William Gill

Customer involvement and user feedback is at the core of building great software experiences that people want and love. It’s a bit old now, but I just stumbled on this impressive way to build an app with customer feedback at the core. Nordstrom innovation lab built an iPad app in just one week to help…

In improvisation theatre (yes, I was a theatre nerd in high school) there is a concept called blocking. Essentially, whenever you have an interaction with someone on the stage in improv, your interaction should allow the next person to pick up the thread and run with it to continue the scene. In other words, you…

When the giants of the tech world play the game of thrones, it’s the users who pay the blood price. About two weeks ago Twitter removed the Instagram inline preview of Instagram photos, meaning Twitter users can no longer see Instagram photos their friends have posted directly in the twitter stream: users now need to…

Can’t wait for your Nokia Lumia 920? Although shipments have started, not everyone has been able to get their hands on one yet. But here’s an inventive solution constructed by my friend Geoff to “get a feel for the Lumia”. Almost as good as the real thing!

Inspiration is oft revealed in the unlikeliest of places. Such as, for example, the latest Bond film Skyfall, where M quotes the marvellous Alfred Lord Tennyson and his amazing work, ‘Ulysses‘: Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which…

Being a Product Owner sure is a lot of work! Following my talk at the recent ALE unconference in Barcelona, I re-made the iconography used in my talk and turned it into a poster: The Complete Product Owner Poster. The poster is available in three colour combinations, and is printable on any normal office or…

Ever since Apple launched iOS6 with their brand new Apple Maps, the web has been flooded with reports, posts, tweets and even special tumbler blogs dedicated to pointing out how ‘catastrophically bad’ Apple’s Maps product is. The cacophony reached a crescendo on Friday with this post from the normally respectable Business Insider, pointing out how…

What’s the one sentence that describes your product? We all know about the Elevator Pitch – the 30 second pitch that you would deliver to your CEO or to an investor whom you meet in an elevator, where you have until the elevator doors open to pitch your great idea. I’ve written before that it’s…

Geekwire reported on Friday that Microsoft announced at their annual employee conference that every full-time employee will receive a brand spankin’ new Windows 8 mobile device, Windows 8 computer and a new Surface Tablet – for work and private use. With over 90,000 full-time employees, this is not an inexpensive exercise… with a generous estimate…

In open space-style workshops/sessions there’s a concept called “The Law of Two Feet”. It means that if, at any time, you feel you are not contributing to the session, or if you are not learning something, then you should use your two feet to leave the session and find one where you can contribute and…

Here you can find the slides from my presentation at the Agile Lean Europe 2012 Unconference in Barcelona this week. Download the slides Thank you to everyone who attended and gave feedback!

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”&#8212…

Cocktail Group – by kurmanstaff. Over the years since I finished high school I’ve had the immense good fortune to work with a handful of remarkable people who have inspired me deeply; who have mentored me and taught me an incredible amount about myself. The first of these was not a CEO or a VP…

“Go Viral” by Tom Fishburne. Everybody’s saying it… “Let’s make it go viral!” “We need to build in some virality.” “It should be more viral!” The problem I have encountered often recently is that many people seem to have various misconceptions about what ‘viral’ really is, what it really means – but mostly how easy…

It’s a simple thing to get someone’s name right. Yousendit had an opportunity. They had my email address from whenever I had signed up to their service in order to download some file or another. I knew the service and trusted it enough to sign up, and if I had left my email address, I…

I found a great quote from the book Meta Products (Rubino, et al) on what makes future thinkers and innovators good at innovating, and I just had to share it: “We’ve studied the ideas of some of the well-known futurologists and innovators such as Juan Enriquez, Steward Brand and Katherine Fulton among many others, and…

The Complete Product Owner Act I: The Product This post is part of the “Complete Product Owner” series. The centre-piece for any product team – the guiding north star – is the product vision. Where are we going? Why? What do we do when we get there? How will we know when we get there…

Homer: It’s nothing big; it’s just a lot of little things. Scorpio: Homer, you can’t argue with the little things. It’s the little things that make up life. In the biography written by Walter Isacsson, Steve Jobs recalls watching his father paint the posts for the picket fence in the yard of their Cupertino home…

The Complete Product Owner Act I: The Product This post is part of the “Complete Product Owner” series. Products never exist in a vacuum. Products live in a world of competitors and partners, of peripherals, networks and enablers. Products live inside an ecosystem consisting of companies, governments, regulators and consumers. To understand what your product…

Babylonian map of the world, dated around 6BC. Source: Wikipedia The map has come a long way since the Babylonians carved pictographic maps of their surroundings on large chunks of stone. Ever since the appearance of the first digital maps many companies and products have appeared with the mission to produce better quality, more complete…