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Insights Unlocked
How customer journey mapping and storytelling unlock innovation at G2
00:34:17
Dane Howard shares how G2 used storytelling and customer journey mapping to drive design innovation and cross-team alignment.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, Dane Howard, Vice President of product design at G2, joins the show for a conversation that dives into storytelling, leadership and the power of purposeful design. Dane shares how a bold customer journey map became a unifying force at G2 and why blending creativity with intention leads to better experiences. He also offers some tips and insights for finding balance in our creativity. Great stuff. And if you have a guest suggestion question you want answered or you want to tell me one way you would improve the show, please send a voice message via email@podcastertesting.com thanks. Now onto the show.
- [00:49]
Jason Giles
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, viewers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
- [01:08]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Senior manager for content production and user testing and joining us today as host is Jason Giles, User Testing's Vice President of design. Welcome, Jason.
- [01:21]
Dane Howard
Hello everyone.
- [01:22]
Nathan Isaacs
And our guest today is Dane Howard. Dane is a seasoned design leader and visionary in customer experience, currently serving as the Vice President of product design at G2. With a career spanning leading global companies such as Amazon, ebay and Microsoft, Dane has built a reputation for blending storytelling, strategic design and innovation to create impactful customer experiences. Welcome to the show, Dane.
- [01:47]
Jason Giles
Thanks so much for having me, Dane.
- [01:49]
Dane Howard
Really excited to have you. We were talking really quickly prior to the show. We've got three so much overlap, but you and I have never actually met in person, so this is kind of a treat for me. It's really nice to meet you. For me as well, you have had a really impressive career leading design and innovation at Amazon and ebay and Microsoft. Can you tell us a little bit first about what is G2 and what drew you there? And then how does your role allow you to shape the customer experience in new and innovative ways?
- [02:23]
Jason Giles
Yeah, thanks so much for the question. So G2 is like a marketplace, but it brings sellers of software together with buyers of software. So if you think of it from a marketplace dynamic, one of the founders asked the question, why is it easier to have reviews for a $20 pizza than it is for a $20,000 piece of software? And from that humble beginning, they built a review site that then turned into a really robust business where we sell data back to sellers. So if you think about in a simple terms, you know, we're all connected through LinkedIn. You may have a professional profile where you might want to see who's visiting your profile and you know, benefit from a little that added data. We do that times, you know, in an exponential way and provide valuable data to sellers so that they can help build their trust and, and pipeline to help grow their business. Cool.
- [03:18]
Dane Howard
And what, what brought you there?
- [03:22]
Jason Giles
Well, if you look at my background, I've done a lot of different kinds of categories. So I've worked in B2C, I've worked in B2B. I've worked across insurance and E commerce and sports and even just when I was at Microsoft I was doing hardware. So I really love this idea of using design and enhancing my life, if you will. I think it just makes for a really interesting life. But G2 gave me an opportunity to do something new. But I could leverage the experience of ebay. I had spent about seven years at eBay and when you build a marketplace, when you are a third party looking in on let's say buyers and sellers, trust is key. So it's really important that I could leverage some of that experience but also lean into a category they haven't, you know, really known that much. But the red thread, as most design leaders have, is that opportunity to build a team, grow a team up level. The, the quality of our offering. We work in squads, so it's really important that we build high performing squads in an agile way. So that's really been the red thread throughout. And G2 is at a really interesting stage of preparing to grow to the next level.
- [04:42]
Dane Howard
That's amazing. That's awesome. I'm sure they're thrilled to have you. In addition to the amazing design journey that you've had, you've also stayed really involved in mentorship and advocacy work. Stan, beautiful black players for change. How do you think that design and research professionals can create this better balance between their careers and these other fulfilling aspects of their life? Whether that's a passion project, advocacy or just general personal growth.
- [05:16]
Jason Giles
Yeah, I love this question. So I think for the most designers that are on a journey, they go from an icy path and they ultimately get to some point where they have impact and influence. And for me, I had built some proficiency at driving a lot of traffic or selling a lot of widgets. And I think I was a little bit late to the game, but I wanted to infuse purpose and I really discovered this at ebay and at the time eBay owned PayPal and Venmo and several other companies. And there's a strong sense of purpose in the PayPal Giving Fund as well as ebay for charity. So I would Loan a lot of my time as well as a lot of my designers time that were also interested to say, let's not neglect this valuable purpose. And I was inspired by a great project called Keep the Change that IDEO did, where they increase this amazing amount of savings or personal savings just by rounding up to the next dollar. And software, it's, it's, in a way, shipping software is an act of will. And when you get people pointed in a direction and they also believe that they can make changes, this inspired me. And so I was able to lean in and use design for good and make some impact on some of those endeavors. But with regards to Stand Beautiful and Black Players for Change, these are things I do through my studio. I have what I call a professional three legged stool now which allows me to kind of sit in the center and be balanced. And I find that this makes my work better when I have other things that I can do that provide different insights but also help balance me out holistically. So I balance that between my full time gig at G2, my coaching and advisory work, and then the third leg of the stool is what products or projects I run through my studio. So I enjoy that quite a bit.
- [07:15]
Dane Howard
That's amazing. As you speak about the three legged stool. Right. Like the reinforcing of each one of those and how one infuses the other. And that's really inspiring. I appreciate that.
- [07:26]
Jason Giles
Sure.
- [07:27]
Dane Howard
When you last year when you joined G2, you guys created the very first visual map of the customer journey. And for those of you listening, like when you hear of a customer map or journey map, you probably have something in your head. But I am telling you, you need to go online, you need to look at this thing. You guys took a. A really innovative approach. Can you kind of talk about why you put such an investment in that, why that project has been really important to the team and then to G2 itself?
- [08:04]
Jason Giles
Yeah, it's a great question. So I want you to imagine the last time that you are a newbie. You might be onboarding at a company and like many executives, you kind of do a listening tour and you kind of listen around to how does the business work? What does this department do? What do you do? And I started getting all these great stories and the way that they were being told to me was kind of like imagine we were working on a car together, but you got invited into the engine bay and you saw this, the most amazing and sophisticated wiring and functionality and you're like super impressed. But then you might ask a simple question, which Is like, so what part of the car does this connect to? And they go, oh, this is the braking system. Like, oh, okay, okay. So immediately you have an understanding that when, you know, the driver presses the brake button, all this magic happens. Well, that was my experience going through G2 just in my humble onboarding. And so my proposal of a customer journey map was, in a way, kind of a proposal on how I could rationalize the business. And the thing is, I've learned is that I needed a clear understanding about how different functions would touch the experience in order for me to connect different groups, but also to rationalize the experience itself. And I learned a great thing from one of my mentors years ago, which is, the customer never cares how you're organized. And that's so true. And so we were inspired by many different kinds of maps. And. And the one that was part of the briefing was a Disneyland map. I don't know if you've ever been to Disneyland or if your family's ever been, but there's just enough detail in it that you could give it to someone who's been there a hundred times or someone who's never been there, and you can still find your way to the base of the ride at 10am the next morning if you're going to meet them. And I think we set out on this ambition and goal to say, you know, G2 is a marketplace. It's a website. It's a combination of a dot com and a series of B2B tools. And we came up with the analogy of a city. And for us, that took a little bit of leap of faith. But we started to do, like, 15 different workshops inside the company. First we started to describe and it started to make sense for us. Then once we launched it, we took it on tour internally. And what was amazing is that groups started to lean in. We have, let's say, an integrations team. Integrations are using software to connect one piece of software with another. And when the integrations team said, oh, can we be the concierge? We're like, absolutely. And so then they sought out to be the best concierge possible. And it so happened that in the journey that was at the base of this big tower where we have a lot of our offerings. And so when they found this particular analogy, it helped them describe what they do even better inside the organization. So we've since took it on tour, we've printed it all over all of our offices, and we now use it as, like, a new artifact when we're doing Brainstorming and when we're bringing different departments together. And that's been really useful for us. And so some of the ROI is attributed to how many groups have seen it. ROI is attributed to how many experiences that are cross department make it onto the roadmap. The other is we are turning it into an education module for all new employees this year. And so it hasn't even become external yet, but we wanted to make sure that we were aligned internally in order for us to then take it externally. And so that was really a big portion of last year. And so we're excited about what this year brings for the next version of the map.
- [12:09]
Dane Howard
You know, you touched on something that we often talk about is like, how do. When we think about our staff and the amazing talent that we have, like, one of the things that we find is to keep them engaged is to understand the context that they're working and the potential where they fit within this big machine. I mean, you and I were both at Microsoft, right? This big massive machine. And I remember so often being like, I don't know, I'm just working on this cog, man. And it took a long time for me to get that appreciation of the context and how my work fit into something broader. And I think, although maybe not something absolutely measurable, I can imagine the, that impact that it has. Clearly you understand it since you're running all your new employees through it. But yeah, I, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, this is so much more not just engaging, but allows you, I think, because you've used the, the metaphor and it's so approachable and you can really drill in and see both the zoomed out view, but then the contextual view. It's. Yeah, I'm excited for it to go public.
- [13:19]
Jason Giles
Yeah, thank you. Well, one of the things we learned along the journey was regardless of our function, the experiences we ship together unite us. And I would attribute a lot of that thinking even back to Airbnb. There's a project called Project Snow White years ago where they hired a Pixar storyboard artist and they actually storyboarded their entire guest journey and their host journey. And they turned these into physical panels that were up in their office. And as the story goes, if you were having a meeting, it was useful and helpful to bring that panel into the meeting. And so even if you're having a predominantly legal, focused meeting, it sits within the context of this is the scene that came before this meeting and this is the scene that's going to come after. So how do we make this the best possible scene and that's what united a lot of the functions. And so that really inspired me and really was kind of the hallmark of why, why do a project like this.
- [14:24]
Dane Howard
Yeah, do you. I'm sure you have broad aspirations, but how do you think about keeping an artifact like this alive over time? I know I've spent countless dollars and time in investing in things like Personas and other things, but really the artifact itself, getting that created, that's only the first part of the work. Right. The real work is getting it fed throughout an entire organization. So how do you think about that? Some ideas around how you envision it being implemented further?
- [15:00]
Jason Giles
Yeah, great question. So much of design I've learned as a leader in my recent years is about communication. And I'd say counter to so much of my earlier years, I would focus on the artifact or focus on the craft of that particular artifact. And I've seen so many great artifacts die because they weren't communicated well inside an organization. And I would learn years ago there was this thing called headlines of the future. But then when I was at Amazon, they really kind of enhanced that because they do what's called a prfaq. And it's really a way of planning and creating like a headline of the future. And you write this down as a means of a story of something you haven't completed yet. And, and it doesn't always have to be like in the press context, it doesn't have to be external. And so a project like this, I would write a short story about how it was communicated inside the organization and I would talk about how we're talking about it as an artifact even before we've created the artifact. And so for several years at ebay, I even worked intern inside the brand and communications part of the organization. And they have a very disciplined approach on internal comms and external comms. And I really understood the value of story inside an organization. And as designers, we often think about like the end user, which is like super key, and who's using your interface or product. But oftentimes a often neglected user or customer is an internal customer first, which usually requires understanding number one and number two alignment. And again, software is still predominantly a human led act of will and to get everyone on the same page going in the right direction. I often think about the communication of the artifact or the story of what we made all do together. And so that was a big aha moment for me. And even with something like a customer journey map, and I'll use go back to the analogy of Disneyland. You go to Disneyland, there's still rides under development. So there's parts of our city that have empty lots in them. And even since we published it, there are some areas that need renewing. So I've kind of reserved a little bit of budget to come back to V2 this year. And you know, we have a whole part of the city that connects. You know, we have this data lake. So we're going to make it. We're going to, you know, have some cool people water skiing on it and there's going to be an island on it, there's going to be lifeguards on it. And every, every kind of role around the lake can be attributed to someone inside the company that works on or near the data lake. And oftentimes like I bring this up because we learned that when you meet with legal or security or IT and they're so critical to the uptime of a business or the security or protocol of what keeps product safe. And so they need to have roles as well. So we want to make sure that they can see themselves in this map as well.
- [18:18]
Dane Howard
I can really see the power of having this kind of common taxonomy or metaphor across because so many brands are really challenged with getting alignment internally. And I love that even in your how you're measuring the success of this might be like cross organization, cross team initiatives that are successfully never delivered. Are there other ways, whether it's storytelling or artifacts like this, or maybe you can give some examples of where it has literally helped break down some of those silos.
- [18:53]
Jason Giles
Yeah. You know, if you work for a small company or a big company, this is still a challenge for any leader and particularly design leaders because again, the tendency is to want to stick to your division, stick to your goals, and everyone has an annual planning process. We just went through ours and most planning processes that I've been associated with have a tops down approach that is then met with a bottoms up kind of empowerment phase. And the challenge is that when goals are stated it and they are stated in such a way so that they cascade distinctly into one of those silos, then there's very little motivation to have one division work with another. So we recently did a goal creation process we were inspired by. So Marty Kagan is an author. He's written Transformed. He's also written Empowered, he's also written Inspired. We really dug into Transformed and what was great about it was how you actually articulate problem spaces. And as a leadership team, we made sure that we articulate problems in such a way so that when they were cascaded, it required cross division work. And it's not a foregone conclusion that all of a sudden people will work closer together. But another thing that I've done as a design leader that's been useful is that we. So we just launched at kickoff last week. So we do an annual meeting where we communicate our annual rhythm and our annual fiscal year. And a couple months earlier, as soon as I get back from Thanksgiving, I start a screenwriting process. And what I do is alongside our business document of requirements and problem spaces, I write a script. And that script is like a screenplay or a movie that we're going to create this year. And it's kind of tricky, but I exit December with kind of a sign off from all stakeholders and leaders on that script. And what it attempts to do is put our year in experiential terms. And this inspiration comes from how I watch directors previs movies. And so the whole thing is that when you're on set making a movie, there's very little room for deviating off of the plan in the same way. This is a high stakes world of software development. Even though it's agile and you ship stuff and you iterate at the same time. What I do is I front load the whole year. And so we just completed about 43 different vignettes that are visual and we put them into a serial fashion. And these are demos, prototypes, movies. And all they're attempting to do is to allow the organization to imagine and to be inspired and to visualize these problem spaces. And they're in the process of deconstructing those now, breaking them into smaller pieces, seeing what's doable. And we do something new this year. We called it Sprint Zero. So we showed up with a initial sprint by all this different squads into the new year. And that gives us a little extra momentum as we kind of kick off our year and kick off our planning.
- [22:16]
Dane Howard
I love that. What I really appreciate too is I can imagine that just like a script, when the entire company kind of has the storyline, they know how this thing is supposed to end, what you know, what the big grand finale has looked like. It helps with all the little decisions that get made along the way to ensure like whoa, wait a minute, are we still on script to tell the story that we want to want to tell? It's I love too that you're using multimodal tactics, whether it's these visuals that help kind of frame here's how the product works or the storytelling. And I'm sure it's accompanied with visuals as well. But that's pretty fantastic. Clearly, storytelling has become like a key part of your leadership style. And it sounds like it's really effective.
- [23:10]
Jason Giles
Well, there's good days and bad days, and I think at the end of the day I find that I advocate and connect with other leaders. I say, you should really watch this video. This is an important one. This should be in the movie editing in how organizations lean into certain things and the story they tell. I think it's so helpful. I worked for years with John Maida and he said, you know, it's like a big symphony and you try to get all of these instruments to play off of the same harmonious song sheet. And stories have sometimes the ability to align an organization so they all head in the right direction. And I think what I've learned, even though I run the function of design and I can speak design with my designers, I have learned to speak customer experience instead. And I realized that for those design leaders and customer experience leaders out there, it's more useful to tell these stories in terms of business impact outcomes, customer satisfaction, than it is to advocate for design. Because what we really mean is the customer experience. But design, when I say it, it somehow gets. It's like a loaded term for some reason, I don't know why, but a lot of internally I find that it just feels like it's being interpreted as, oh, well, that's the design team, it's the design group. And so what I've learned to do is just shed some of the design functional language. And that's totally fine when I'm running my, my craft and running my design crits and speaking with other designers on their work. But when we're working collaboratively in our squads and working on, you know, we have a three legged stool as well, which is like design, product and engineering. And you're supposed to put the customer in the center of that stool that's in service of the customer. And so I find that the stories land better inside an organization if they are customer focused rather than design focused.
- [25:23]
Dane Howard
Yeah, I totally get that. And that was actually going to be my question because I can imagine depending on the organization, you coming in, hey, I want to like, you know, illustrate our customer journey. Like, what's this design guy thinking? Like, how is this real? And so I imagine you probably think about what this particular culture or these stakeholders, what would resonate with them. Did you have to do that with coming up with the G2 map to figure out either what the right metaphor was or even like maybe the right format.
- [25:56]
Jason Giles
Yeah, well, it had never been done before. And I would say that this type of work, plus any of the visualization work falls into this category of, you know, what's the company's appetite for its future? What's the company's appetite for serving a customer? And whenever I go into an organization, I mentioned listening to her, I try to pick up on clues. And so it's great when your CEO is an advocate or the founder or anyone inside the organization that is a influencer, that has a lot of influence if they are a champion for the customer. That's a, that's a. You want to, you want to take note, you want to listen, you want to like, feed off of their energy and understand why there's a lot of talk about serving the customer. And I, I find that you have to also look for clues on what, what mechanisms or operational mechanisms or what, what's being done to translate that interest in serving a customer. And I go to the path of least resistance first and I start to create great wins there. And then through that organic interest, I start to then shine a light on it through storytelling. And then I, I'd say I'm fishing for a comment. And my favorite comment from a CEO or leadership or anyone from up high is, so why aren't we doing that? That's my favorite comment because what it implies is that we've shown or shared something that is pretty awesome and it has the right amount of emotional and content or data surround the argument that says, well, why aren't we doing that? And now everyone else has to defend the other way of doing it or the way that we're not doing it. And that's my favorite comment because then I just sit back and I listen and I just go, okay, let's have you guys work this out.
- [27:57]
Dane Howard
But you're an instigator.
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Jason Giles
Subtly, subtly. But I still think that in a world. So I've worked for tech companies for a long time and there is a lot of still data that infuses my language and backs a lot of the defensibility of our work. But at the same time, I think we should not lose the emotional position. On the other side of our work are real humans interacting with our stuff. And when they do, they feel a certain way. And if we lose that connection to the emotion or if we even lose connection to the fulfillment or purpose of building it for that customer, we're at risk of kind of taking out all emotion out of all of our products. So I'm a Huge.
- [28:47]
Dane Howard
I can't tell you how much I appreciate that sentiment. You know, we, the design research, the industry has taken a hit. You know, it's been really tough this past few years. And you see, and myself included, I'm encouraging folks like understand the business, change your language so that you know, it resonates with our stakeholders within the company. And that is all true. But what you point out is and stay connected to the customer, the narrative, the heart that I think many of us, that's the reason why we got into this was and finding that balance. But yeah, 100%.
- [29:29]
Jason Giles
I'll offer up to analogies that have been useful for me. The first came from a panel of about 40 very talented design and UX leaders that I found myself on a kind of a zoom call. We were talking about this, this state of the state currently and what had happened, this shift in design. And I think some of the response to that is that design had its moment. And if you think about the analogy of like a band, it wasn't that we ever really wanted to be the lead singer. We're actually not that comfortable being the lead singer of a band. And what was offered up was the bass player. And as the leader, if you say, you know what function you played a really important role. In fact, you kind of create the resonant beat and you're a foundational part of this band and they can't do it without you. But you're not up front and in fact, you haven't really ever been in front. But it is important for you to think about yourself as the bass player. That's the first analogy. The second is most journeys, let's say like a hike is the second analogy require sure footing. But how interesting is a hike if you only look at your feet? And so they also offered up this ability to say, you know, design represents a unique skill that can paint a really interesting picture of where you might be heading. And so the combination of sure footing with a great view represents the different vantage point of how you go on this journey together. And that's kind of been my center lately. And so whenever we feel reactive or put in a box or we're not using the right language, I bring those back out. And it's usually a way for us to kind of recenter. And you know, I'm at a stage in my career where I'm. I joyfully kind of try to give back to the next generation of designers and try to close the gap between hard lessons I've learned. But I also recognize it's a different time, so I kind of lean into what we have. We've also, you know, are doing quite a bit of work. Everyone is alongside AI and using it as a enhancement and a superpower for the individual. And, you know, in my other leg of my stool, I do a lot of creation work. So I understand the mindset of a creator, but also understand the mindset of a curator and how important taste is and how important human intervention is required to shape work. So it's not that AI is going to do the work for you, it's just that you might have more iterations so that your creative confidence can go up. And so this is a really interesting time historically to be building things now. And I just enjoy that and kind of, you know, ready for my third, fourth wind here to basically, you know, go alongside several different design teams to see what we can make together.
- [32:37]
Dane Howard
That's amazing. Dane. Where would folks find more information about your thought leadership? Maybe what you're doing at G2? You've really got a lot of perspective to share.
- [32:51]
Jason Giles
Oh, thank you. I do little bursts of posting every now and then on LinkedIn, so just find me @danehoward. I also enjoy some of the projects and enjoy some of the feedback I get on my projects@danehoward-studio.com so I'm doing a bunch of fun stuff right now and yeah, excited to kind of put that out there.
- [33:20]
Dane Howard
So amazing.
- [33:21]
Jason Giles
Yeah, thanks.
- [33:24]
Dane Howard
You've ended my day on such a high note. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being on the show and yeah, the best to you at G2 and as well as all your other endeavors. It's very impressive.
- [33:40]
Jason Giles
Thank you so much. Thanks for your time and the opportunity. Sounds good. Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.