At Centercode we believe in technology's ability to make everyone's life better. In the Delta Huddle Podcast, we bring together industry experts and visionaries to share their insights about building products and bringing them to market.
What does it mean to really value something? When it comes to products and product development, does that mean enjoying a certain set of features? Or does it go beyond the simple feature set to encompass how a product makes someone feel? Or how immersed they are while they use it?
Value is something that we’re always trying to provide - to whatever audience we serve, and in today’s episode, we had some amazing insight into what value means to every audience.
Here to discuss and explore these ideas with us is Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design at Mattel. Paul leads a global team at one of the world’s top toy companies to engineer and develop electronic designs that enable the next generation to explore the wonder of childhood. Paul brought a lot of amazing stories and insights to the table, from his time at Microsoft helping to launch Surface, to the quirks of developing routers for different audiences at Cisco and Linksys, and adopting the mindset that the designer isn’t always the user. Paul’s passion and love for design really shined through in this episode, and it was great being able to share his love for innovation with you all.
In this episode:
- Microsoft Surface, user design, and taking cues from users and competitors
- Identifying what users value and combating cognitive bias
- Mattel, testing with younger audiences, and Centercode
- Understanding that you are not always the user
- What users say vs. what users do, sentiment, and core user value
- When to test, Barbie, product evolution, and knowing when to listen
- Dogfooding, “tribal knowledge”, and learning from every user
- Creating personas to represent numerous audiences in tests
- Connecting with audiences in a meaningful way
About Our Guest:
Paul Chen is the Senior Director of E-Design at Mattel, leading a global team that creates the electronics for toys and baby gear, focused on electronic designs that enable the next generation to explore the wonder of childhood.
Prior to Mattel, Paul brought Agile Methodologies and Design Thinking/Human Centered Design to multiple companies as a Product Management Leader. Paul is fiercely in love with innovation – with over 18 patents, worked on the earliest Wi-Fi chipset, and wrote the initial MRD and PRD for Microsoft Surface.
As a people leader, Paul has established cohesive roll-out roadmap, dev cycle and release execution for multiple companies; securing #1 positions and market success with a portfolio of consumer products.
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Podcast Transcript:
00:00:00
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Coming up on this episode of the Delta Huddle Podcast.
00:00:03
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But if you put the whole thing together, see how it hangs and look at the how people value it, whether you're solving a need or there's an emotional bond they got, they you hit on something they want or something economical, if you will, saving them money, whatever, whatever it is that motivates them. If they don't, they don't see the value the same way.
00:00:27
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Then you know, then you've got a mess on your hands.
00:00:33
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Hello, I'm Stefan Stenroos and welcome to this episode of the Delta Huddle Podcast. What does it mean to really value something? When it comes to products and product design? Is that simply enjoying the features set of a product, or does it go much further beyond that to how a product makes someone feel or how immersed they are when they're using it?
00:00:53
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Value is something that we're trying to provide no matter what audience we serve. And in this episode we had some amazing insight into what value means for every audience. Joining us to discuss and explore these ideas is Paul Chen, Senior Director of Electronic Design at Mattel. Paul leads a global team and one of the world's top toy companies to help design and engineer electronic designs so that the next generation can enjoy the wonder of childhood.
00:01:23
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Paul shared some amazing stories across his career from his time at Microsoft to help develop Surface, to the quirks of developing different routers for different audiences at Cisco and Linksys, as well as adopting the mindset that the designer is not always the user. Paul's love and passion for design really showed through in this episode, and we had an amazing time being able to bring that out and showcase it to all of you here.
00:01:52
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Without further ado, here is Paul Chen. Yeah, All right. Or go for it. Well, Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. Fantastic having you here. I want to start off first off, just by asking you, tell us more about you, kind of how your career has gone, where you started, where you’ve been and what you do at Mattel.
00:02:15
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah, my name is Paul Chen. I lead a group called Electronic Design at Mattel. Um, prior to this, I think a balance between product management and engineering going back a long, long time, but worked on things like Microsoft Surface, at Western Digital where Chris and I intersected. We worked on consumer products. So I have been a lot of consumer electronics, consumer facing products in my career, I really love making products.
00:02:49
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I'm a product guy. And so when you get to, you know, the area of Mattel toys, it has a very different slant because obviously where we're working with kids.
00:03:01
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Gotcha, yeah, so a lot of different places there. Western Digital, Microsoft holds a special place in my heart, former Microsoft as well.
00:03:14
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Okay. We all intersect somewhere somehow.
00:03:17
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Yeah. So. Yeah, you kind of mentioned different products on every step of the journey. Right. And, you know, Surface is going to be wildly different from anything at Mattel. Right. So can you talk a little bit more about kind of how you were involved at the Surface team and some of the things that you did there?
00:03:36
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah, I think I was on the original way back Surface team. It was still the playtable at the time. And so I got a chance to help release the table as the lead program manager and then as the senior product manager, I got a chance to write the MRDs and PRDs. These were what we know as Microsoft Surface today.
00:04:00
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I think Chris knows I used to share stories with him at Western Digital. There was a lot of a lot of user research and user facing design, really thinking about what we would put in that product and being intentional. I think definitely you can see today that Microsoft Surface is amazing among the commercial market productivity that that derives from way back in the days that we were located in this crazy little building called Willows.
00:04:33
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And you know, I share one inspiration. When you're defining the surface on the tablet, if you will. It was interesting to see that there is the Mac business unit for office in the same Willows building down the hall. And so you're some derivation intersection where you go, wow, if Microsoft back in early 2010’s or 2008.
00:05:01
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Was that an app.
00:05:04
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I gather that if Microsoft had had such a mindshare with the office products even to the Mac community, then it just seemed very natural to head towards productivity.
00:05:20
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Go ahead Chris.
00:05:24
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I was just going to say, productivity leads the way.
00:05:26
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Especially now.
00:05:27
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Leads Everything.
00:05:29
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Yeah, Yeah. You see a lot of it kind of goes into what they're doing with GPT and Bing and all that stuff, which is really interesting how they've kind of taken that over. But you mentioned some elements of user design and how that kind of operated in terms of helping develop Surface. Can you talk about that? What were some of the feedback that you were getting within Microsoft, outside of Microsoft that kind of drove the development of that product?
00:05:52
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It was a wonderful time. We were still a small group when I was there, and I got to work with a user researcher, Jennifer McCormick… So you got a really condensed group of folks that could focus in
00:06:18
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And even though you said productivity, it was really projecting where productivity could be. If you think around the 2006 and 2008 timeframe, it was coming off of maybe the tablet PC thing that just went away and one might go, Oh, are you creating a new version? And was definitely not just creating a new or updated version of tablet PC, but looking at how natural use of the hands and touchscreens and including the pen and removable keyboards and all that could fit into the work like how people work.
00:07:06
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And so I think ultimately it was about trying to reach the natural user interface in a new way and making sure that that you're there there's a lot of words for it human centered design, actual user interface, design thinking. But I think ultimately you have to focus in on the user and and and it isn't a panel of the features that you make.
00:07:35
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It's the sum of what they really may not even be able to tell you what they want. You have to look at the reactions and stuff and to some degree I think, you know, I worked with Centercode before. I think it is not just the testing and survey. Did you like or not like it, but it was watching, watching and seeing the micro-level reactions of people.
00:08:01
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
One thing I love and it's a famous saying, right? Like someone said, I think it's Henry Ford. If I were to ask my my customers, they would have asked for faster horses. And that's not an expression where you say, no, I don't want to ask or talk to customers. It's not that you don't want to get the feedback from them.
00:08:19
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
It's, you need to observe. You need to watch and empathize. Because when you were talking about looking forward, it's not like, you know, how do I make the tablet PC better? It's like, what? What is the future? What problems are they running into? What's going on around them that I could improve in their lives and say in making something like product productivity a little bit better and work life.
00:08:42
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So like I always go back to that saying, when someone says if I were to ask my customers, they would have told me something that I wouldn't have built. And it's like now you need it's really listening to what they're thinking about or empathize with them, which goes back to your design thinking, right? You gotta watch them, observe them, kind of take in what's going on.
00:09:02
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And then you apply your knowledge and say, what? What's going on here? How can I make this better?
00:09:09
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
See, even the you'll you'll see that people struggle. What people what they are trying to express verbally. So and then you know what I think in it we intersect the western visual Chris I think redefining the way engineering QA beta and testing is is a struggle sometimes for consumer electronics. There's a desire to test the features as you design them but if you focus a little bit higher on real users you know who I think that that sauce to give you something easier to digest it informs on what you should do and what you just need to quit working on.
00:09:51
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Actually it's something.
00:09:53
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
As product managers it's, it's, it's data, right? And you're a very data driven person. I know from experience and it's you get that data, you get that data to make your decisions, right? So I look at what the users are doing and what they're saying and I can analyze it and I understand, like you would specifically understand technology and engineering very well and you can, what I loved about what you did, it interacting with you is your ability to translate between all the different teams.
00:10:24
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So like I was in user research there so you can talk to me and empathize with the user, but you can also talk to the user directly. You communicate it to an engineering team, go down the cubicles to go talk to marketing and and translate it to how they could be pitching it and positioning it for the future.
00:10:40
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So that's a special skill for a product manager. And actually as just a I guess, a leader yourself in being able to communicate to all those different teams.
00:10:52
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I mean, in my mind, I'm a poor simple boy from North Carolina. I'm an engineer. But what engineering really means is about all those things, because again, we've all been there. You could have the, in our mind, the perfect product, right. Why can't people understand? But you know, I think I think, you know, we're where a lot of us get caught up in engineering is the slice of the picture is the best ever, the most efficient, the most dominant.
00:11:26
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But it takes losing first. And so if you know, you know, might this story about Microsoft Surface I always told Chris first was actually looking at Apple and going, man the iPhone right?
00:11:40
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah the yet to lose.
00:11:43
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You know the multitouch kind of thing to win to win something else said.
00:11:48
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Yeah like that old saying that no plan survives first contact with the enemy right. You kind of have to get out there and experience some of those small losses or sometimes big losses in order to kind of realize where to course correct. But one of the things that you mentioned is like sometimes as designers or engineers, you have that idea of like, if this feature is amazing, why can’t necessarily users understand that?
00:12:14
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
What are some of the ways that you've encountered that allow you to kind of maybe fight that cognitive bias where it's like, Hey, this is my baby and I really love it? What has allowed you, whether it's through testing or other methods to understand, like, Hey, it's great, but this is how we can improve it.
00:12:30
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Well, I think I think, uh, you know, I think when you look at what we fall in love with as technologists and engineers, it's really important to go I can, I can change how people might rate a feature. But when, when Chris was talking about data, one of the one of the things I always change on is, okay, how do they value the thing?
00:13:05
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
That's a fundamental thing. If you test the product and you look at how much they value not a feature, but a value the product as a whole, with all the features combined, that's actually harder to change. And that's just, that's the, the essence that kind of hurts sometimes for people in engineering. And, you know, I think to some degree in consumer electronics to product design, you go, I, I, but why can't people get this one one element or maybe you've you've put in I call the the amazing bucket of technology into the product, can't they get it, and it's not not that you didn't do the hard effort it's not that,
00:13:52
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You didn't test well because sometimes that occurs, where we're doing the test and we think we have a winning set of features. But if you put the whole thing together, see how it hangs and look at the how people value it, whether you're solving a need or there's an emotional bond they got, they you hit on something they want or something economical, if you will, saving the money, whatever, whatever it is that motivates them.
00:14:22
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
If they don't, they don't see the value the same way. Then, you know, then you've got a mess on your hand. And that's, that's the harder part. It's not that what I'm saying here sounds like, Oh I, you know, I know what I'm going to miss. Well, I'm only human as well. I go, Hey, that sometimes I don't. I don't understand why people can understand that.
00:14:47
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But if they can't understand, it really is about that distance between or between what they can understand and what they can value.
00:14:57
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I guess one thing that was always just popped into my head, we worked on routers, right?
00:15:03
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Oh yes!
00:15:04
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So what was kind of interesting is you take a router, right? It's pretty technical for the most part. And what I remember seeing is you treat the features and the performance and all the things that the router is doing, and then you have this problem of I need to get the user to that value right. I need to walk this user to get to the point where they get the value.
00:15:25
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And what I remember going through it at WD, I'm sure you had it in your time at Cisco was I need to get someone who is not technical to use a technical product. I need to. This product is no longer only for networking professionals. It is in the home of everybody. How do I get, you know, Ma and Pa to get to this?
00:15:46
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Now, some of them are going to go buy services, but for these people, there's a market that is buying themselves and they're trying to figure it out. And I remember you in that you always saw the value in all the performance and everything that was going on in the router. And the software was just a point to get them to that value.
00:16:02
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah. On those WD routers, no one wants quality of service. They don't even know what that really meant. You know, we worked on it. I had a few patents too in this area, but I had to match the technology to the need and people didn't want their streaming service to break up at the time. You know, networking, home networking was still a mess.
00:16:25
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And networking streaming services to the curb, depending on who you ask, people go Netflix like we did a great job, but maybe you got it there. But the congestion on the network meant that you had to do something in the standard, you know answer internal to router quality service isn't doesn't resonate with anybody, they would just mean that if you have a video call it will go through if yeah if you're if you're doing a video call and your spouse is watching a movie and if you have three kids and they're also online class.
00:17:02
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
At the same time, you want it all to just work. And that's really the pursuit of solving the problem. It sounds like, maybe we were before our time, Chris, because it sounds like we could use those routers in the past.
00:17:17
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
The past.
00:17:17
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Years when a lot of us were working from home. But, I'm grateful. A lot of that, a lot of that initial work did move on to other other companies and you can definitely overcome your networking issues but no one wants or no one wants a router!
00:17:39
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
No one wants.
00:17:39
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Quality of service!
00:17:40
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Of what? I have to move it there. Yeah that that same concept right with that Mattel. Right. Like your router engineering. Right. There's what you're saying is there's a tech component now.
00:17:52
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
To to.
00:17:53
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
To toys and to these, these products that are less technical people. Not all kids are less technical. Some of my kids are very technical for their age. I'll say it's my fault, but I'll take it. But it's harder to have empathy for children. But you have empathy as a father. Right. And understanding how kids have to go through this stuff.
00:18:14
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And you're bridging the gap between what is essentially a kid that doesn't have technical knowledge, maybe a parent who also doesn't have technical knowledge. And this product is supposed to be engaging and fun. And it's that, again, it's not like the router, but it's similar in the sense of where you're trying to bridge the gap between them and that empathy.
00:18:34
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Is big.
00:18:35
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But that’s where I’m lucky at Mattel, our founders or were founded in large to some degree. What we see is every day, every day toys were their innovation of their time. It's almost like, you know, back in the days, if you look at what was available for kids to play with, their version was the CGI version.
00:19:02
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Of toys to play with. And so you carried on to Mattel. We have a long history of child testing. I think it started way back in 1945 and they they we we already know what design thinking communities got onto is You may not be able to trust the survey, but with kids, we service you know kids from zero all the way to, you know, the adult collectors and the earliest and youngest of us if you give them a survey, they can't figure it out.
00:19:39
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Right.
00:19:40
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Child testing goes as young as, I think our PlayLab and Fisher-Price and we saw in Europe we got babies in there and you're watching parents react to those things. And so there is a complex thing. There's that there's a child and there is not only the parent's reaction to toys at that age. And so, you know, so if you can't, you can't really survey some of those things, you're going to have to really be observing things.
00:20:10
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It's it's it's it I walked into a company that was quite advanced in this area and our leader Natsha Kirkwood, with if you ever get a chance to see her for a podcast and things that she's involved with this is amazing what Mattel does. And I would say that our focus on the child has helped us redefine who we are and continue.
00:20:43
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You continued to redefine who we are. Yeah. As you know, we have a mutual buddy, Chris and I have a mutual buddy, Dave. Dave Cohen, who is the guy who has kids in college and all that. But I think he can remember his junior high class or class of whenever the field trip was,
00:21:10
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
He told me a few months ago that they'd get on the bus and they'd come over to Mattel. You're in El Segundo and got a child tested. And so.
00:21:21
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Yeah, it's cool. What you mentioned earlier, it seems like that kind of testing and that kind of feedback focus is kind of baked into the DNA of the company for a while. It's like, Hey, we have to make sure that we're getting this feedback. And you spoke to, you know, Mattel being advanced in that kind of field, so to speak, right?
00:21:40
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
You're like, hey, this is day one, you know, you've lived it, breathe it, etc.. What are some of the kind of unique techniques that you guys use at Mattel to capture this feedback? You know that it makes it so unique?
00:21:53
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Well, I don't think there are. What I would say is that we have a wide variety of ways to do testing. Yeah. Actually, at some point we actually use, reach out to Centercode when we knew that certain product complexes were pretty high, if you will. It's just that we do it. I think our attitude is, I’ll quote the tagline for Fisher-Price’s PlayLab.
00:22:16
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
We bring in the real experts, right. And the Imagination Center that we have here in El Segundo is where, you know, children, toy designers and research leaders come together to imagine the future of play. And so, yeah, uh, I think I think we hire uniquely our design to be able to, to, to look and try to project and understand what the future might be.
00:22:46
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But when you go, what's the unique design? I think it's because we know it's so important that we may modify how we do a set of tests by what the product or the product line might be. We got many different brands at Mattel. And so what it takes certainly to maybe test vehicles and Hot Wheels is different than the approach that you had for Barbie.
00:23:17
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
So we're continually evolving.
00:23:21
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Lots and lots of different kinds of product spaces and different ways to test and different audiences test with. I know kids could be very honest as well. They can really deliver feedback when it's like, I didn't necessarily ask for feedback, but you're giving it to me right now. Is it interesting working with an audience like that where the feedback is sometimes a little pointed and very on the nose?
00:23:43
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Is that good or bad?
00:23:45
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It's honest. I've been I've been invited to observe kids, you know, playing with an idea and product that we have. And it's actually very honest. I think when you watch, yeah I 've all been through a cycle we actually watched watched the kids not value something that we thought they would and it's a great great company and that the the people I work with can actually take that and go, okay, you know what?
00:24:32
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
We might need to pivot. We should look at what they are interested in then and move from there so you know I think I think when I'll go you know, when we looked at Hot Wheels ID with Centercode. I think it's one of the most complex products we ever, ever made at Mattel.
00:24:55
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And it had a digital app with six different app experiences, a physical portal. And the bring this up, a physical smart track NFC enabled cars. You know and just I think from three weeks testing you guys helped us recruit a wider right, a wider user base because we needed a huge base. And I think we appreciate the findings that you guys provided because if you look at you know, you know what they like and dislike that was one view.
00:25:33
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But there was an undertone. I don't know whether you guys knew or not. There was an undertone in your data about how much people value certain things. And I think when I look back at the product and ultimately the you know, we always measure things as they come back, consumer feedback, consumer services, people calling events.
00:25:54
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And the important lesson was, you know, again, I think we can, through improvements, change a user's opinion about an experience. But we, we we we weren't able to change how we use or value something if we could change how someone could grasp a certain concept, if you will.
00:26:19
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Another good.
00:26:20
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Night. Got another famous saying was it's for product people, right. You're not the user. Right. So sometimes we find it in a product, we're like, Yeah, I'm totally the user. I was a product manager before stepping into marketing. I'm still a product guy by heart. Again, we can't shake that, but we're always product.
00:26:40
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
We're always product guys.
00:26:41
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah.
00:26:42
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
What's interesting is you think you're not the user. And I have to tell myself you're not the user all the time. I am the beta testing guy. I understand beta testing, dogfooding, playtesting, all these things. I understand it, but I don't I don't actually do those things anymore. I'm not the user anymore, so I'm losing touch.
00:26:57
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So like, I love that tagline that you mentioned. We bring in the real experts, right? So the people that are making these products, they're not the users they're not playing with. I mean, they could be playing with the Barbie, but not the same way that a kid could be doing that. Right. So it's right. It takes smart people to break down those barriers.
00:27:15
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I'm not the user, but I can use some feedback and it's feedback everywhere, right? It's not just you start off with a prototype or an idea. I get feedback on it, right? It's funny, Stefan, as you said, kids are honest. There's a lot of different kids out there. I've done playtest on versions of little robots and of like racetracks as well.
00:27:36
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And there's kids that wouldn't say a word. They would play. They would be so engaged with the product and they were playing. I'm like, That's cool, right? I don't want to like, I'll try to ask some questions. There's kids that ran into frustration and the first thing they do is look up at their parents. We bring in parents to do tests because they're younger, so they look at their parents.
00:27:55
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I don't know how to do this. I need help. And then we see whether or not we get parents involved in the frustrations the parent goes through trying to help this out. And it's like, oh, man, there's so much. And then take that they're in a room confined, break them out into the real world, get them in their houses and watch them.
00:28:10
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, I remember with, with some of your testers some screenshots that we included of people playing, it's like you look at people's houses, right? You get to see them in the living room. People in the kitchen and like what's going on around the house that could be impacting their product experience. So it's so cool hearing great products come from learning from their customers throughout the lifecycle, not just at one point in time saying, Yep, I've got feedback, I'm okay.
00:28:38
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I don't, I'm a product person, I'll figure it out from here. I don't I don't need any more.
00:28:43
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah.
00:28:44
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I think it achieves… I think what's wonderful is, and the reason I like working for Mattel, is that the challenge is constant because the audience, the kids change probably faster than their you could ever match the base I think you know and still you have to strike that balance and in a I'm not design product design there's designers that have a vision they want things to execute.
00:29:16
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And so you got to go, well, you know, we have to work together when it becomes a more technical product. Now ours are mostly low tech and there's some fun things that it's always played with but I'll you know Yeah. And in, in terms of engineering and technology, you uh, the challenge we put in place for that imagination.
00:29:43
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
So why it's, it's unbelievably wide. It's a lot of fun.
00:29:49
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah.
00:29:50
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Something I think, go ahead Chris.
00:29:52
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Go ahead.
00:29:53
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Yeah. So that. That you touched on that I think is interesting. And this is kind of a running thread. I always have. I guess it's kind of like the power of sentiment, right? Like what you said, the kids sitting down and playing with that Hot Wheels racetrack and just being absorbed in it. You know, even if they’re not saying anything,
00:30:12
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
That's an amazing sentiment, right? Like, look at how immersive and enjoyable this is. Or, you know, someone looking up at their parents for guidance because they don't understand how to use it or they're running into an issue. Right. Even that right there is is a sentiment and all I think that also kind of speak to what you're talking about with value.
00:30:30
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
What does the user value, what does the customer value at the heart there feel like that's a really powerful sentiment because you give them everything in the world, like you said, quality service and an amazing router, but it doesn't match that kind of value in that sentiment and they get lost in the weeds a little. I always think they're very interesting.
00:30:48
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, good insights is a mixture, right? Like when we talk, when you talk about sentiment and whatnot, there's what people say, there's what people do. Those are two different things. And you get a, you need a mixture of data to help you make those decisions for your product. So when you get things like I watch someone use this product and you have things like the survey, the thing that they quantitatively, you know, filled out being asked questions, it's it's absolutely essential to make sure that you can actually do good, make good decisions for the product by having a comprehensive view of what people are doing and saying.
00:31:29
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah, I think our experience when you, especially when you have younger kids that are a younger age, that can’t communicate, you can actually get kids that are very kind. They're very kind. It's the opposite. I think we all think they're they're, you know, the younger, younger kids are more sharp and all that, but they're actually too kind and too polite and they might go, you know, Did you enjoy your time here? They say yes.
00:31:54
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yes. But you'll see that they took the toy and they may have done it a couple of times and then they set it aside and they're off playing with something else. And so I think that's that's part of the kind of reality check that you have to have when you get there. We also have that added with electronic features that added balance of if I'm making a dinosaur, am I frightening the kid?
00:32:24
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Right?
00:32:25
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, I brought this.
00:32:27
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I brought this Ender Dragon. This is a Minecraft Ender Dragon. So yeah, you know, I don't know if you can hear it. Let's hear this.
00:32:37
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
We can hear it. Yeah.
00:32:40
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah. This thing. You can see it actually puts us in steam. Oh, no, no, wait a second. Let me make you.
00:32:48
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Oh, there we go.
00:32:50
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah.
00:32:54
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You know, you want to make sure that the age group that gets this can appreciate that thing. You don't want that thing coming out too much. You're frightened. Well, this is Minecraft, so it's a different crowd. But if this was a younger item, we don't want to frighten the kid upon first, the first encounter. And so what might be cool to us, we have to continue to balance the sound level, the features set, the other added challenge is the battery.
00:33:26
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But yeah.
00:33:27
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
I remember as a.
00:33:28
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
It’s a challenge with every product these days.
00:33:30
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah.
00:33:32
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
I remember as a kid, you know, doing that all the time with toys just as the battery actually got to live on this. And now I remember having like a lightsaber as a kid and would take like five D-cell batteries and get me a couple hours out of that. And you were done. Yeah. So yeah, one question I asked I have is, you know, earlier, a little bit earlier, you were talking about like, hey, you know, we want to have testing at the design phase and be able to say
00:33:58
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
We're in the middle of designing it. Let's get someone in that. Yeah, the feedback. That's not always possible. When do you when Mattel or your team determine like, okay this product is actually ready for testing.
00:34:11
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Well like this again, a spread because there are a lot of different groups that do it differently. I know when I talk to designers in the design community here, we have some that tell me, you know, I don't give it to the child testing. I, I said to my peers to look at and so there is there's to some level that that I'll look at understanding that there is there's a condensed amount of learning that's already in folks that have been at Mattel for a long period of time to to some degree Chris said there's you know, I have some some sort of beta thing that goes
00:34:55
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
on and it puts me on to the. Yeah. The thing I think we your kids change, but they never change pattern, if you will, if they're looking to their parents as soon they get like I don't know what to make of this, you know you're you're kind of in trouble. Yeah right. It's not always true. I think when you go with products like our games, you do want them to look at instructions.
00:35:22
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It should not be so easy to accomplish things. So it really it really is that part where I, of course, were a design company. I think it's pretty public how we might test early concepts and prototypes now but it is really looking towards the direction of what is needed to accomplish our goal in a certain product.
00:35:50
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Now I'm particularly moved by Barbie if this occurred before I got here, but if you look at the design they're thinking articles they've had and I've met the people here, they changed Barbie from what Barbie stood you know ten years ago to what you know focusing on the dream gap. You can be anything. I was just at my local Walmart took pictures of that now the Barbie Barbie set there and you've got Barbie being a veterinarian and you know there's a I think there's an astronaut.
00:36:34
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But these are the things that I want for my daughter. And we want for our kids actually, for that matter. Why why can't why can't you think of your career as you as you play. Yeah. If you will fill that. Yeah. Pretty heavy stuff. For me I think when I was that age I'm like, Ender Dragon!
00:36:57
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
But I also want to be a dragon.
00:37:03
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Maybe one day we'll have Ender Dragon Coder, so it'll be kind of more inspiration dragons out there. But I think that it's quite interesting because it's feedback, but it's not necessarily in a lab setting, right? It's kind of societal feedback, you know, saying like the way society is changing, right. Is going to dictate the way the product is being developed or the kind of the messages that we want to send.
00:37:24
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
So I think that's also another kind of interesting area of feedback. And you get feedback and it's not going in the way that you ever expected or intended.
00:37:33
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Like, well, if you if you leave it up to, you know, I guess what I say, like I'll in consumer electronics we all we Chris and I remember we had to go to a you know a group that approved products and stuff like that because they're well-intentioned but when you look at trends, those might go right by very quickly and you'll miss it in consumer versus, you know, knowing that you need to listen to actually that and really reach out for the the things that society… but get it through the testing there you'll you'll see it with for example, the parents, what they may want their kids playing with.
00:38:21
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It may be different from what you want to make for them, if you will. And now it's sobering for me to look at Chris and see he has three kids.
00:38:32
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Because I remember when he didn’t right? he's yeah yeah.
00:38:38
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
He is there's a, uh, in so young as a young I help hope actually coach my, my son's basketball team and going, oh how quickly that changed. So his view of parenting and whole that's very different than than would be my it would be different than the next set of parents. Uh, younger than all of us, if you will.
00:39:02
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And their views of the world is know, quite frankly, drastically different. Yeah. Ever, ever changing.
00:39:18
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Oh, you said that, like, designers would take products to their team, right? Go get the tribal wisdom. I love that at when we were at WD, we would do internal beta testing. We would do what we call them alpha tests that some companies call them dogfooding or internal beta test. And I always remember that was kind of like the first step.
00:39:42
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
You go find the tribal wisdom. There's engineers that have been there, that have so much knowledge. There's marketing people that have knowledge. I still remember to this day, sitting in Rusty's office, you remember Rusty Howard, sitting in his office with a pen and paper, and I took down his feedback and I was a beta test coordinator at that point.
00:40:00
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
So I'd sit there and take all this feedback and I'd go through. He had such a good eye for that. And then you weigh that with things like customer feedback and say, okay, where are we sitting with all this? We just don't take his one thing. It's all right, we've got to go fix that now. But that internal internal testing, internal feedback is so important.
00:40:18
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Those are the people that are going to support the product. They're going to promote the product, sell the product, market. They're the ones that are taking that product outwards. So their feedback is just as crucial as the customers and users.
00:40:31
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah, I think, I think there is certainly at the companies that we've worked for crossed over, Chris, the folks were great at, at that leadership level. They were great at actually not doing the IT for me product. They were more of it seems to, it seems to the broader set of people, this would be a challenge, if you will and Rusty was great at that.
00:41:00
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Very blunt too.
00:41:01
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
But yeah.
00:41:06
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Actually. But like we said, sometimes kids can be pretty blunt.
00:41:12
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
See those.
00:41:12
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Kids grow up too, and they.
00:41:17
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Keep that kind of mindset with them throughout their entire lives, which are pretty good actually.
00:41:21
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
That's why you need diversity, right? You need to get them. That's when you said that when we worked with Mattel on ID, it was about getting a larger audience. It was about bringing in more people. Because you do a play test, it's typically, you know, smaller groups or you do usability tests, smaller groups, and then you start getting into the people's homes and you change like environments that they're in.
00:41:44
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And like when we do mobile app testing, or for example, we did my MyPassport Wireless, there was.
00:41:50
A long list of different types of people. The photographers stay at home, people that were just trying to get their home videos on it on the drive. And there's like you have to have that mixture of those market segments, those personas to be able to diversify the data that you have.
00:42:10
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I mean you mentioned there in consumer electronics the ability to do enough testing that you could create or someone's. Hmm. If you know, the world's very, very, very, very diverse. But typically you're going to look at four or five personas that show up in each persona that you, you know, pulled together.
00:42:38
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
They value things differently. And it may come down to who has all that data. I think we had some success, Chris, in really helping the business side decide who they're going to market to, because you could pour as much money as you want into, I think what they call the tech negatives or what I don't know what the term was.
00:43:35
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It's hard because we want to have people, everybody, to like our stuff. But again, I think Chris brings up a good point. If you have a very active Alpha beta program. We had a very, very clear, clear purpose for what we did with those things. I think even some of the user groups we had, we had people that showed up all the time.
00:44:04
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
They weren't really, again, kinda funny, they weren't really sometimes who they said they were because we had Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
00:44:14
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
All right, okay. But this is not The Rock. I mean, it's you've got Dwayne Johnson.
00:44:20
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You're like.
00:44:22
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, but.
00:44:24
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But, you know, did did the person, whoever he and she was provide good didn't feel so yeah.
00:44:33
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
I'm sure The Rock would come out if you had any negative feedback to share with you know, The Rock as a character right. Yeah
00:44:40
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Put Chris in front of him.
00:44:43
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I have.
00:44:43
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
A feeling I wouldn't stand a chance.
00:44:46
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
They he, he would have really.
00:44:49
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Laid the smackdown on me.
00:44:51
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
If that's what I was going for it. There you go. Yeah, but yeah, it's interesting to talk about that. It always seems to come back to value. It's always about, you know, what does the user value? Are you going to be able to capture that? You mentioned tech negative, which I assume would be almost kind of like lowest common denominator versus least likely to use a platform where this is a product, etc..
00:45:14
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Like, are we able to capture that market? What they value, etc.. So it's kind of interesting seeing how all of this kind of mixes together and what kind of audiences that you heard it was trying to capture.
00:45:25
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Is an interesting connection. I remember this is we did a market segmentation study and we were working on products, networking products and solutions for storage. And it's not a… it’s pretty technical product, right? And a big market out there was people that were not technical. And we did all these studies and market research saying there's an audience out there that has a need, right?
00:45:47
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
They have a need to store content. And it was then the job of product and engineering and quality and everybody to to build that product. Now the problem was they had that need, but it may not have been the right solution because that market they were going after was tech negative. They just didn't know how to get through that stuff.
00:46:09
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And how do you develop a product that is both for technical people and for not-technical people without hurting someone's feelings, right? Like you dumb it down so much. The technical person is like, Nah, I can't control this. I have no flexibility, no customization. I don't like it. I remember actually, Paul is one of the people that pointed out and say, Look, we can have these experiences tailored to the tech person, but this non-tech person needs something very simple.
00:46:36
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
They need to get to value very quickly. They don't have 30 minutes to an hour to set up this product. They don't because they're not, they're not going to even be able to accomplish their goal.
00:46:47
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Right. There's a there's a… And so you see yeah, I mean, there's two decisions you can make there. You can make two different products that are targeted to two different segments. Or you can go, I'm going to invest in one and then move away to the other. I'm certainly in the router world. It was about making it easier and of value for us.
00:47:12
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But, you know, I'm also the same guy at Cisco that I remember. There was a consumer router, the E4200 and I was in charge of the technical one and you can't fall below a certain believability for people. They go, Man, I want this. Just look at the name, E4200. It sounds like a it sounds like one of our Hot Wheels.
00:47:36
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You know, it's like it.
00:47:37
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Sounds like a car. So, you know, if people want that, you can't, you have to keep that one to some level. Everybody appreciates simplification, by the way. I would say, you know, you don't leave things really messy. Doesn't look like Linux box to some degree, although some people Linux.
00:47:59
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
All right. Chris knows there's a there's the other end.
00:48:02
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Of tech negative which is maybe tech fringe, you know, there's there's everybody can can appreciate simplicity and being able to find their stuff so that that's important being better at usability on all scales is is helpful but certainly you know when I was at Linksys and Cisco, they did decide to make two different groups of products make sense, right?
00:48:30
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
You can market something specifically to somebody. And I, I don't know if you remember this. Are you guys for some of the routers we would look at a dark interface. For a light interface, right? One communicated technical and one communicated easy. Right. We look at the very bland white background. I said, oh, this is going to make it look easier.
00:48:53
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
But the darker gray black background was like, oh, this there's some tech to it. Now we have like light and dark modes and a lot of tech people who sit in front of computers like putting on dark mode. I put it on everything because my eyes hurt from staring at the screen for that long. My wife does not like dark mode.
00:49:10
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
She likes seeing light so she sees stuff simpler, but she's not in front of it all day. So she does. She doesn't like problems. So yes that's a good approach is to really understand your market, Stefan and Paul you're saying what's valuable to them and how do we get them to that value. It's big and in product creation and building those products.
00:49:33
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It’s definitely. So that takes me back to my roots. Stefan and Chris. I'm a color image processing digital signal processing guy at NC State. That's where I got my master's degree. I worked for a professor, Dr. Trussell.
00:49:55
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And I think the.
00:49:56
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Result is even though I'm always in, I'm an engineer the insertion of how how now even the effects of color I'm also an audio guy sound that the total experience here really shaped things. And then even in the trend of color like fashion changes quite a bit. We were for Barbie, so the movie's coming out. Everybody should be wearing pink shortly.
00:50:26
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But I think the color scheme of light and dark changes things. But if you look at it's a funny thing about kids and the effect discord, for example, this is a higher age grade than we typically engage with at Mattel. But I know in my personal life watching my kids are like, Oh, everybody needs a server.
00:50:53
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
When did everybody need a server? Number two is like, oh, they're in dark mode. That's cool, right? So it's interesting how much time people spend on the screen. You might see books that are completely non technical, all using a darker color scheme because they get adopted to it. It changes. Yeah.
00:51:16
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
So how do people react to color whites and sounds even the purple out of our dragon.
00:51:25
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
You know, it was
00:51:27
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Very very well thought out. You know we work with Microsoft.
00:51:32
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
On that.
00:51:34
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
App.
00:51:35
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
I would say that's very close to the actual purple it's in the game so. You guys did an excellent job right there. So yeah, it's interesting to see how all of it evolves between these different audiences. Right. Like Chris, you were mentioning, like the original idea might be, you know, light mode is more friendly and kind of easy and dark mode is more technical and, you know, serious.
00:51:57
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
So but then over it evolves into like dark mode is cool because it kind of has this sentiment around it. Yeah, this is what the serious power user thing is and it spirals from there. So I think one of the themes we've had here is that there's so many different audiences, so many different sentiments and ways of communicating.
00:52:17
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
And Paul, I ask you like, what are some of the tips that you have for making sure that you connect with each of those audiences in a way that is meaningful to them and also gets the kind of feedback that is going to improve the product.
00:52:32
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Now, I'm gonna share with you what Richard Dix actually shared with a group of us here that holds true for me is, well, I get out there into the community. I work for Mattel, it's a toy company. I try to volunteer for different causes. My kids are into certain activities. So I try to keep a pulse with the audience.
00:53:05
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
I'm clearly older than much of them
00:53:07
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
If you will.
00:53:08
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
But I do , though on the ride. I'm involved with the scouting. I do know one to ride, one that we went to be. It's he's a right he was he was 17 or and so he's about to make their job he he he'd been my year for the five hour drive to summer camp about you know Hot Wheels Unleashed and you know it's it's amazing how it doesn't matter what age you are the the wonderment of childhood is amazing.
00:53:40
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And now you know, I try to keep as close to that as possible. I teach kung fu and wushu on the weekends and and so if you're again Chris said it best it helps remind you that you're not the customer but also helps to go, oh, you know yeah that there's going to be there's they're going to the the people you make your approach we're going to see it differently.
00:54:11
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Just touch it, feel it in terms of user needs, if you will, and try to get that perspective the best you can. Yeah.
00:54:28
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Good answer. Coming up on time here. Lots of amazing sentiments shared. I think that's probably the theme of this podcast has been sentiment and value and different audiences. Last question that I wanted to ask you, Paul, is I mean, you have shared a lot of passion about everything you know, from toys you’re developing at Mattel, to Surface, and what you did to WD. and Cisco and Linksys and all that stuff.
00:54:59
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
So my last question for you is, you know, what are you passionate about in beta testing? What you do now, What gets you up every morning to say, yeah, I want to keep going.
00:55:09
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Oh, you know, I think the thing is redefining what beta testing even is, I mean I think I think if you look at what it meant when Chris and I were there at Western Digital, how much we transformed that, it's different. I think, you know, if you look at technology and what I’m really, really passionate about it has been AI and Machine Learning and all these things but not not from the simplistic view of you know, take 10,000 samples and shrink them a little kind of thing.
00:55:48
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
It is the opportunity to see how that technology, and if you I'm a ML guy from the 90s.
00:56:04
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Now.
00:56:04
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Was part of my undergraduate research and all that and when I say if you look at the way that that process works then your own what's the thing that that to some degree is what we need to learn to train yourselves on if that makes any sense. Where there is the real digital model technology side in that there is the human factor side that we can understand.
00:56:35
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
And so I think when you look at the look at what we're talking about here, there is to some degree the constant training of ourselves looking at the dataset, looking at the videos, observing people that we understand what we think we understand the reward system. Right. Maybe I think bringing it back is that we fail, that we should get the negative feedback early.
00:57:11
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, better than later!
00:57:15
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Versus, I think well traditionally I like oh I succeeded that you know we get companies to sell us on how we're able to do this but I'm more interested in what you can't do. What you can not do?
00:57:30
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
You see that.
00:57:32
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
And you need that feedback to identify what you can't do a lot of the time to understand, this is what I'm doing that they might people might want to do. That's what's important. That hypothesis mindset is kind of what stood out to me as this whole theme is like, treat everything you're doing like it's a hypothesis, not the law.
00:57:55
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Treat it as you need to test it. You need to understand whether or not it's valid that it has substance in it before you actually make it concrete. In a true thing, like a law would. And it happens. You gotta do it throughout the development lifecycle from design concepts to whether or not you're going to your teammates saying, Hey, check this out.
00:58:17
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
I don't want to I don't want to develop in a silo designed in a silo too, all the way to you. And you get into the electronics component and putting it all together. And how is this going to actually work outside of being a concept. So that hypothesis mindset is calling it that.
00:58:33
Chris Rader, VP of Marketing, Centercode
Yeah, Scientific Method. I like it a lot. We'll go with that. Yeah.
00:58:39
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
But yeah, it could catch on that ability to. Yeah, maybe sooner rather than later I hope. But yeah, I think that ability to listen is incredibly valuable. Something I’m always trying to do is always be listening. You never know when that good feedback is going to come in and change course but Paul, amazing having you on today.
00:58:59
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Thank you for sharing all the stories and those sentiments and everything. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you.
00:59:06
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Oh, no, thank you guys. This has been wonderful. It's great to get to chat about oh, I guess this wide meetings.
00:59:17
Paul Chen, Senior Director of E-Design, Mattel
Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Hopefully this place is useful for you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
00:59:24
Stefan Stenroos, Technical Trainer, Centercode
Thank you for listening to the Delta Huddle podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, leave us a like or a five star rating. You can also find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and anywhere else you get your podcasts. We'll see you in the next episode and happy testing.
