two, knowing when to do something. Knowing why to bring things together, and knowing when to bring those things together.

[00:09:08] So I passed by this shop in Copenhagen called Sneakers and Coffee. And it's not the type of coffee that's for them[?], it's the actual drink. And I passed by the shop and I was thinking, this is genius. Sneakers and coffee, who thought it up? That's kind of cool. And you're probably thinking more like, why sneakers and coffee?

[00:09:32] And if you think about it, coffee these days is not something of an exclusive quality. You go into things like coffee houses, you get these handcrafted beans and brews and cups and this really wonderful experience of drinking these cups of coffee. And then sneakers, well, they're a thing of high fashion. I pass by so many high street shops — these actually come from Dublin where I live — and the idea that these things are not just a comfortable, practical purchase, but they're something that people want to wear on their feet and they want to look and feel better, they're actually cool now.

[00:10:14] So when we think about sneakers and coffee, it's that sort of unnatural pairing that seems like, well, why do these things work, and why did this shop decide to pair those things together? Well, the why of it is, when you purchase these things, or when you're associating these things, it makes you look and feel better. And the when of it is, it's in this hip neighborhood in Copenhagen, in the appropriate spot at the appropriate time.

Pairing planes, trains and automobiles

[00:10:44] And in the CarTrawler world we pair lots of different things. Planes, trains and automobiles nearly rolls off the tongue. So we're thinking about airlines, we're thinking about cars, we're thinking about trains, we're thinking about lots of different types of content and how it is that you get from A to B.

[00:11:03] And I would actually say that when we initially thought about these things, we kind of made a mistake of saying they're all the same thing. It's all part of one travel journey, it all makes sense together, let's sell them together, let's think about these things together. How do you build platforms where everything is just available to everybody, because people want it? You're trying to get from point A to point B, people want these things, they're important.

[00:11:24] But actually, if you think about a typical travel journey and typical purchasing journey, you go to one place to figure out where it is that I want to go. So usually on TripAdvisor, blogs, talking to your friends, figuring out, okay, well, where am I going to go on my holiday, am I going to go to Copenhagen or am I going to go to New York? Then the next decision that you make is purchasing your flight. So you go on, you purchase your flight, and right, okay, now I'm going to New York, that's very exciting. Now I'm going to get my hotel, so I need to figure out where I'm staying. And once I've got my hotel, then I'll think about anything else later. So restaurants and that kind of stuff is going to be a later purchase or later decision.

[00:12:03] And the two later components are, if the journey is kind of complicated or continuous, it's usually car rental. So if you're going to need transport with you throughout your holiday, you're going to be going to multiple different places, you're probably going to be thinking about car rental. Whereas if you're doing a simple point-to-point journey from the airport to the hotel, you're probably going to go with the transfer or taxi, or that type of transport.

[00:12:30] And the why of these two things is really interesting to me. Because first, on the car rental side, as I said, it's complex, it's unlimited, it's self-service. Whereas on the transfer side, simple, limited, point-to-point, it's very much about service. Two different types of decisions, and there are two different types of things that happen at different stages.

[00:12:55] And that's exactly it: so when do these things happen? You generally think about car rental well in advance of your trip. It is the last decision that you make when you're booking, generally, but it's usually well in advance of your trip. Whereas on the flip side, who books a taxi three months in advance? It just doesn't happen. It's not the behavior that we have.

[00:13:14] So again, thinking about the why: why would I pair these things? And then the when of these things is a lot smarter. As I said before, what we'd done initially, we'd gone, right, selling all these things as part of the flight purchase, working with our airlines, working with all these different travel companies around the world, so they're all going to go as part of one platform. But actually the real innovation comes when you think about these whys and whens, as I was saying.

[00:13:41] So what we're experimenting with at the moment is how we notify[?] you. We're going to actually ping you, when we know where your destination airport is, we know where you're going because you booked your flight, and then we're going to ping you at the appropriate time. We're actually thinking about transfers, not three months in advance when you're in a complicated booking funnel and you're trying to make all those different purchasing decisions. It's a really simple thing, that sounds very simple but took us time to get there, before we were thinking about those things and in the right context and how we actually pair these things.

[00:14:14] So whether it be sneakers and coffee, or whether it be trains and transfers and automobiles and planes, knowing the whys and the whens of these things is really important.

Nuance: the small things

[00:14:24] And then finally, nuance. It's all about the small things, and I think all too often, particularly when we focus on the big grand idea, a vision, we really lose sight of some of these smaller things and smaller changes that we make to products that have massive impacts. So I'm going to talk to you about a few, in my opinion, exciting examples. These are things we've just done over the last couple of months actually.

[00:14:49] One of the things we do that is very important to me, and it's something that John Buckley touched on earlier, is that notion of actually being really in touch with your end users, understanding the insight and really drilling into that insight so that you're solving problems based on that insight. So we do a lot of research and we look at all the different problem statements and pain points that our users have.

[00:15:13] And in the car rental industry specifically, one of the big pain points is insurance. Like, I even say the word insurance and immediately, oh, what's that, what am I signing up for, like, this fearful kind of thing. And if you think about car rental as an asset that you're renting, these assets are upwards of 20 grand, so you could damage this thing, you could have all sorts of issues on your holiday. It's intimidating, it's fearful, it's not very sexy, it's not great. But insurance is a fundamental component of how it is that we think about the car rental space, because we want people to have a peaceful holiday, we want them to have a good holiday.

[00:15:51] What we found is that there are lots of different insurance products out there on the market, and largely they're grouped into two categories, and that's around basic and premium insurances. And 53% of our customers didn't understand the differences between these things. Intuitively you're going, well, basic is basic and premium probably means something more, but do you actually understand the context around those things?

[00:16:16] So I'll break it down for you. The car rental company sells basic insurance, which basically doesn't cover you — covers you in terms of a lot of the car, but there's this upwards of 3,000 euro excess charge that you could be paying if you haven't taken out an insurance product. On the premium side of things, then this covers that 3,000 euro liability charge that you could potentially have. It insures you for all that. What's complicated is that if you damage the car you have to pay that money still to the car rental company, so you're still paying three thousand euros to the car rental company and then you can reclaim it back. Here is mud[?]. Exactly.

Testing the insurance copy

[00:17:00] So how do you explain that in a UI that people spend less than ten seconds reading? This is the really, really big challenge for us. So when we thought about it, we go, right, okay, well, the first thing we're going to test is a number of different displays that have varying levels of information. So, is more information the right amount of content, less information the right amount of content? What types of content are people looking for? Is it about undercarriage, tires? Are these things important? What do people want to know that's included, not included, all these types of things? And so as we were coming up with and crafting the copy, it's about two things. One was how much copy, and the second was what types of copy, what types of information are people kind of looking for.

[00:17:48] Can anyone guess which one of these three? You guessed it: less is more. We proved it. So we saw — it's amazing, we'd see these massive variances depending on what type of copy we wrote, depending on what type of information we were presenting. And you just think about that uplift[?] in business on our site: it was absolutely huge for us. It was just simply removing lines of copy. That's really what it was. Those displays were quite similar, it's just actually drilling into the right amount of information that people were looking for.

The nudge principle, and naming the products

[00:18:28] The second test is one of my favorites that we've done in the last couple of months. We use something called the nudge principle. So many of you have probably heard about this behavioral economics side, but really the idea is that we're not going to tell you that you're fat[?] if you decide to go up the escalator, but we're certainly going to hint it. We're not going to be direct with you, we're actually going to nudge you in the right direction. And this actually works, by the way: no one was taking the escalator any more, which is just really interesting.

[00:19:02] So how do we use that to our advantage, knowing that this insurance product is really, really complicated, it's really difficult to consume, but it's really important that people understand what kind of coverage they're getting in this mix? So as I said, one doesn't really cover you and one actually kind of covers you. So we're thinking about these two concepts, we're going, how do we explain in a UI — again, people are spending less than ten seconds — what these things actually mean?

[00:19:30] So we decided to title our insurances differently. These are the words we tried. We said, really, if you think about that one coverage, "basic" is a non-term, so we're going to call it "limited", because it's limited coverage, you're not getting your full coverage. And then we're going to actually go between the words "standard" and "premium". The notion being, do you as a user expect a certain level of cover when you're going to purchase an insurance product, or do you feel like you want to pay a premium for that insurance? As in, do you want a five-star hotel or do you want a three-star hotel? How do these things operate in your mind, and how do you actually evaluate what that means in terms of insurance?

[00:20:11] Two very similar displays. Two words of copy that changed: limited/standard, limited/premium. Anyone want to wager a guess which one? One. Left? Anyone other than left? Okay. Anyone right? Good man.

[00:20:31] So we saw a minus six drop between the words limited and standard. And you're going, what? Like, we just explained that this is the coverage that you should be expecting. The minus — like, I don't understand, how did this even happen? It's just a few words of copy, which again is that further impact piece. And then we put this version live: plus 11%. How did that happen? Words of copy. I still don't understand how these tiny changes can have such massive impacts.

[00:21:04] And these are the things that are so important when you're thinking about product. It's not about changing the entire flow or making everything the most simple thing that you've ever seen in your life, and the better UX and all these kinds of things. Sometimes it is, but lots of times it's these tiny things that are drilled into those really strong user insights as to how we solve these problems for our users.

Sharing, and taking it one step too far

[00:21:26] So I'll share another one with you just before I go. We know, again from our research, that 85% of our customers travel with a companion. That sounds pretty reasonable. You're going, okay, well, you've got some business users in there and then you've got your pleasure users, and most people go to places with other people. This is something that happens in travel, so that makes sense.

[00:21:52] And one of the things we found out in this space is, okay, well, people are going places with people, and there are lots of different purchases happening in a booking funnel. The people that are researching or the people that are purchasing aren't necessarily the decision-makers. So is it the husband or the wife, a friend, or whomever it happens to be, that's actually going to be the person that's making that decision? So this concept of, how do we share content so that we enable these decisions to happen a little bit more easily for our users, is something that we've really been thinking about quite a bit.

[00:22:25] And we're going, okay, so you have this old mobile web flow and display. As I said, we were working on our mobile, and we have this concept called email quote, as you can see down here at the bottom in gray, multicolored, we didn't focus on both[?]. And then we moved to this kind of new flow, and we were thinking, right, okay, so we're going to make this thing really prominent, we're going to put the share icon up at the top, we're going to make this feature totally something that people can do and they can interact with, they can email and SMS, it's going to be great, we're going to add all these properties to our share display. And guess what happened?

[00:23:03] So, share icon. And we saw a massive drop. Our share metrics just plummeted, and we're going, what? We just enabled sharing in a really powerful way, and before we had this ugly CTA that was gray and nearly looked like it was inactive. How did our share metrics drop? How did they plummet, when now it's more prominent? What's going on?

[00:23:28] And this is what we found. First of all, the share icon is not something that is widely recognized. If you ever notice, in terms of UIs, you'll see the word "share" paired with that icon, and so it actually needs to be paired with words. So that was the first insight that we had. But the other insight that we had was, it's kind of typical behavior in travel, which is that people don't think of sharing content, they think of saving content to share it. So if you go on Booking.com, you go on Hotels.com, you go on all these different sites, and you think about actually how do people think about these things: hearts are a really prominent feature, Airbnb, all of them have hearts. And it's this notion of saving content before you share content. So we took it too far, we went one step further than our users were willing to go in terms of what they understood, and that's what ended up happening.

Wrap-up

[00:24:22] So, as I said, for me it's really three things. One is, how do you gauge it's worthwhile, and that's all about that propensity to learn versus your risk. Two is, what's innovative, how are you thinking about the whys and whens of what you're pairing, in terms of how you're bringing these things together. And the final piece is, how am I thinking about the tiny things, how am I thinking about those small things that actually have massive impacts on the product? It's not just about those big visions or those ideas. So think big, fuel the great ideas, but start small to ensure you get there. Anyway, thank you.