Product Workshop @ California Design Studio

Brandon Kleinman came to Thought Merchants through a mutual friend to help him break through his product's nebulous state. It's a privilege to work with a founder at such an early and vulnerable state. Trust and honesty need to be shared right away. Brandon was not shy, and we had a fantastic collaboration session.

I have spent my entire career building a safe place to make seriously good products, and my studio is the culmination of 11 years of focus. It's a joy sharing my creative space with Brandon and use all the tools my curated space provides. Having the right tools at arm's length makes a workshop so much more productive.

Product workshops always adapt to the product and person, but they all follow the same framework:

Morning

Outline our goals, anti-goals (what we don't want to do), risks, and roles. Defining these gives us a shared lens to look through and evaluate our progress throughout the day. I prefer to write these on a whiteboard that is visible throughout the entire workshop. We will frequently reference them and modify them throughout the day.

Lunch

Workshops are all about mental clarity and thinking. You have to get out of the room to keep the creative flow. We decided to walk down to Sunny Blue and eat delicious omusubi. Yum!

Afternoon

We breakdown user activities for this product on a huge table. A roll of paper, index cards, post-it notes, and markers of all colors help.

Wrap

Small workshops are the highest fidelity experience a knowledge worker can provide, and the wrap-up is essential. The ocean water temperature is still warm enough for just trunks, so we jumped into the ocean! It's only five blocks away.

Take a look!

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