Advocacy Through Prototypes
Princeton JuST
NICK PUNT
2021/01/20
About me
I’m a product creator interested in elevating the human condition.
I’ve spent several years at the intersection of tech and social good, in education and mental health.
I’ve also worked in a variety of media (news, social media, video games) and am interested in how mediums shape our thoughts & actions.
nickpunt.com - nickpunt@gmail.com - @nickpunt
EDUCATION
Stanford MBA, MA Education
UC Irvine BA Psychology
Overview
What to expect and what to focus on when doing advocacy through prototypes
Your goal is to influence & advance the conversation around a particular problem.
It’s not to launch a real product. (though that may be nice)
It’s not to find the perfect solution. (though that helps)
It’s not to win a debate. (though that may happen)
Your audience is anyone with the influence to bring products to life.
They’re PMs, Engineers, and Designers at companies in the space.
They know how decisions get made and things get built.
You want to show what is possible, and why it’s worth pursuing.
The more compelling the story you tell, the more likely it influences your audience.
The problem should resonate.
Your insight and solution must be plausible. (the more the better)
Your analysis must overcome their doubts. (they have many)
Your audience should walk away with an awareness of broader possibilities.
You want to push the boundaries of their thinking.
Ideally you plant a seed in their minds that they keep returning to.
You want to get them to interpret the problem themselves.
(it helps if you can get them to think the idea is theirs)
Twitter Mea Culpa
Where to Start
Some tips on approaching problems
Consider Underappreciated Problem Areas
Within any big problem there are tons of small facets that people aren’t very aware of. Your goal is to raise awareness, so try picking one of those.
Consider things that:
SUBJECTS
Health & wellness
Politics
Current events
Etc
EFFECTS
Poor/dangerous decisions
Loss of resources
Incorrect beliefs
Loss of connection to reality
Rewards extreme content
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVERS
Addiction to news & gossip
Inattentiveness
Overconfidence
Lack of understanding
Automaticity of reading
Ex: Misinformation
HOW IT MANIFESTS
Clickbait headlines�Ease of sharing
Virality before verification
Lost nuances
Misleading images
Bad sources
Lack of corrections
Trending topics
Matters of opinion vs fact
Echo chambers
Desire for validation
Confirmation of beliefs
Hustle & grift
Desire to help
Chase Hunches
Read & learn until you develop a hunch.
Chase the hunch through design until you reach a stopping point.
Then return to reading about the problem. Repeat.
Chasing a hunch is about relying on your own problem solving skills to motivate you.
It’s often helpful to incorporate constraints progressively like this vs. all at once.
You want to avoid analysis paralysis and getting disheartened by complexity.
OBSERVATION
‘Why can’t people admit mistakes and avoid all this nonsense?’
HUNCH
‘What if we could admit mistakes?’ → Mea Culpa flag with follow-ups
RESEARCH & CONSIDERATION
Cultural and psychological difficulties in apologies and mistakes, history of poorly written copy in social media dialogs & tags, user emotional state
UPDATE
Remove follow-ups design, tweak copy “@user has indicated they made a mistake in this tweet”
ETC...
Ex: Mea Culpa
Start with the obvious
Early on try to just solve a problem in an obvious or literal way.
Use these solutions as dummies to beat up and guide deeper questions.
Your goal is to have answers for all relevant second- and third-order effects.
In the process you may need to update your obvious solution.
On the other hand, you may also find obvious solutions are easier for users to understand, despite their imperfections.
PROBLEM
Users share a story from a sketchy source.
OBVIOUS SOLUTION
Include ‘this is a sketchy source’ tag.
QUESTION
How is this tag added?
OBVIOUS SOLUTION
Other users flag it.
QUESTION
How is sketchiness determined?
LESS OBVIOUS SOLUTION
The sum of user tags on a domain creates a ‘sketch score’. At some threshold a tag is added.
Ex: Sketchy source
Start with the obvious
Early on try to just solve a problem in an obvious or literal way.
Use these solutions as dummies to beat up and guide deeper questions.
Your goal is to have answers for all relevant second- and third-order effects.
In the process you may need to update your obvious solution.
On the other hand, you may also find obvious solutions are easier for users to understand, despite their imperfections.
QUESTION
What if users brigade a particular domain to try to take it down?
CORRECTIVE SOLUTIONS
FOLLOW-ON QUESTION
Who is intervening? How do they decide?
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
Ex: Sketchy source II
Clear Next Step
One way to influence is to show a clear next step, something that could be implemented tomorrow.
HOW TO
Make your case in the form of an experiment that can be run, ideally as a product requirements doc.
Be clear about metrics, what success looks like, and abuse potential.
Your case should be relatively airtight.
Another way to influence is to present a pot of gold that highlights a destination worth pursuing.
HOW TO
Make your case in the form of “we get X if we can just overcome Y.”
Pick a single problem to leap over, and be clear what overcoming it means.
Show how getting to the destination creates new possibilities to resolve some long-standing issues, and include a few solutions to demonstrate that.
Pot of Gold
vs.
Don’t limit your story to just UI
UI is just the tip of the iceberg of a product. Most ideas require changes under the hood, so consider how you might change APIs, algorithms, and business processes.
If the plausibility of your idea relies on assumptions of how users will use it and important second-order effects (e.g. it’s not just a straightforward UI), you’ll probably want to model those. Consider prototyping interactive widgets with sliders to adjust the key variables. Remember, your goal is show something plausible.
Q&A
NICK PUNT