The Lighthouse Podcast

#54: User-focused Content and its Importance in the Creative Landscape

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:30:58 +0000

Tom was joined by Laura Jackson from creative content agency Not Actual Size to talk about content, a topic that often gets forgotten about and not given the focus it deserves. NAS design content and manage communities for some of the biggest brands in the world and their words are seen by millions.

Along the way they talked about

What content actually is and why it's so important to people
What teams can do to bring a more rigorous content focus to their workflows
Useful frameworks for content success and the importance of accountability

#53: Product Maturity, the Unexpected Joy of Status Reports and Designing for World Leaders

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Shelley Malham, Jolien Hordijk, Tom Johnson) — Tue, 9 May 2023 13:04:23 +0000

The Lighthouse Podcast returns, and we've had a format re-shuffle! 🎉

In our 'Spotlight' section we take a deeper dive into a topic we know will give a ton of value to product teams. This episode, Head of Client Services Shelley joins us to discuss product maturity; what is is, why it matters, and how forward-thinking organisations can make improvements.

Further product maturity reading and resources:

In 'Housework' - where we discuss the inner workings of a creative agency - we hear from Senior Client Manager Jolien on how small changes to status reports had a big impact on client happiness and even created a potential new revenue stream. And you thought reporting was boring!

We round up with a recap of our last ManyHands event, where we brought talented product professionals together to work on a fun fictional problem. Yes, one team really did consider offering 'war as a service' to world leaders.

Find out more about ManyHands and register your interest in taking part

#52: The Overlap Between Type and UX Design with Dalton Maag's Bianca Berning

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Bianca Berning, Tom Johnson) — Wed, 7 Jul 2021 14:35:31 +0000

Want to get in touch with Bianca Berning? Have a look at all of her work here.

Want to learn more about font design? Have a look at Dalton Maag!

#51: From designer problem to consumer plugin: how we launched Spacer

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Tue, 8 Dec 2020 11:06:05 +0000

In this edition of the Product Leadership Podcast, Alice and Russ chat about how we created the Spacer plugin for Sketch from an internal problem we had and then turned it into a commercial product. Along the way they cover: How Spacer was created to solve issues that our own designers were facing, staying curious about your audience and connecting with them and the importance of getting the right feedback and using it to improve your product. Lighthouse London is a UX and UI design studio who help teams bring new digital product MVPs to market and breathe life into existing tools.

#50: Moving online: how to make the most out of remote workshops with John Monks

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 15:26:46 +0000

For this edition of the Product Leadership Podcast we invite John Monks from Curve once again, where he talks to Tom on how to facilitate remote workshops and allow for creativity to flow - even when you’re miles away from your team 🌎

We cover ideas about:

What to think about when preparing a remote workshop 🕵🏼
How to best utilise modern tech to enhance the experience (and not replace it) 🌟
Tips and techniques for keeping the energy flowing and people engaged 🙌🏼

Use the discount code LIGHTHOUSE2020 for 20% off any Curve workshops 💸

Download the workshop planning canvas 📜

Learn more about Curve’s amazing workshop workshops here curve.cc 👀

#49: An Insider's Guide to Startup Funding

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 10:26:04 +0000

In this episode of the Product Leadership Podcast Tom is joined by Jonathan Hollis from Mountside Ventures.

They chat about the wide range of funding options available to startups, how Jonathan's company makes the fundraising process more efficient for both investors and startups, and the effect Covid-19 has had.

Along the way they cover:

What startups should do in preparation for taking their proposition to market.
Why the UK is a great place to invest in early-stage companies (and to be an early stage company!)
How funds have responded to the need for remote investing, and what goes on in an institutional investor's head.
How similar the process really is to the one we see on Dragons Den.

Grab Mountside's list of funds still active during Covid-19 here 👀

#48: The Secrets of Perfect Creative Workshop Facilitation with John Monks

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 11:05:29 +0000

John Monks from Curve talks to Tom about how to run amazing creative workshops and the main pitfalls to avoid. Along the way we discuss:

How to manage troublemakers
Ways to encourage collaboration with teams
Why PowerPoint is just the worst

#47: Redefining Launch - Product Success By Increments

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 11:11:07 +0000

Stop thinking of launch as a date in the diary, and instead focus on the smaller, more subtle stages and release your product by increments.

Dan and Tom discuss how little is actually needed to start sharing your ideas, and the stages involved in using a 10x launch strategy.

Along the way they cover:

#1 Not being afraid to launch to a tiny group - you're ideally placed to speak to users directly when your idea is still just a scribble on the back of a napkin, so now's the time to get feedback.

#2 Early stage MVPs and faking it before you start to scale.

#3 The importance of experimenting while you're still able to move quickly- and how established companies envy this ability to release something imperfect and learn.

#4 Tom's preferred sandwiches if you invite us to your launch party. (No plain cheese, please.)

Read more about the 10x Launch Strategy here

#46: Weighting and Rating - How To Manage Your Backlog

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 13:39:04 +0000

Prioritising the contents of your feature backlog is a vital part of determining your product roadmap. Tom and infrequent co-host Russ talk us through how to go about backlog weighting in order to work out what you should be building next. They cover:

Weighting by perceived value - Chatting to your users, stakeholders and frontline customer service team about what people are lacking, longing for or frustrated by.
Weighting by analytics - Using Google Analytics etc to provide the least subjective picture of what's needed.
Weighting by cost/resource - Working out the effort needed by teams to get the feature completed.
The tension between prioritising fixing bugs and building new things.

We also find out why sorting tasks alphabetically isn't a sensible framework!

Grab our backlog weighting template here (we've added some example features and scored them to get you started) 👉Google Sheets / Excel

#45: The Mini Pitch - Easily Distill, Explain And Present Your Ideas

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 15:18:06 +0000

Dan and Tom talk about the mini pitch process, our tried and tested methodology for showing the people who matter that an idea is worthy of taking forward.

We use this at the end of our Idea Generation Workshops to help innovation teams from larger companies convince management that the product ideas they've come up with are going to make an impact.

But it's something that can be used by just about anyone who needs to get an idea out into the world so we thought we'd share.

They run through:

What each of the five slides represents, and why each matters.
Tips and tricks for filling our your pitch.
3)...And the German word for mullet. (literally 'short at the front, long at the back.'

#44: How To Win The Product Lottery

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Tom Johnson) — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 14:17:39 +0000

Why do some businesses seem to have the best ideas and launch the best products time and time again? Dan and Tom discuss the innovation lessons we can learn from them.

#43: What Would Happen If You Hired the World's Greatest Designer?

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 14:14:00 +0000

Dan and Tom talk about how to make sure you get great results from the UX and UI designers you hire and how hiring the world's greatest designer might not guarantee amazing results if you don't give them the right information to work with. Along the way, they discuss

The mistakes that businesses make when briefing talented designers
What sorts of processes you can put in place to get the best from your design team
What a great designer will expect from you to allow them to do their best work

#42: Creating the perfect workflow between UX/UI and development teams

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 4 Mar 2019 15:26:00 +0000

We're back! An embarrassing period of silence but Tom and Russ are back with some handy advice for UX and UI teams kicking off a relationship with an external product development team. Along the way they discuss

What's needed to build a seamless working relationship
How to use agile techniques to speed up delivery
What the common pitfalls are and how to avoid them

#41: Exposing Vulnerability, Breaking Habits and Other Adventures in Creativity with Steve Chapman

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 15:46:00 +0000

We talked to Steve about how he helps teams discover their inner creativity through workshops that take them out of their comfort zone and into the realm of uncertainty. Along the way we discussed:

Challenging norms and constant experimentation to help push innovation in organisations
How something as simple as lunch choices can help people be more creative
Why we should be listening to more "inexperts"

#40: The Covert Innovator: How to Disrupt Under the Radar

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:10:00 +0000

We discuss ways in which people can introduce innovation to their organisations alongside their everyday activities. We talk about:

How leaders can create an innovation stream with small, simple changes
How to encourage innovation techniques in your team and see quick results
How a focus on customers will give you the power to shift and change and report to the powers that be

#39: How to Conduct Expert User Research (aka How You Might Be Doing It Wrong)

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 12:57:00 +0000

We talk about the research techniques we've learned and adopted over the years while talking to customers and users. Learn about why conducting good research is one of the most important parts of any tech project. In the podcast we cover:

How to eliminate bias and get the right answers
What benefits research will bring and how it could save you money
How you should conduct research and who you should be talking to

#38: Juggling Priorities - How Product Teams Can Choose What To Do Next

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 08:09:00 +0000

Any product manager/owner will have a million things to keep on top of and lots of potential ways to take the tool. How do you effectively manage your priorities to make sure you're steering things in the right direction? We give our four top tips for staying on top of the workload and product roadmap.

#37: Appetite for Disruption: Revolutionising Street Food with Feast It

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 09:55:00 +0000

We chatted to Feast-It founders Hugo Campbell and Digby Vollrath to learn how they built a platform bringing street food to the masses from the ground up. Along the way we learned:

How they faked the tech and focused on design and experience to get the startup off the ground
How their sales and marketing focus has shifted since launch and the effect it's had
Why experimentation and constant change is key to their long-term success

#36: How to Measure the Four Types of Value Created By Digital Products

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 4 Sep 2017 14:46:00 +0000

Digital products can bring value to a business in many ways. It's important to know how the product you're developing is going to benefit you and how this will affect your business value. We talk about the four types of value:

Direct value
Additional value
Influence value
Innovation value

On top of that we talk about examples of some successful businesses who have shown the benefits of these types of value over their product lifetime.

#35: Managing Ideas: How to Generate, Filter and Judge Innovative Thinking

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 9 Aug 2017 08:45:00 +0000

Lighthouse founders, Dan and Tom, explore the process of ideas. They discuss the ways to generate and validate ideas, as well as the role of idea management in the product development process.

Along the way we learned:

The danger of becoming too attached to an idea
Why "lightbulb moments" is a bad expression
How to generate ideas when you have none, how to filter when you have too many
How keeping an idea a secret is harmful

#34: The Benefits of Startups in Residence with Friends of the Earth and Makerble

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 16:20:00 +0000

We chat to Matt Kepple from Makerble and Joana Esgalhado from Friends of the Earth about the recent Startup in Residence program at FOE. We hear how Makerble came about and dive deeper into how this large UK charity are trying to bridge the gap between corporate and startup.

Along the way we learn:

How the idea came about and what benefit it has brought to both teams
What the biggest learnings were from both sides of the table
How large and small teams have benefitted from sharing the FOE offices over the past months

Links

https://www.makerble.com/
https://www.foe.co.uk/
https://www.foe.co.uk/about-us/apply-friends-earth-startup-residence-change-world

#33: Startup vs. Corporate Development, an Inside View with Aleksandar Orlic from Penta

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 4 Jul 2017 12:09:00 +0000

We chatted to Aleksander Orlic, CTO and co-founder of Penta, about his insights on the pros and cons with both startup and corporate approaches to product development and innovation. Penta is a digital bank for businesses across Europe based in Berlin, Germany.

Aleksandar has over 20 years experience as a software engineer, architect and product manager having worked from startups to banks multi-national corporates. Along the way we discussed:

Why corporates struggle with rapid change and fast-moving innovation
The pros and cons of life as a developer at a startup
How instability is a valuable asset of innovation

#32: Changing a Charity Through Digital Transformation with Tom Wright from Friends of the Earth

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 07:40:00 +0000

Tom talks to us about how Friends of the Earth are trying to focus more on digital to keep up in the ever-changing charity sector. Along the way we discuss:

The successes and difficulties in trying to adopt a "Digital First" way of thinking
How moving to a digital fundraising approach will extend the charity's life
How internal meetings, event and comms have helped excite and educate FoE staff

#31: Building A New Way to Pay with Tom Weaver from Flypay

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 29 May 2017 08:00:00 +0000

Hear about Flypay's journey from rusty prototype through major funding rounds to a suite of Point of Sale software for the hospitality industry.

#30: Trademarks and IP de-mystified with Chris McLeod from Elkington & Fife

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 15 May 2017 13:56:00 +0000

We chat to Chris McLeod from Elkington & Fife about what you need to know when it comes to trademarks and IP for your digital product.

#29: Make Saving Great Again - Using Facebook Messenger To Reduce Your Monthly Bills with Lukas Zoerner from Mespo

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 08:00:00 +0000

Hear how Mespo are giving customers a smart, non-biased way to save money on their monthly bills using cutting edge technology.

#28: Why Your App Idea (Probably) Sucks With Heidi Pun

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 3 Apr 2017 14:00:00 +0000

Heidi Pun tells us about her tried and tested approach to product development and how early stage entrepreneurs can bring ideas to market quickly and effectively with little to no technical skill

#27: Accelerating a Startup, Doughnut Marketing™ and How to Launch a Business on a Train

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 7 Mar 2017 17:40:00 +0000

Tom talks to Simon about his experience of starting a company out of university, going through an accelerator and taking an idea from conception to revenue inside a week.

#26: Can Tech Help a Nation of 1.2 Billion People Go Cashless?

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 08:30:00 +0000

One of our founders (Tom) recently got back from travelling in India. You may have heard about the situation with their currency at the moment - Tom got a great insight while there. This episode he chats to Simon about it - the issues it causes, possible solutions, as well as a brief discussion about why one of the world's largest (by population) countries made such an unprecedented move in the first place.

#25: Porter's Five Forces

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:40:00 +0000

Anthony joins Tom for a recap of the talk he gave at our recent event on "Porter's Five Forces". After covering what each force is and how it may affect your business, they do a quick analysis of well-known startup Deliveroo!

#24: Designing for the Future: Pattern Libraries

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 15:50:00 +0000

Russ and new Lighthouse member Josh chat about Pattern Libraries - what are they? When and why should you use them?

#23: Starting up, shutting down and enabling the next generation of entrepreneur with Tristan Watson of Ignite

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 11:03:00 +0000

We've had a couple of Ignite alumni on the show already (Ben from Chew.tv and Gilbert from Leaf.fm to name two) - this time we have a director! Tristan Watson was an entrepreneur himself who mentored Ignite at the very beginning, before joining the team full-time. In this episode he tells us about success and failure; what they look and feel like as well as what sets a team up for each!

We talk about whether London is really the best place to start your startup, and how best to prepare your application for Ignite (or any similar accelerator). Tristan also shares some of his biggest surprises encountered in running Europe's #1 seed-stage accelerator!

Tristan: @tristanwatson
Ignite: @igniteaccel

#22: Experimenting Your Way to a Global Music Streaming Community with Gilbert Corrales from Leaf

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 7 Sep 2016 08:52:00 +0000

We chatted to Gilbert Corrales, CEO and Co-founder of Leaf, about how a close-knit group of Costa Ricans came to the UK and turned a hypothesis based around music streaming into an app used all over the globe. Among other things we discussed:

Why you shouldn't worry about user churn
How Leaf adopted a test-driven approach to developing new features
How a simple chat box took on a life of its own!

#21 Helping Corporates Be More Startup with Howard Rees

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:19:00 +0000

Moving quickly and innovating gets harder the larger you get, but the rewards for getting it right are great. Howard Rees from CSC came in to chat with us and outline how he goes about getting larger, more mature companies to "think like a startup".

#20 Building a 20,000-strong community in 1 year: The creation and rise of Chew.tv with Ben Bowler

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 10:30:00 +0000

Ben Bowler from Chew.tv popped in to chat DJing, grime, startups and building a community with us.

#19: How To Raise, Fail and Find Your True Calling: Mental Health in Startups with James Routledge

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 17 May 2016 15:27:00 +0000

Tom chats with James Routledge (formally MatchChat - Ignite100 - NowNative - Seedcamp) about his new venture making Mental Health easier to talk about, as well as the journey that got him to where he is now.

#18: Life After Techstars: Headliner’s Accelerator Post Mortem with Stan Mcleod

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 12:52:00 +0000

What is a business accelerator? What does it do? Could one help you and your startup? Stan's been through one of the best, and he tells Dan all about his experience, sharing his thoughts on general accelerators and who they might help.

#17: Lighthouse Book Review! - "Creativity Inc" by Ed Catmull

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Fri, 1 Apr 2016 16:55:00 +0000

Dan and Tom have a chat about "Creativity Inc' by Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar. Hear the secret's behind Pixar's success and how the company focuses on creativity across the entire organisation

#16: One Step at a Time: Exploring a New Market With a Lean MVP

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:20:00 +0000

How Lighthouse's latest side project, Bandit, is attempting to gain traction by starting small and learning directly from its early adopters

#15: Just Enough Design: Our Tips For Creating Effective Prototypes

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 8 Mar 2016 11:28:00 +0000

Dan and Russ talk about Lighthouse’s approach to designing prototypes and how we maximise them for learning, not aesthetics

#14: Startup Stories - From MVP to Techstars With Stan Mcleod from Headliner

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 08:50:00 +0000

Stan talks about his startup journey, creating two business in five years which took them from humble beginnings to graduating Techstars in 2015

#13: How To Use Prototyping To Get Instant, Meaningful Feedback From Your Customers

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 8 Feb 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Dan and Tom talk about how to chat to customers and get awesome feedback on your product. What should you be asking? Where can you find your users and much more...

#12: How to Spend Your Time on the Right Startup Ideas with Howard Gray

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:26:00 +0000

We chatted with Rozel Studio founder Howard Gray about how to evaluate your startup ideas and choose which are the best ones to test and launch

#11: Three Simple Steps To Self-Starting Your Idea

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:08:00 +0000

What are the steps needed to get your startup idea out of your head and into the real world? Follow these three simple steps to start engaging with your audience and learning about your product without the need for any technical knowledge

More episodes and articles on the Lighthouse London blog
http://wearelighthouse.com/blog/

#10: The Lighthouse Christmas Show and 2015 Roundup

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 09:00:00 +0000

We all sat around and talked about our high and lowlights of 2015 as well as our wishes for 2016. There's also a tense vote for the internal results of the Best Christmas Card competition.

#9: Coin: The Birth of a Side Project

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Russ chats to Tom about Coin, a side project he set up in early 2015. He discusses where it's at now, where it might go and what problems it needs to overcome in the future.

#8: How To Be Your Own Worst Client: The Story of Re-designing Our Website

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:00:00 +0000

As part of our hack day trip to Bath we got round a table and talked about the recent re-design of the Lighthouse website. There were laughs, there were tears, there was authentic rural background noise.

#7: Totally Wired: Project Planning and Prototyping With Wireframes

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 11:04:00 +0000

How do we use these simple tools for great learning in design and build projects? Where do wireframes end and prototypes start? We're not sure we have all the answers but we gives it our best shot!

#6: Left Hand Green: Should You Play Twister in Kick-off Meetings?

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 13:39:00 +0000

Kick off meetings, are they the best meetings? Everyone’s so positive and excited. Russ and Dan immerse themselves in these most cherished moments in the client/agency relationship, the bit before anything’s gone wrong.

Why are they important?
What should be covered in one?
Would a game of Twister work?

#5: Designer Origins: Our Paths From Low To Pro

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 01:00:00 +0000

And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?

Russ & Tom learnt design over 10 years apart, in this week's podcast they discuss how they started their careers and how things done changed. Hear Tom grapple with how long ago it all was and raise an eyebrow at the role Russ' printer played. Most of all, enjoy!

#4: How We Became Addicted To Prototyping

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 7 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Prototyping is great. So great that we talked and recorded and it's a podcast. Dan & Tom on the mics.

What are prototypes?
Why are they so useful?
How can they save your startup idea?

We discuss how prototyping can help both startups and established businesses and why recently we've become addicted to them.

#3: Technology Choices And How You Should Make Them

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 2 Sep 2015 07:00:00 +0000

Dan and Christy discuss choosing technologies. Trying to stay impartial because unbalanced views are the biggest problem, they fail to be impartial. There was swearing. Apologies to any technologies offended.

What are the different aspects around choosing a technology
Tried and tested vs cutting edge
The biggest mistakes we've made
Why developers are not the people to ask

It’s a long one but if you stick around there’s the opportunity to hear Christy’s vision for Lighthouse, which is frankly terrifying.

Watch out for the accompanying blog post which tries to make sense of the madness.

#2: On The Importance Of Side Projects

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Christy and Russ discuss their personal experience of side projects, of which they have started many and finished few.

Why do side projects?
Why is finishing them so hard?
What happens to the unfinished ones?

Some real insights into the design and dev duo's process (or lack of) and lessons learned.

#1: What Skills Should A Founder Have?

accounts@wearelighthouse.com (Lighthouse London) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 14:14:00 +0000

Tom & Dan discuss the skills and qualities a startup founder needs and a couple that they probably think they do but don't.

The importance of a strong vision
Why you don't need coding skills
The irreplaceability of industry insight
Good determination and bad determination