At the end of the day, we needed to take some time away from the urgent and focus on the important.

If you’re not familiar with what we do, Favor is an on-demand delivery company that lets consumers get anything they want delivered in under an hour. How do we make this happen? We have a community of thousands of delivery drivers (we call them Runners) who are arguably our most important stakeholders. At the end of the day, happy Runners deliver great service to our customers, so we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to serve our Runners.

We brought in Voltage Control, a company here in Austin that facilitates sprints, to lead us through a structured week of activities to help us improve the earnings (and happiness!) of our Runners. The process was fun, fruitful, and we found that the impact continues beyond the short time we spent in the sprint.

Our Challenge
INCREASE AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS PER RUNNER BY 10% WHILE ALSO DECREASING RUNNERS WHO INDICATE THAT RUNNING IS FRUSTRATING BY 50%.

The Sprint

While the ideal sprint length is one week, we only had four days to dedicate, but we made it work in the shorter time span. Here’s what our week looked like and our activities each day…

DAY 1

We started our week by examining our long-term goal. We refined it by asking where we wanted to be in year with this project and noting questions that we hoped to answer. We agreed that we would aim to both increase runner’s earnings and decrease their frustration.

We spoke to key members of the Favor team with deep understanding of a Favor Runner’s journey to discover current pain points and areas of strength. As we listened to experts and identified areas that we needed to improve, we crafted “How Might We?” notes, reframing problems as opportunities.

We each used notation and sketching processes to craft a final sketch of a potential solution. We hung these on the wall to examine individually.

DAY 2

We reviewed each individual’s sketch and voted on areas of promise. We then selected one sketch as a potential solution to prototype and chose features from other sketches that we wanted to integrate. With all of this in mind, we created a storyboard to plan our user’s journey through our prototype.

DAY 3

We divvied up the prototyping work to be done into different roles, with some people gathering content, some building the screens in Sketch, and some stitching the screens together into a usable prototype.

Meanwhile, we worked to create a thorough, scenario-based testing plan of our prototype and recruited real, experienced Favor Runners to come in and test our solution on Day 4.

DAY 4

We tested our prototype with users in a makeshift research lab environment. In one room, the interviewer talked with a subject, while in another, the rest of team could watch the Runner and the prototype, discuss, and take notes. We compared notes looking for consensus and documented these insights to inform our next prototype.

Real Results

In only four days, we were able to find a new direction for the next iterations of our Runner app. We’re looking forward to bringing some of the best ideas we came up in the sprint to life. More importantly, we’re thrilled to know what Runners DON’T value so we can focus our energies on the pieces of the app that matter. Here are some of the key outcomes our our Design Sprint:

INSIGHTS: We revealed 35 individual insights into what our Runners value, need, and expect out of the next Runner app.

ALIGNMENT: We got cross-functional buy-in by assembling a diverse sprint team of Favor employees from 5 different specialties.

VALIDATION: We tested out new features and UI elements prior to sinking development time and money into building them.

“We started with all these ideas about what our users wanted and needed in the next version of our app. The design sprint made us rapidly validate these assumptions instead of getting months down the road and realizing we were designing things our users didn’t want or need. In one week, we were able to build a solid foundation for our redesign from real user feedback..”

-Meg Nidever, UX Designer, Favor Delivery

Lasting Change

One of the coolest things about our Design Sprint is that its effects are lasting far beyond the four days we spent. It reminded our team how valuable prototyping and early user feedback can be in building great designs. It also helped expose some of our top performers in other departments to the product design process.

If you have a high performing team with a big project that needs a jumpstart, I can’t recommend a Design Sprint enough.

The post Favor Improves Employee Experience & Earnings in a 4-Day Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

Douglas is a rare individual. Gifted in artistic, communicative & progressive ways, he is a leader who helps others lead.

I was privileged to have Douglas facilitate Service Direct’s first ever official Design Sprint. As as the “Decider”, I was challenged and encouraged by Douglas to interact, organize, converse, and question with my team in all new ways.

Within the demanding and rewarding environment of the Sprint, we were forced to make decisions and gain rapid consensus to move onto next steps and push our expectations through to the humble but oh so crucial moments of Actual User / Prototype testing.

So, what did our sprint actually look like?

Day 1 & 2

Prototype Scoping & Individual ideas. We had to resolve several seemingly conflicting original opinions from members of our team. As the Decider, I had elaborate in my mind and struggled with the smaller problems or pieces that others had brought to the table. However, after a lot of conversation and guidance from Douglas — I began to see the trees amongst the forest.

We ended up integrating several of the excellent smaller ideas into my more extensive plan. I felt like we were able to pull the team together around this more massive solution— even though it was going to be tough to test. Day 2 was when we began to wonder if what we were doing was going to be testable with folks who had never seen or heard of our service before.

Day 3 & 4

Choosing the actual walls of our prototype & building it. As the boundaries of what we were prototyping started to emerge, it became clear that we were going to have to setup our testers by either showing or telling them our ‘sales pitch’. We realized that we were going to have a problem getting our testers to complete a form on a webpage — and a complicated form at that — without at least prepping them solidly on what was happening.

Douglas presented an option to use our current webpages & flow combined with the same basic process for a competitor and much more well-known company. It turned out to be a great idea. We decided to start our testers on a Search Results page with a prominent search term already input and a couple of relevant results for our testers to choose from.

Day 5

Testing! Make or break, Friday arrived and we were ready to see what folks thought of our prototype. I was nervous about getting real value from the process. I felt like we had chosen a big hairy problem to test and our ‘prototype’ was pretty long. Douglas just looked at me, smiled and shrugged. He knew the secret — that no matter what our ideas were about this, the Testers were going to open us up to insights that we had not considered yet.

He was right. Even though some of our Testers didn’t have time to get through the whole prototype, we learned huge lessons. We learned about our positioning, about specific words, about how images that we thought were clear made our Testers feel entirely different. We learned how difficult Pricing is and how hard it is to make people feel comfortable when they are in an unfamiliar space.

Overall, we learned the critical truth that I think the Design Sprint Process is all about. No matter what you think or how much time you’ve put into your work.

It flat out doesn’t matter until your Customers put their hands on it and you see how they actually interact and feel in real life.

Douglas was crucial helping us advance through my grandiose expectations and our team’s all important and yet divergent ideas to arrive at actual prototypes, real takeaways and even better — a fantastic understanding of new ways we can create, debate, develop and test new ideas.

We have substantially changed for the better after our Design Sprint and I will always have deep gratitude, remembering this week as one of the crucial growing points along our company’s history.

The post Service Direct’s Virgin Sprint Challenges and Realities appeared first on Voltage Control.

We first met Douglas about a year after our company moved from Los Angeles to Austin. We getting to know the who’s who of the Austin startup scene and the name Douglas Ferguson kept coming up. What was interesting was the commonality in the recommendations for Douglas — he not only knows how to build a team, but he’s a real team player.

Fast forward to June of this year and we were looking for someone to consult with us part-time both to help make sure our AWS setup was rock solid, and to give insights into how we could better organize all things engineering. It was a hard combination of skills to find in a consultant and most we met with were more tactical and focused on writing code or building a system, not on helping an engineering team work better together.

When we met with Douglas and did a deeper dive into his background we realized, this is that special mix of skills we were looking for. Now the question was, would the team like him?

That’s the challenge with a consultant that goes beyond delivering code or solving a specific task, we were looking for someone that could look at our team, how we all worked together, and help us find ways to improve. We told our team, be totally honest, if you don’t feel like he’s a fit here, let us know, we only want to bring him onboard if we all feel like he can help.

After the first day with our team it was clear that Douglas had a really unique way of doing things. He didn’t come into our company with a set way to do things. He didn’t reference books he’d read that suggested we do things a certain way, instead he just listened.

The result was an almost instant level of comfort between our team and Douglas. Over time, this listening allowed Douglas to really take a step back and understand how we were working together and where we could improve. In a couple of weeks it was safe to say that Douglas wasn’t an outside consultant looking in, he was a real team player that we all felt was bought-into helping us streamlined the way we worked together.

Fast forward to today and Douglas really does feel like a member of the team. He’s gotten his hands dirty and learned the intricacies of our system, and at the same time, he’s created one seriously kick-ass Trello board that has helped us better communicate and prioritize engineering goals as a team. These goals are now alongside sales goals and marketing goals so that we’re all working together as a cohesive unit, rather than distinct and separate departments like we were before.

In short, Douglas is the definition of the team player. Sure, you can hire a consultant to do one specific thing, and there are plenty of amazing people out there that can do what you’re looking for. It takes a very special person to come in and not just improve how your team works together, but do so while becoming part of the team.

Startups are busy and hectic places, for some people that can mean disorganization and chaos. For people like Douglas, it is an opportunity to add a sense of calm, a feeling of organization, and a positive vibe that I think every company needs. The way we work together continues to evolve, and as our company grows so does our relationship with Douglas.

Originally we were looking for a consultant, I’m happy to say that what we found was someone that I think we all know is more than that — he’s a member of our team. He might not be there all day every day, but he always adds value and is always there when we need him. Now I’m just crossing my fingers he decides to continue to follow this path for years to come…but if not, I can tell you we’ll be competing with whoever is trying to take him off the market because it’s not easy to find people like Douglas.

The post The definition of a “team player” appeared first on Voltage Control.

A few months ago, I started my new company, ZenBusiness. I founded it with the belief that insights from our potential customers would be absolutely fundamental to business decisions. For this reason, I became interested in the methodologies behind the Design Sprint process, as made famous by the folks at Google Ventures. I did my research, read the book Sprint by Jake Knapp and then asked around for advice on hosting my first Sprint.

I serendipitously ran into Voltage Control’s Douglas Ferguson as a part of my regular networking “rounds” in Austin and we started chatting about what he’s learned from facilitating Sprints for numerous start-ups. From reading Knapp’s book, I knew that it would be important to have an experienced facilitator for our first Sprint, so I asked Douglas to help. He also recommended a fantastic designer as his co-facilitator; together they made an amazing combo and covered everything in terms of brain power—from marketing and branding expertise to deep knowledge of software and user experience.

Here’s a few of my top learnings from our first Design Sprint with Douglas:

1. The process helps you identify the right question to answer. One of the first things we did in our Sprint was map out the customer journey and every key touchpoint. It’s a deceptively simple task, but putting this flow into a visual form allowed the team to really hone in on which question we should answer through our Sprint. As a new company, it can be overwhelming to know where to focus our energy. We decided that we would spend our time looking at the initial customer sign-up experience because it would give us the most “bang for our buck.” Being new to the market, our most pressing problem is, naturally, the top of the funnel and acquiring first-time customers.

2. An outside facilitator allows the team to focus on outcomes, not “doing it right.” One of the benefits of doing a Design Sprint is that all of our critical team members were together in one room, focused on solutions, not just talking. With Douglas leading us through the process, our team was free to work on the tasks at hand—fleshing out our targeted customer segment, building a prototype and testing it with real customers. Douglas gave us the structure and leadership we needed to fully engage in the process. With his help, we had no worries about doing it right; we only had to worry about getting our ideas right for our customers.

3. We learned enough to lead ourselves next time. ZenBusiness’ first Sprint was a great success.The basic assumptions we tested —Does anyone want to buy our product? Do we have a market?—were answered with an overwhelming “yes.” At the end of the week, Douglas left us with some very actionable product changes to make. The cherry on top was that we had learned the Sprint process enough to give it a shot ourselves next time. Soon, we’re embarking on our second Design Sprint and, this time, we are comfortable facilitating ourselves. It is a testament to Douglas’ guidance and leadership: the students can now take care of themselves.

My parting advice is this: Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint. It will undoubtedly save you time, money, and by the end, your team will have learned this transformative process so you can lead yourselves in, and into, the future.

Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint

The post The importance of an experienced facilitator for your first Design Sprint. appeared first on Voltage Control.

I met Douglas in the mid 1990’s when our shared interests were primarily music. Our paths diverged, as friendships made in your late teen years often do, but I always thought fondly of my principled, punk friend. Independently, each of us established digital-centered careers in the dotcom-heyday of the late 90’s and early 00’s.

In the 2010’s, music brought us together again. This time it was music + technology at the SXSW Interactive, Film, and Music Festivals. It was refreshing to catch-up and talk about how our careers evolved. My career evolved into consumer strategy and production for digital projects; Douglas’ career evolved into technology leadership and strategy for digital products.

Digital Entrepreneurship

The late 90’s and early 00’s were exciting for early tinkerers in the digital world. Because we were working in a new medium, everything was unprecedented. Those who worked in the digital world in those early years have entrepreneurship in their veins; they’re always looking for new ways to solve problems with likeminded folks. As we conversed over avocado margaritas in 2013, we realized our disparate backgrounds would make us great teammates. We just needed a project.

A Project Emerges

In 2014, we got the chance to tackle a project together. I was assembling a team of digital professionals to build a digital team within the Philadelphia Water Department. I needed team members who could consult, guide, and build team skills on the newly developing team within the city. I asked Douglas to join the team because of his extensive knowledge of AWS best practices.

The Role Expands

We expanded his role on the team once we discovered his superb tech leadership skills. It was clear his ability to rally the team and organize processes to improve our focus would breath more life into the project. In the first meeting, Douglas identified $2,000 a month in savings based on extraneous AWS instance allocations. His recommendations helped us increase security across all digital properties, consistency in the work created by the internal team and contractor, and visibility and control over the work being completed by 3rd party developers. Teammates, from all levels, have found Douglas to be a great collaborator, great leader, and a reliable team member. Douglas’ AWS-role expanded to a broader fractional CTO consultant for the PWD digital team.

We are still doing great work for our shared client. With his leadership, we have established a plan for growing the technical skills of the digital team, a timeline to execute on, and clear standards that all consulting partners use (which allows our small team to have a larger impact).

Conclusion

I am consistently impressed with Douglas’ technical solution design, process optimization, agile project management, and requirements analysis abilities. We knew Douglas would provide tremendous value as an AWS consultant for our client, but as we worked with him we found something much more valuable. As a Fractional CTO, Douglas guides us through the technical landscape with an unfettered vision, providing tremendous value to our team in about 2–3 hours per week. We enjoy working with him and will keep him on the project as long as we have a contract with this city agency.

The post Looking for a consultant; found a CTO. appeared first on Voltage Control.

We immediately began validating the market through conversations with individuals in the health, fitness, HR and employee wellness communities. This research made it clear to us that there was an appetite for this type of program.

…the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

Our goal was to produce an event in April that would encourage the community to become more active and live a healthy lifestyle. The resources to establish the necessary technology were beyond the means of our nonprofit, even with “non-profit pricing” from long term tech friends.
Time was running out; it was Thanksgiving and we hadn’t secured resources or a plan to get them. Things were not looking good. Needless to say, the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

After an initial meeting with me and Will, Douglas asked if he could meet some of the other board members. Several of our board members and I met Douglas for lunch the day after Thanksgiving and walked through our programs and structure in more detail. We couldn’t have been more pleased to hear Douglas say, “I like what you guys are working to accomplish; I’d like to help you out”.

Douglas promptly got to work and delivered us a Christmas miracle. After a thorough audit, he simplified and organized our concepts, recruited technical talent who practically volunteered their time and helped oversee development of the product. Due to these efforts and my delight, we launched Million Mile Month on April 1st, 2014.

With Douglas’ guidance, we expanded HealthCode from one annual event to 4 quarterly events, amassing over 4.7 million miles of activity with estimated healthcare cost savings approaching $1 million. HealthCode programs now host over 36,000 participants, representing all 50 states, 30+ countries, and 150+ organizations. None of this would have happened without Douglas.

Douglas brings a unique perspective to building technology that I had never previously witnessed. He possesses an invaluable practical sense of technology along with an eye for business economics and financial realities. Douglas increased user satisfaction and improved engagement by first identifying and then addressing the key components for success.

I am continually amazed by Douglas’ ability to see the art of the possible, to cut through the crap to ensure we target cost effective, consumer engaging solutions that align with business objectives. From recruiting and coordinating the tech team to leading our product strategy, Douglas has been invaluable. I only wish I had known Douglas 10 years earlier.

The post Smart Tech For Nonprofits appeared first on Voltage Control.

My mother often said that before I marry someone, I should embark on an extensive, non-luxurious trip into a developing country with my potential spouse. Her reasoning is that within the challenging moments we would encounter, they will reveal their true nature.

I haven’t found my future wife yet, but I do believe challenging situations allow you to observe a meaningful relationship — especially people you are working with.

I have had a lot of talented teammates on my projects, and I have found that character trumps talent.

Talents are hard to acquire if the person doesn’t have the right values and discipline. You can have a “crazy talented” designer or engineer that can produce a product in record time, but if they don’t embrace empathy, they are unlikely to create something people want to buy. 

I want to highlight what good character is by sharing my appreciations for a former teammate named Douglas Ferguson. I sincerely enjoyed working alongside him and it is because of his character. Hopefully, you can look for these same characteristics in your next business relationship.

Douglas and I have worked on a few technology projects, and we both are deeply obsessed with the early stages of a venture. We have led design sprints, conducted innovation workshops, and released a lot of product features together. The start of any venture is challenging and they can fail quickly, so having a foundational team built on good character is vital to successful traction. Douglas and I leaned on each others strengths to best collaborate, and from his strengths he has a few essential traits that I now look for when recruiting teammates.

Douglas embraces continuous improvement.

On a frequent basis, Douglas would ask me what I believed he could do better. After I had given feedback, he took it a step further by involving me in the ideation of methods of approaching those improvements.

Douglas is able to continuously improve because he is aware of his ego and not afraid to admit when it gets in the way.

Self-awareness is a high form of intelligence, and he is not afraid to admit when his ego is getting in the way. We are all guilty of thinking we are perfect, and it is admirable when someone can acknowledge when they need to shut the ego off to make progress.

Douglas thinks more about the system than his role.

Douglas has a high enough IQ to regularly be the strongest contributor in the room, and instead of exploiting this to get a lot of credit or dominate the discussion, he spends his mental energy thinking about the entire system and how everyone in the project can be optimized to reach the best product/service. Having a wholistic thinker like Douglas on your team is important to prevent an unhealthy collection of separate agendas.

Douglas puts in the work and discipline powers his approach.

I trained boxing at 6:30am with Douglas for over a year. He was consistently the first person at the gym and had the highest attendance out of anyone. Many in the class were sore and tired when their alarms sounded, and they would skip a few sessions for more time with their pillow. I am guilty of it myself, but Douglas was always there. Discipline is key because there are many moments in a project that are less enjoyable, and you need teammates you can power through the moments that aren’t so fun.

Sure, Douglas is a talented engineer who can lead a company into rapid feature development, but that isn’t what makes him a great teammate. Coding, running project management software, and rapidly solving problems are hard, technical skills. The excellent characteristics I reference above are what I consider “real skills.” While getting my altMBA, we learned that culture will always defeat strategy, and the characters on your team is what makes up your culture.

I hope in your search for future teammates you spend more time looking at their character rather than the list of technical skills they have. With a teammate like Douglas who has excellent values, any journey you take with them will lead to greatness.

The post What Makes a Good Teammate? appeared first on Voltage Control.