A Product Cannot Live on Dogfood Alone Toby is the Director of User Experience at Simple, where they are working to craft the best personal banking experience around. As one of the first employees at the company, he helped design and build a modern approach to banking from the ground up. When he's not helping build his dream bank, he's either listening to metal, playing the drums, or making things out of leather. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wonderful wife and the 2 cutest kiddos around.

2. Toby Sterrett
Director of UX
@takeo

3. PORTLAND

5. I almost didn’t
end up here.

21. BankSimple?

22. I have a credit union…
why would I want a bank?

24. How the hell can we
compete with banks?

30. However, BankSimple offered
something no one else did…

31. a chance to build something
from the ground up.
flickr photo by freefoto

41. Ok, cool, so you have a
marketing site.

42. Dogfood

43. Dogfooding can be a way for a company to
demonstrate confidence in its own products. The
idea is that if the company expects customers to buy
its products, it should also be willing to use those
products.
- WIKIPEDIA

48. “… the immediate feedback of code breaking the build,
the loss of pride, and the knowledge of impeding the
work of others were all powerful motivators.”
- WIKIPEDIA

52. Image Background Title

53. Image Background Title

54. Image Background Title

55. So, banking…

56. What did I want from my
new bank?

57. Build for the way people think,
not the way banking actually works.

69. Effortless Saving

79. Mobile

89. Sweating the details

90. – F R A N K C H I M E R O
“To delight someone is to give them a small
lesson in seeing the world as something
good. It is design’s superpower.”

102. – O H J I M M Y !
“This is a pretty sad app for such a major
bank. It’s clunky and unprofessional. I have an
impossible to remember password and every
time I log in with the mobile app I have to pull
up my password list on my laptop. Touch ID
support would be a MAJOR improvement.”

123. Customer Relations

131. Beyond Dogfood

138. Get the why behind the what

144. It is the customer’s job to explain their behavior, goals,
and challenges. It is the product designer’s job to come
up with the best solution.
- Talking to Humans

152. Thank you.
@takeo