NOEL: Hello and welcome to Episode 62 of the Tech Done Right podcast, Table XI's podcast about building better software, careers, companies, and communities. I'm Noel Rappin. 

In this episode, we have a slightly different topic for Tech Done Right - food. Table XI has been working to adapt our design sprint process out of the realm of custom software and into more general product design. In particular, we've worked with Tyson Foods Innovation Lab on a few different projects including the creation of their Yappah brand which is designed to prevent food waste. In this episode, you'll hear from Chemia Davis and Santi Proano from Tyson, Rex Chekal from Table XI and Jessie Shternshus from the Improv Effect and we'll show you how we adapted design thinking and Agile process from software to food products.

Before we start the show, one quick message. Table XI offers training for your developer and product teams. If you want me to come to your place of business and run an interactive hands-on workshop, I would very much like to do that. We can help you development your team learn topics like testing or Rails on JavaScript or managing Legacy code, or we can help your entire product team improve their Agile process. Also, if you're in the Chicago area, be on the lookout for our new public workshops including our How To Buy Custom Software workshop currently scheduled for June 5th and hopefully with more to come. For more information, email us at workshops@TableXI.com or find us on the web at TableXI.com/workshops. And now, here's the show.

This time on the show, I have a large group with me. So, I'll try to introduce them all one at a time. First from Table XI, I have Rex Chekal. Rex, would you like to explain what you do?

REX: Hi, yes. I'm a Creative Director at Table XI and also a Product Designer. I've been here a little over four years and I have been working on a lot of our integrated projects, as well as our internal initiatives and branding and marketing.

NOEL: I have Jessie Shternshus who has been on the show before. Jessie, would like to remind people what you do?

JESSIE: Sure. I am the owner of the Improv Effect. I do professional development training for people and companies worldwide, working with them on communication skills, creative problem solving, and team cohesiveness. And I've gotten a chance to work with Table XI, as well as Tyson.

NOEL: Our last two guests are from Tyson. I have Chemia Davis, what do you do?

CHEMIA: Hi. I am a member of the Tyson Innovation Lab. I'm the Innovation Methods Conductor.

NOEL: And I have Santi Proano. Santi, what do you do there?

SANTI: Hi. My name is Santi Proano. I'm also on the Tyson Innovation Lab and I am a Brand Dreamer, focused on our Yappah brand.

NOEL: What we're going to talk about here is how Table XI and the Tyson -- so, for everybody that's not clear about this, this is Tyson as in Tyson Foods and we're going to talk about how Table XI and Tyson worked together on product and design innovations. So, can you just tell me first of all what kind of the scope of the work that the groups have been doing together is or was?

REX: I believe and this is because I came in a little bit later into the process but originally, we had a relationship with the head of the Innovation Lab when he worked at a previous client... worked for a previous company. And we came in really to help facilitate what the design process was, how to work in Agile and to help train the team and connect them with other people to work our communication and team building. I think that's how you came in, Jessie, right? Was that through Mark or did you know Rizal from before?

JESSIE: No, that's actually how I got introduced into the mix. Mark decided to bring me in when he kind of heard some of the needs. He thought that it would be something that would kind of be right up my alley in terms of the team cohesiveness and storytelling and communication skills. So, that's how I got brought in right towards the beginning of putting together the Innovation Lab at Tyson.

NOEL: So, Chemia and Santi, what is the Innovation Lab trying to do and what sort of things were you trying to design with Rex's and Jessie's help?

CHEMIA: The Innovation Lab was actually started in October of 2017, and it was started with team members that were already existing employees of Tyson Foods. Initially, we just wanted to really look at a different way of thinking about innovation and start bringing in some of those design thinking and agile techniques. So, that was the overall goal. And like Rex said, that's when we brought in the Table XI team and then started to work with Jessie. So that was kind of the overall space. Santi, you can talk a little bit to what our first project was about.

SANTI: Yeah. I think in big CPG, this idea of using design thinking and a design sprint was really new. And the reason, I think, the whole team was open to exploring this new path forward for innovation was because we were tasked with going from an idea to a test launch in six months which is really, really, really fast. In CPG, it's typically, for a true innovation in CPG, it usually takes 18 to 24 months. CPG meaning Consumer Packaged Goods.

NOEL: So, you were tasked with trying to create a new consumer packaged good in six months and did you have a specific kind of consumer good that you were trying to create? Or was that also part of what you were trying to discover?

SANTI: We presented various spaces to our leadership team and the one that got selected was the space of create a consumer packaged good that's delicious, that helps fight food waste.

NOEL: So you were trying to come up with something to use what might otherwise be wasted food from Tyson's processing?

SANTI: From Tyson partners. We worked with a lot of suppliers and partners. So just across our supply chain. So that was what we were tasked with doing and creating the idea and launching it within six months.

NOEL: And Rex and Jessie, is that where you came in?

JESSIE: Yes. I know I came in kind of at the very beginning. I remember us drawing on a whiteboard basically from farm all the way to consumer where all the areas of food waste happen and kind of thinking through where are all those pain points were and all those problems were, and doing design thinking and ideation around how might we solve for that. And then coming up with different potential ideas or problems and things like that. And that was, I think, October 2017, it was right in the very beginning.

NOEL: So when you talk about bringing design thinking to this kind of product development, what does that look like? What are you actually doing and how is that different from the way this would have been done otherwise?

CHEMIA: Normally with our process, it's very linear. And also, we hand off from one cross-functional team to the next. So you'll have a few people that help come up with that idea, then you have a different team that will execute it, a different team that researches it. So there is a lot of handoffs with the design thinking approach, we really wanted to work all as a team from the very beginning. So, the Innovation Lab is built with a cross-functional group that all works together from creating the product, researching it all the way through to the execution. So, we really wanted to not just do things faster but the same. We wanted to be able to also do it differently than we had been operating before.

SANTI: And then I would say from the marketing side, typically the way that innovations are handled, as Chemia said there's a smaller group that comes up with some ideas, those ideas really exist as paper ideas for a long time. Paper ideas that are concepts that get shown to consumers. And usually, there's testing done to gauge consumer interest or appeal and then propensity to buy that concept. And based on the results of those paper concepts, decisions are made to invest and then actually scale up from the get-go, promising concepts. So what's different here is instead of paper concepts actually doing some very rapid initial prototyping is something that we adopted, we took that to consumers on one-on-one ethnographies as opposed to a large sample size done electronically, and then we iterated based on that feedback to get to a minimum viable product. So, quite a bit different process than is typically done.

NOEL: I'm really curious as to what that process looks like. I'm familiar with what that process looks like in software, and I'm really curious about how it translates to creating consumer food products. Where did you start? What was the first thing that you all did in your first design sprint or whatever that first intervention was?

REX: When Table XI came in, our theory, our working theory was that the design principles or the principles of the Google design sprint process that we typically have been using in software -- and we have been doing training dinners, hosting events, and teaching people a lightweight way to do this -- we thought we could apply that to the process at Tyson, that the same values of building and designing from a user-centred perspective prototyping and testing and shooting for that MVP could work in product. And so this first sprint was really modeled off of what we had been doing with our clients for the past couple of years with design sprints. What I really loved about the initial engagement with Tyson that first time was we had a lot of people that hadn't done anything like this. And I think what the Google design sprint process or the sprint process had done was make these things approachable to people that hadn't had experience in that because we were working with this very diverse cross-functional team and teaching them that they could be a part of the design process. I think often when we work with clients, one of the first hurdles we go through is that they often first say that they're not a designer and they don't really have anything to contribute or they can't draw or they're not unsure of where they fit in this process. And I think the sprint process gives you this framework and rules that are easy to understand, and so you know where you fit in and how you can contribute. And I think that removes a lot of the pressure and the stress that can be associated with being creative because it is so directed. And so, when Table XI came in for that first sprint, we came in as facilitators to really help the team rise to their potential and to make that safe space for them to ideate and to fail fast and a lot of the principles of Agile.

NOEL: So what do the design steps look like in that case? You're not sketching interfaces. Are you sketching ideas for products? Are you sketching labels? Are brainstorming names? What kinds of things are you doing in that initial process?

REX: We follow that similar process of a five-day sprint where day one is sort of understand the product or the problem space, the area, the users. Day two is the diverge and that's the ideation day. And we use Crazy 8's to really kick off that process and that is where you fold a piece of paper up into eight squares and you set a time and you sketch anything that comes out. It's kind of like a word association but draw association. And from there, people would write a sentence. You would write like maybe a brand name. You could draw a product, the packaging. You could draw what it actually look like. It was really dependent upon capabilities of the person, but that didn't stop the ideas from influencing others or from rising to the top and then being more fleshed out. 

NOEL: Chemia and Santi, what was this process like from your end? How did it feel to you to be doing that kind of rapid ideation and prototyping?

CHEMIA: I think for us, it was very different from anything that I had done before, being tasked to go from just that wide space of food waste that Santi talked about and then expecting to come up with an actual product idea at the end of five days that we would launch. So, being a part of that process and going through the ideation and going through the user testing and seeing it all happen that fast was really different but fun. 

SANTI: And I would add, I think before that sprint, we went and talked to users, the one-on-one ethnographies that I described earlier. And I think getting into people's homes that you're designing for was such an important step as opposed to other projects I had been on previously. You're looking at trends, you're reading aggregated secondary research and trying to pull things out from it versus here, you're actually talking to the people you going to design for. Then the next week, having them in mind as you're creating these ideas, say on the Crazy 8's that Rex mentioned. So, you actually have them in mind. They're real people that you spend time with. And so that was very different, very empowering and you got this constant visual connection to the folks that you're designing for.

NOEL: After you did that Crazy 8 piece, did you actually converge on the idea, like what kind of ideas came out of it and then how did you decide to pursue the one that became the product? And at some point, we probably should say what the product turned into.

REX: Where this started to diverge from our typical process required a lot of sort of quick thinking on our feet and for us, it was hard for us to get out of the sort of known areas that we were used to as designers of doing this process over and over again in software. The ask or the needs for Tyson were really different. And that's where we started to diverge from the process and really make it unique to Tyson instead of just trying to focus on one idea. The way we needed to build buy-in internally and to get as most out of these five days as possible was to prototype and concept many ideas. And that led through a process of refining those Crazy 8 quick sketches into a storyboard. I think that first sprint, we quickly sort of glommed on to like a simple template that worked to describe a product idea which was like a headline, an elevator pitch, like one sentence, some bullets and then an image representing it. And we tried to do them all the same way so that the playing field was really level for leadership when they came in to make decisions on which ideas they wanted us to pursue. So instead of software where we're trying to really narrowly focus on one thing to validate, here we were trying to get more ideas out because the capabilities of the team was different. We had access to chefs, to world-renowned chefs and food scientists. So our capabilities within the five days were dramatically different than what comes out of maybe a five person sprint at Table XI.

SANTI: So what that meant was that after we kind of narrowed down the ideas, a chef could go prototype, actually go make the ideas, make the food concepts and have several options for leadership to then converge on for the decision on which one to move forward with.

NOEL: What were some of the food options that you prototyped? 

SANTI: There was an idea of Nduja which is a spicy salami spread that would have leveraged the ends of salamis that get cut off and would otherwise be wasted but are perfectly delicious and nutritious. So it turned into a spread. You can put on a cracker or something like that. That was an idea. There was another idea that leveraged partner's veggie pulp that would otherwise be wasted after it was used in the juicing process and turning it into like a frittata mixed with eggs. That was another idea. And then there was ultimately the idea that got chosen which was a chicken crisp which was a combination of all white chicken breast, tapioca starch that got puffed through a frying process and then spent grains from brewing or a veggie puree from juicing incorporated in there to add fiber and also help fight food waste. That's what today is the YAPPAH! Chicken Crisp. It kind of has the texture of like a shrimp chip that you might get at a Chinese restaurant, so it's really light and airy and has a bunch of protein in it.

NOEL: Jessie, the whiteboarding you were referring to is that the whiteboarding that you were saying you remembered earlier? Were you helping facilitate some of the communication in the design through this process? 

JESSIE: We did some of that as well and some of the training too early on because we were working on thinking through Agile mindset and communication and also design thinking and creative problem solving early on. Because part of what was going on behind the scenes wasn't only solving for food waste but was to take this fantastic team of really diverse minds and people and make sure that they all had a voice at the table. When we always think about ideas are only as good as the people that are speaking to them and if the group isn't getting along or somebody who has an idea isn't being heard, then it just kind of dies there. So I think those two things were going on hand-in-hand the whole time. There was something going on throughout the whole process, so I feel like what the Innovation Lab has done really, really well is they've understood that while they're working on these products and trying to solve for these problems, they're also really working on how can this team be a stellar as possible. Both things are important and you don't do one without the other. So that's where I've kind of come in and worked with them since 2017.

NOEL: Are there some specific techniques or things that you did to help them allow all the voices in the room to be heard?

JESSIE: I mean, all sorts of things. We worked on things like active listening skills. We talked about things like what motivates each person in the room and having to hear. We did a lot of activities on unlearning, so letting go of habitual ways of thinking to make room for something new. We worked on storytelling so that they could spread their stories throughout the company because Tyson is such a large enterprise. And so, it can't just exist within the walls of the Innovation Lab. They have to be able to go out and and tell their story and get it out there and get people to be behind their ideas. I mean, they've just done tons of kind of experiential work, if you will. I don't know. Do either of you have ones in mind that you remember or something that sticks out because they're just so many we've done over the two years, I feel like?

SANTI: Yeah. For me, the unlearning can't be underestimated and the ability to storytell can't be underestimated in terms of its value for a company like Tyson. There are ingrained processes, approaches, ways of working and relating to each other that are assets when you are churning out really big innovations or very efficient project launches. But what the Innovation Lab is trying to do aren't quite as helpful. And so, the reflection of acknowledging that, (A) is very, very useful and was useful, continues to be useful for everyone on the team; but then, (B) recognizing that something needs to fill those empty spaces. The unlearning coupled with learning of new techniques. Very simple things for me as a marketer, just the tool of 'yes and' in terms of ideation. And I think all of us, at Tyson, you're thinking about what are our capabilities? And so there can be a lot of no's but that's not helpful for disruptive innovation. So just learning to really have that knee jerk reaction of 'I'm going to say and' at the end of this response or this thought to keep the conversation going, to bring in and include more of the team, to have more divergent ideas and deeper ideas rather than cutting things off. It sounds simple and obvious in retrospect but is immensely helpful to get to some of the things that we've gotten to that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to ideate or produce.

CHEMIA: I agree. I think it's important to call out too that we did about three months' worth of training and getting the team ready before we actually did our first sprint. So, a lot of the techniques that Jessie talked about really just helped us to get out of our comfort zones. Someone like me who's traditionally more quiet, I learned how to speak out more and then we had other team members that may have learned that they needed to listen more. So, I think that that timing and everything that we did during those three months was really critical to our success when we finally did get to the sprint week.

NOEL: When you got to the end of the initial sprint week, when did the leadership choose which product to go forward on? Was it part of the sprint week or was it after the sprint week?

CHEMIA: It was part of the sprint week. We had leadership check-ins along the way which I think is a standard part of the sprint process. So, they checked in with us on the first day to make sure that we were exploring the right problem statement. And then they checked in midway through the sprint to help us narrow down our ideas. And then the decision was made on day five of the sprint. And at that point, the team had actually done the prototype. So, they had a chance to taste, hear what we had heard from the user feedback and then make a decision based on that.

SANTI: Yes. I'll add that, I guess Rex can speak to this, I'm not sure if the sprint had previously been used to create a brand. We've been talking about the actual food product so far, but we also during that sprint actually split off while the R & D team and a chef were creating prototypes for the food itself. We had another group that was basically creating the essence of the brand, why it exists in the world, what its personality is, what its values are, and then all that culminating into a few options for brand names which leadership came in and decided on as well, which is how we got to Yappah as the brand. That whole process can take months and months and months typically in a big company like Tyson. And so, to get that whole process done in a week was amazing and a great outcome of the sprint as well.

REX: Just to add to that, it's one of my favorite memories ever of our sprints together is that initial brand sprint. It's not anything part of the normal design sprint process but it was something I had tried with another client that I had actually read on the Google Ventures blog of a three-hour brand sprint. And I was like, "Well, we have three hours, so let's see if this works." But I think it's really a testament to Jessie, the work you did on building that team to be the communicators they were. We were in such lock-step as a team by the time we got to the brand sprint that we had so many great ideas and the team was just firing on all levels. And when you came up with "Yappah", Santi, it kind of clicked with so many of us. And then when Sally responded to it in the same way, I was just so immensely proud and gratified for the week. We were exhausted and we had done all this stuff and then that was just kind of like this glorious moment at the end.

NOEL: The brand stuff was on the last day of the sprint, the day five?

REX: Yeah.

NOEL: So, what do you actually do? You said you had this technique. You have three hours and you needed to come up with a brand. What does that actually look like?

REX: Like a lot of things. It seems really simple on the outside but actually it initiates a lot of really deep conversations. You start out with a 20-year timeline for the brand. That's not just for the initial product. It could be a suite of products of like how do we solve for this problem of food waste and what does that look like across 20 years? And what are the goals of the company? It allows you to really get into this headspace for this particular problem like saving the planet, reducing pollution and global warming. It is tied up in all these really heavy topics. From there, you move in to the golden circle which is the why, how, what of a brand and how these things play into each other. The why is one of the hardest things to come up with a brand and one of the things that is often not developed with a lot of brands. It's the why do you get up out of bed in the morning and why does this brand exist. What is its driving purpose and what is the thing that everyone that works for the brand understands and agrees with, and how does that resonate with a consumer? The how is how do you get there or how do you get to products? How do you feed this big why? And then the what is the actual outputs of that. And that is one of my favorite exercises. It is so clarifying for me. I'm sure Santi and Chemia can comment on how strict I can be with the why's or any of the other sprints we have done.

NOEL: At the end of the sprint, where did you go from there? What did you actually have and then what were your next steps?

CHEMIA: Once we finished the sprint, that's where our six-month timeline started. We literally put up a clock in our Innovation Lab room with 180 days and started getting to work on how to launch the product. So, we launched it within six months on Indiegogo as a test market through crowdfunding. That was our way to continually get user feedback so that we can iterate more on the product. The team, like I said, got to work right away, started to prototype the product, getting into the kitchen to make it better and then figuring out how to scale it up on a pilot scale so that we could sell it to our test market.

JESSIE: And it's delicious, by the way.

NOEL: Rex, were you and Jessie continuing to work with them over this process or was this handed off to Tyson at that point?

REX: This was all their team from Table XI. I don't know Jessie, you were probably still doing more communication work with them, right? 

JESSIE: Yeah. I continue to do work with them on more teamwork and communication, storytelling and lots of coaching. So that was all kind of going on in the background as they've continued to think of new ideas and things that are changing and stuff like that. Like I said, I think one thing that's really interesting about this team in terms of the work that I've done and I've had the chance to work with other innovation labs before and why I feel like this lab is different is they really have taken the time that they've needed to invest in themselves as a team professionally, like continuing to learn, continuing to push, continuing to just hear each other out and think differently and not let that slip away. And I think that's been a big part of their success. They're an incredible team, a really incredible team of people. 

NOEL: Do the goals of your coaching change over time or do the techniques change?

JESSIE: They always change. Just like they learned how the ideas of being agile, the coaching is agile. So that agile mindset, like if I had to be scripted, I think that would be pretty ironic, bizarre. So yeah, I think things change. I need to be able to shift as they need shifting to happen. So, I stayed present with them. And when different needs came up, I flexed with them and with those needs and I was happy to. That's what certainly makes my job fun and interesting.

NOEL: Chemia, what do you feel like was one or two specific things that you really learned out of the design and the coaching process here?

CHEMIA: For the design and coaching process, one of the things that we had to do that was different from other groups in our organization is that we had to give updates to our leadership team every two weeks. Typically that wouldn't be the responsibility of our team in terms of our level of where we were reporting, if that makes sense. Normally, there would be kind of a hierarchy of higher ups that would handle that for us. But we had an opportunity to meet directly with leadership every two weeks and do that ourselves. So part of the coaching was just on knowing how to do that, being able to be comfortable, telling our story, explaining what we had worked on, and being able to answer questions directly to our leadership team. So that was definitely a great opportunity that we've had throughout the sprint and then moving forward beyond the sprint with our leadership team.

NOEL: Have you done more design sprints since then on other topics?

CHEMIA: We have. We've done a lot of design sprints, it seems like. 

JESSIE: I've lost count. I don't know how many millions we've done.

CHEMIA: Yeah, we've continued to evolve the process. Luckily, Rex and team at Table XI, they are literally right across the street from us, so we can call them when we need help. But we've done design sprints for additional products that we've looked to launch in the lab and then we've also tried to adjust it to do packaging sprints when we wanted to come up with a new package ideas that we've done like one or two day sprints for that. We've done creative sprints where it's like a three-day just to help us come up with how we want to creatively execute on our brand. We've found a lot of value in the process and we've continued to try to use it to help us get things done quickly but still in a quality way.

NOEL: Rex, what's something that you've learned about design applying it to this different domain?

REX: I've learned a lot on this process. I think one of the biggest themes I've learned is to really seek out ideas and inspiration externally. As a designer, I think I have always just sort of relied on myself to produce ideas historically. What I've really gotten out of working with Tyson is that you can be a force multiplier that we can ideate as a team, that we can build each other's ideas up. We can inspire each other and we can create things that you are 100% just as proud of even if it wasn't your baby, getting like Yappah is something I'm really proud of. I don't work at Tyson but just to have been a part of that is one of the really greater accomplishments of my design career.

JESSIE: Me, too. Every time I hear the word Yappah or read something about it, I skip around my house. I'm so, so happy for everybody. I truly am so happy for everybody.

REX: I love seeing it in Instagram.

JESSIE: Me too.

REX: I think for me as a designer, what I've really grown in is to trust that by being a facilitator doesn't mean that I'm giving up being a designer, that I could be in a role like that and still be a major part of the design process. And I had always thought that it was one or the other and I think working with Tyson has really taught me that it can be both.

NOEL: Jessie, what was something you learned about communication and facilitation working with this team? 

JESSIE: So many things. I feel like I got to be on a journey with this team and really watch people grow over time and communicate those ideas. I think it was remarkable to see what having the right leadership in an organization can do for innovation and being able to communicate those ideas can do for creating a product that quickly. I think in the beginning, I didn't know if such a large organization would be able to innovate and create something as quickly as they did, as successfully as they did because you kind of have all the odds against you. It's just so hard to navigate even with the best of teams. And so, I learned through them that when you have all the right pieces in play and you communicate those things in a way that's clear, you can make it happen and you can make it happen and tasty and delicious and do a great job. I'm super proud, like I said, of what they've done.

NOEL: Chemia and Santi, what would you tell somebody at a company that might be thinking about doing this design kind of process? What's something they should know about?

CHEMIA: Make sure you have an open mind. Like I said, we've done it a couple of times and each time is still different. I think it's important that the group comes in with that mindset, that agile mindset. And then also just being open, being willing to learn and being willing to share your ideas. I think it's really important that everyone contributes that's in a room and that's a part of the team. So just keeping that open dialogue and an open mindset, I think, are both critical to the process. 

NOEL: And where can people learn more about the product that you actually developed?

SANTI: You can go to Yappah.com to learn about the brand and the product, and follow us on Instagram yappahfoods, also on Facebook. Please get to know us. 

NOEL: Jessie, where can people go to learn more about the work that you do? 

JESSIE: You can go to ImprovEffect.com and you can also find me at the @TheImprovEffect on Twitter and on Instagram. Jessie Shternshus on LinkedIn, all those places.

NOEL: Rex, if people want to talk to you more about this, where can they find you online?

REX: You can find me at Rex@TableXI.com and my Instagram which is full of pictures of cats.

NOEL: Great. Thank you all for coming here and telling us this really cool story. I appreciate your time. Thanks.

Tech Done Right is on the web at TechDoneRight.io and on Twitter @tech_done_right and we're available wherever you listen to podcasts. 

The show is a production of Table XI which is on the web at TableXI.com and on Twitter @TableXI. 

Tech Done Right is hosted by me, Noel Rappin. I'm @NoelRap on Twitter and is edited by Mandy Moore who is @TheRubyRep on Twitter. If you like the show, tell a friend, a colleague, your boss, your social media network, your pet, people you stop on the street, tell me, tell anybody you want about the show, that would be very, very helpful and review on Apple podcast helps people find the show. 

Table XI is a UX design and software development company in Chicago with a 15-year history of building websites, mobile applications, and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Find us at TableXI.com where you can learn more about working with us or working for us. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks with the next episode of Tech Done Right.