Creating an internal podcast to share field insights and drive product impact

March 2024 – Now

🔍 Background

I joined a new product team working on operational technology (OT) in mid-2023, which taps into work and tasks in the industrial environment, requiring the product team to have contextual knowledge to build products. One key pain point I noticed from the inbound product team is the lack of contextual understanding of users, use cases, and workflows, while more customer-facing roles, such as outbound product managers and sales teams often travel to customers.

I saw this as an opportunity for the team, so I initiated a series of customer visit podcasts, inviting team members who recently visited customers to share their learnings and discuss implications for our products with the cross-functional teams.

To date, we have hosted 7 podcast sessions, covering 15 customer stories, with an average of 30+ listeners.

🗻 Process

I first proposed the ideas to a mix of outbound product managers, inbound product managers, and designers to gauge their interests, which got them excited. I then used the first two sessions as pilots. After iteration, the current format contains three main parts:

  • Customer background and fun stories from the travel. e.g., we have product managers showing us a giant van they drove that fit 9 of them in.
  • Top learnings and any call to action for the team.
  • Additional photos to visually immerse the listeners in the industrial environment.

I drew a lot of inspiration from Lenny’s podcast.

An example slide, explaining the gamification in an Amazon warehouse to our listeners

🔭 Impact

  • We got an average of over 30 listeners from cross-functional teams each episode, attracting not only team members from the immediate team but also 4 other adjacent teams.
  • The podcast scored 4.25/5 for usefulness and impact in an end-of-year feedback form I shared with the team.
  • I was so happy to be told by the engineers I worked with how much they love these contextual learnings and the podcast format.

✍️ Lessons Learned

  • Think outside of the box can be risky, but also rewarding. When I initially proposed this idea to some team members, I got some doubts and concerns as this was not a typical researcher’s role, but I tested it, iterated on it, and proved it to be so valuable for the team.
  • Identify your unique strengths and use them to solve the pain points of your team. I have a media arts background, which made me naturally interested in creative storytelling. This initiative came to life due to my deep conviction in the impact of creative storytelling and a close understanding of pain points my team is suffering – the gap in contextual understanding of end users.