About Tom Kerwin
Tom has 25 years of experience as a leader in design, research and product. He’s co-founded two successful startups and worked both agency-side and in-house, coaching cross-functional teams to innovate.
Since running his first usability test in 1999, Tom has been obsessed with adaptive sense-making: how do we continuously make sense of the world so we can act more effectively in it?
He is the author of Innovation Tactics, the deck of cards from Pip Decks that’s packed with pragmatic methods for making things people want. He’s also the creator of Pivot Triggers, a simple but powerful idea that’s helped hundreds of teams become more adaptive by doing discovery and delivery at the same time.
Pitch Provocations:
How to probe for what the market really wants
Why is it often so hard to cross from the broad enquiry of ethnographic research to narrowly focused objectives for teams to work towards? This talk will peel back the layers on what's going on and what we can do about it.
When everyone sees the situation differently, even though you're all looking at the same data, it can be tempting to force alignment. Instead, work with the variety and turn a group's hidden assumptions into lots of ideas (including some that are deliberately wrong). Then gauge reactions from the market in parallel so you can update your assumptions in an organic, natural way.
Pitch Provocations is a fast, counterintuitive method to do just this.
Tom is speaking on day one, June 18th
Day one focuses on UX Research.
Learn how to use Multiverse Mapping to align your team around the stuff that matters – fast
Pin down your product strategy. Expose those do-or-die research questions, experiments and technical spikes. And collaboratively prototype too. All in less than an hour? For real?
That’s what you can do when you master Multiverse Mapping.
This is a deceptively simple but powerful form of behavioural mapping that I adapted from different sources over many years with hundreds of teams and students. It’s the most useful tool in my whole kitbag. And you’re going to learn it hands-on with peers in this workshop.
First we’ll revise the basics of user story mapping using the morning routine exercise (you’ll want to do this with all your teams). Then we’ll jump into the multiverse, you’ll practise making a few different varieties of map. Along the way, you’ll get and give feedback to help you get comfortable with the method.
Tom is giving this workshop on day two, June 19th
Day two focuses on Product Design.
Tom is giving the workshop again on day three, June 20th
Day three focuses on Design Ops and Design Systems.