The Two-Year Mistake
1 week saved per user per month
Day two of the workshop. A customer arrives with their own PowerPoint. UI mockups they drew themselves. A user-journey map. Two minutes in, they point at the screen: "If you built this button and this selection flow, it would save us a week of work per month." Then they say the thing the room hadn't quite expected: "I've been trying to tell the company this for years. Nobody was listening." Two years of product development, and the answer was sitting in a customer's drawer the whole time, waiting for someone to build the forum where it could be said.
An engineering software company had spent two years building a new version of their product. When they finally showed it to customers, the reaction was confusion. No user testing during development. Customer support and sales received user feedback constantly — and treated it as troubleshooting, never as product input. The product team built in isolation. The customers had the answers. There was no feedback loop connecting them.
The shape of the week
- 01
User interviews with existing customers, recorded and edited into highlight videos
- 02
Two-day workshop starting each day with user interview highlights
- 03
Post-it exercises: note, vote, cluster to map current ways of working
- 04
Sailboat retrospective to surface pain points and blind spots
- 05
Design thinking training for the product team
Engineering firm user
“If you built this, it would save us a week per month.”
The moment that surfaced
One user came to the interview with a PowerPoint presentation. UI mockups. A user journey map. They said: 'If you built this button and selection flow, it would save us a week of work per month.' They had been thinking about this for years. Nobody had been listening.
What the week bought
The team restarted development of the new version with a user-informed approach. They changed their operative methods entirely based on the two-day experience.
- Complete pivot in product direction based on real user needs
- Team learned methods they continue to use independently
- Feedback loops established between users and product team
- Waterfall process replaced with iterative, user-centric development
Why the sprint earns its week
The methods transferred permanently. The team now runs their own user research and has direct channels to customers. They don't build in isolation anymore.
Want this kind of result? Start with the version that matches your situation
These pages break the work down by the problem teams usually feel first, before they know what kind of engagement they actually need.
Design & Validate
Customer Research Workshop
Bring the voice of the customer into the room before the roadmap hardens around internal assumptions.
Fractional CDO
Design Strategy Consultant
For teams that do not need prettier output. They need better decisions about what design should focus on and why.
Fractional CDO
Fractional Design Leadership
Senior design direction for teams that need sharper judgment, better decisions, and stronger product thinking without a full-time executive hire.
Design & Validate
Product Validation Consultant
Before you spend another quarter building, find out whether the direction makes sense to real users.
Service Transformation
Service Blueprinting Consultant
Map what really happens across teams, systems, and touchpoints, then redesign the parts that keep the service from working.