The insight driving my work is that products and services only extend or adapt existing behaviors: they never grow from a blank slate. You gain traction with critical activities that users already perform. The question of product strategy isn’t "what do we build?" but "how do we shift key behaviors from there to here?"
Awareness of users’ context and the critical factors that drive behavior will remain durable for quarters or years of hypothesis-driven product delivery: visual maps and models can be tested and refactored with each step forward. I work with teams who seek the clarity and focus that this kind of situational awareness offers.
Primary ways to work together
- Product Consulting: We shape the best approach to a time-sensitive product challenge. I am an investigator and advisor, modeling out internal and external streams of activity. You gain directional insight, new pathways, and critical sequences for action.
- Player-Coach Embed: We help a team engage the gameplay-strategy engine, learning to play one good move at a time and respond to the outcome. I am an embedded researcher, product coach, and prototyper or design advisor. You gain situational awareness, informed delivery, and product traction.
My context
I've been working inside product organizations since 2010, building insight and product strategy f0r forward-looking teams. I began consulting in 2020 to work on a larger, strategic scope of problem. I work with a handful of clients each year, and write about my perspective in the newsletter on this site. (See more about me.)
Explore your options
Email dave@davesresearch.com and tell me what you see — I'll tell you what I see, too. If you want help, and I can do it, I'll describe how that would work.
If I'm not the right person, I'll point you toward someone else in my network.
