Product thinking lessons from Reykjavik

In my last post for the year, I wanted to share a lighthearted, experimental one! Part travel blog, part product blog, here are my product lessons learnt from cafes and bus rides during a weekend getaway this December in Reykjavik, Iceland. It goes to show that “product” is a mindset, not a role or title, and you can apply the Radical Product Thinking tools of vision, strategy, and priorities anywhere!

The value of a vision?

We planned this weekend in Reykjavik as a mom and daughter trip, something we had never done before and wanted it to be a bonding experience before she goes off to college next summer. While most people visit Iceland to enjoy the natural beauty, hike over glaciers, and dip in hot springs, we envisioned a different trip: a weekend of bonding through café-hopping while experiencing cozy and wintery settings and getting a feel for the city.

Being aligned on this vision meant we could agree on priorities. We didn’t plan excursions into nature and we didn’t need to rent a car which would only have gotten in the way if our plan was to comb the city center on foot. So we took the bus from the airport to the city (a 45 minute ride) which seemed very convenient, but stay tuned for our nail-biting adventure on our return!

Cozy cafés: A strategy grounded in Real pain points

If you’re visiting Iceland in December, daylight lasts for only a precious few hours – only from 10:50 am to 3:45 pm when we were there. But while the darkness could have felt gloomy, it didn’t! We realized that in terms of a product experience, every café and restaurant in Reykjavik seemed to acknowledge that darkness could be a problem and as a solution, had designed a cozy and warm ambiance within. My daughter pointed out that there was a complete absence of tube lights or white lights – it was almost always warm lighting over tables, fairy lights, or candles.

In the RPT way, a RDCL Strategy is a comprehensive product strategy. The RDCL mnemonic is grounded in the user’s Real pain points (a deep understanding of how the customer is thinking, their mindset, and their problem). Once you have a clear definition of Real pain points, you can think of the Design, i.e. solutions to those pain points. And to deliver the Design, your strategy should identify Capabilities (IP or partnerships that power your solution) and Logistics (pricing strategy, sales channels, and support plan to deliver your solution).?

The Design in cafés reflected an understanding of the Real pain point of how overcast weather and short daylight hours might affect people’s moods. Instead of seeing lighting as purely functional to fight darkness, the Design used warm lighting to create a cozy ambiance and address the Real pain point. A strategy grounded in the customer’s needs led to a better product experience. And it led to us being well-caffeinated after finding every cute coffee shop and even making friends by being repeat customers at our favorites.?

After a weekend of café hopping, alas it was time to head back.?

How siloed thinking in product design kills a product experience

Our return trip provided an interesting example of what happens when the focus is on delivering features instead of a comprehensive product strategy.?

I had booked the 13:00 bus to take us from the bus terminal to the airport and after enjoying our last coffee, we set out towards the bus terminal, a convenient 16 minute walk. We even arrived at the terminal with a little over 10 minutes to spare, but suspiciously, our bus was nowhere to be seen. I asked the nearest bus driver of a different bus company where our bus might be and he informed us that we were at the wrong bus terminal – apparently there were two in the small city of Reykjavik! “And you see that guy on the phone? He also made the same mistake,” he added, pointing to a guy looking desperately lost.?

With 7 minutes to spare, my daughter and I along with the other lost traveler ran over to the front desk at the terminal asking what we could do to catch our bus. They gave us the address of the other terminal and said to run outside and catch a taxi there. “You can still make it, it takes 5 minutes to get there.” Despite our looks of desperation and stress, they looked like ER doctors calmly giving instructions – they had clearly seen this before!

We ran outside and fortunately there was a taxi pulling in. We anxiously waited for the passenger in the taxi to finish paying while the clock kept ticking… 6 minutes… We dashed into the taxi and asked the driver to rush to the other terminal. He asked us questions like whether this was near the Bus Hostel, and didn’t seem rushed. 5 minutes left… We begged him to start driving…?

We were almost at the other terminal when the taxi driver pointed to a large bus driving away in the other direction and asked, “Is that your bus?” Yes, it was! We desperately tried to get the driver’s attention by stopping in the middle of the road and waving madly. He noticed us – I imagine it was hard to ignore our craziness in the quiet surroundings! He said he would wait for us at the gas station around the corner. Phew! The taxi turned around and followed the bus like a car chase scene in a movie. And we finally breathed a sigh of relief after we sat down in the bus and were on our way.?

If I were looking for thrills on this trip, I would have perhaps scheduled an excursion to a volcano and asked if they offer bungee jumping into the crater. But you see, I wasn’t seeking thrills (hence the relaxing visits to cozy cafés).?

By not thinking through the user journey, the bus company had given me thrills I didn’t seek! The company had focused on the user’s pain point of needing a service that’s reliably on time. But a bus departing on time is only useful if you can catch it! And catching the bus seems to be a common problem for travelers because the two terminals in the city have remarkably similar names (Bus Terminal Reykjavik and Reykjavik Terminal)!?

If they had considered the complete user journey (pun intended) that included getting to the right terminal, they could have delivered a less stressful user experience through short or long-term solutions. In the short-term, tickets could have displayed the pick-up address in big, urgent letters, and the confusing name of the terminal in a tiny, barely-noticeable font. But in the long-term, they could work with the city to rename the terminals A and B so that even the naming instantly tells users, “There are two terminals. Beware!”?

There’s an important product lesson from this experience. Very often in our companies, we focus on delivering a feature or point solution – the bus company in Reykjavik focused on the feature “on-time bus ride to the airport”. Instead, if you start with a comprehensive strategy that identifies the persona and all their pain points before you jump to features and solutions, it helps you deliver the intended user experience (not just a feature).

Product is a way of thinking. Whether we’re traveling or working, and irrespective of the title or role we hold, we can craft experiences by applying a product mindset. Strategic planning season is a perfect time to apply Radical Product Thinking so you can revisit your vision, create a comprehensive strategy, translate these into priorities, and a hypothesis-driven approach to execution (instead of OKRs).

In the meanwhile, as the year draws to a close, I wish you happy user journeys, joyous product lessons, and a wonderful holiday season!?

Radhika Dutt

Product leader and entrepreneur in the Boston area. Author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter, participated in 5 exits, 2 of which were companies I founded.