Vision vs Iteration
Brendan Kearns at UX Brighton 2019
About this talk
Teams iterating without a vision are working blindfolded. The constant demand for new features and growth often force product teams into endless cycles of iteration. At best, they’re missing out on new opportunities. At worst, they’re ignoring threats that could upend their business.
The struggle to plan beyond the short-term mean it’s easy to ignore the future bets you need to make to survive.
In this talk, Brendan will share models and ways of working from that designers and product owners can use to focus on both the short and long term.
Some of the topics covered in this talk are:
- the value of a vision,
- how to measure big bets through experimentation, and
- validation and turning a vision into a roadmap.
About Brendan
Brendan is the founder of Studio Rival – a digital product agency in London. Rival partners with leading startups, tech companies, and brands to design and innovate digital products. As a former designer at companies like Google, Twitter, and InVision, he has the inside take on some of the biggest and most complex products in tech.
Related reading
Books, research, ideas and people referenced in this talk.
Ad · Book titles link to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Concepts
- Post hoc fallacy00:03:22Brendan Kearns uses the post hoc fallacy to describe a problem with attributing outcomes to later explanations.
- Agile software development00:03:35Brendan Kearns names agile as part of the shared vocabulary of product work.
Projects and resources
- Design sprint00:03:35Brendan Kearns refers to the design sprint as one of the fast product-work models used by teams.
- Google Maps00:07:00Brendan Kearns uses his former work on Google Maps as an example of a critical user journey.


