Why design thinking is the key to product development

Product teams move fast – often keeping their heads down, chasing goals, and, unfortunately, overlooking customers’ emotional needs, which is essential to creating positive user experiences.

In this episode of Product Marketing Life host, Mark Assini, is joined by design expert Bryan Zmijewski, President and Owner of ZURB, to unpack how companies lose touch with users and provide proven tactics to close the disconnect – enabling you to get that bit closer to your customers.

We’re all human, which means when we look for products or services, we tend to favor those brands that understand our genuine needs.

Using design-thinking principles like empathy can help you better understand your customers' needs, wants, and pain points, so you can craft positive user experiences, offer products they love, and achieve sustainable success.

A bit about the speaker

From selling toy concepts to advising CEOs, Bryan Zmijewski has always explored the intersection of design and business. This unconventional career path gives him rare insights into building great customer experiences.

While at Stanford, his passion for human-centered design was ignited. Now as a design transformation leader, Bryan studies creative routines and helps organizations become design-driven.

He's advised over 1,000 executives on leading with empathy and believes that companies who listen to their customers, not just their business needs, will win big. Bryan’s currently distilling his approach in a new book on creative decision-making, is a competitive runner, and, at his core, Bryan’s an explorer – of design, business, and pushing human capabilities further

Key takeaways

Why adopting design thinking principles can create positive customer experiences.
How losing touch with your users creates a disconnect between the product and customer needs.
Why you need to facilitate an open dialogue between sales and product.
How negative feedback presents invaluable opportunities for improvement.
Why diverse opinions – united behind customer insights – produce better outcomes than isolated decisions by one specialized team.

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