Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/abstracts-an-interview-with-jonathan-courtney-4635fde5d143?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Melvin Thambi 
CEO of AJ&amp;Smart Design Studio, Germany
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*lppXLCsl8uwrQBIuxcjQXA.png">Illustration <a href="http://www.melvinthambi.com">Melvin Thambi</a><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fplay.ht%2Farticles%2F4635fde5d143&amp;src=https%3A%2F%2Fplay.ht%2Fembed%2F%3Farticle_url%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F_p%2Fabstracts-an-interview-with-jonathan-courtney-4635fde5d143&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;schema=play" width="700" height="185" frameborder="0"><a href="https://medium.com/media/1b1bee7c69edbd9677b2993c59ee9130/href">https://medium.com/media/1b1bee7c69edbd9677b2993c59ee9130/href</a></iframe>
<h3>Welcome, Jonathan to Abstracts! How is your life in <a href="https://ajsmart.com/">AJ&amp;Smart</a> design studio?</h3>
I guess that’s a pretty broad question, and I’m going to answer it based on my day to day activities.
I am currently the CEO of AJ&amp;Smart, and this means that my work revolves around trying to figure out some crucial questions: &#8211; What is vital for AJ&amp;Smart in the short term? &#8211; What are the things that keep the company running? &#8211; What are the things that make sure that the quality is as high as possible for clients?
Also, how do we make sure that the environment is as nice as possible?
People hearing and finding out about AJ&amp;Smart, and this also comes down to building client relationships directly.
I’m just making sure that AJ&amp;Smart is running smoothly in the short term. What I’m heavily involved in is thinking about what happens in the long term. So, like how and why would AJ&amp;Smart still be open 10 years from now and be successful?
It’s easy to start an agency, and I think a lot of people can do that, anyone can do that, and the thing that’s pretty difficult is just to keep this thing running. It’s a big, expensive machine. A lot of agencies fail, so, I’m trying to figure out how to make sure that the company is sustainable but keeps the sort of high quality and charm that it has right now at its current size.
<blockquote>Also part of my day today is travelling around the world consulting large companies. Recently I was in Tokyo working with<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwbOfnXQIiA"> LEGO</a>, and I’m kind of like a Product strategy consultant on that level.</blockquote>
So I don’t really do the day to day product design work anymore but a lot of high-level product strategy consulting work.
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Mt7tSg25GsAz_yzAcQJeLg.jpeg">Image courtesy <a href="http://ajsmart.com">ajsmart.com</a>
<h3>You are a man of productivity and time management. How do you come up with the ideas such as <a href="https://medium.muz.li/shortcut-o-matic-a-simple-exercise-that-will-improve-your-life-immediately-1b2a98c355a7">Shortcuto-omatic</a> and <a href="https://medium.muz.li/a-super-simple-exercise-for-solving-almost-any-product-design-challenge-f9e6c0019d7d">Lightning Decision Jam</a>?</h3>
They just kind of happened a bit accidentally. I guess it was always related to a client coming in with a problem.<a href="https://medium.muz.li/a-super-simple-exercise-for-solving-almost-any-product-design-challenge-f9e6c0019d7d"> Lightning Decision Jam</a> occurred because for years of not having a system for letting clients come and talk to us and have a meeting. I really hated meetings, and I always thought that of super messy and I want to find a way to make that a little bit cleaner.
Even internally we weren’t using any systems we were just talking and discussing, and I hated discussions too. I think discussions usually goes nowhere. So lightning decision jam just slowly evolved over a few years of trying different things with clients.
<a href="https://medium.muz.li/shortcut-o-matic-a-simple-exercise-that-will-improve-your-life-immediately-1b2a98c355a7">Short-cuto-omatic</a> was just something I was doing myself to solve my own problems which weren’t something I was going to make public. I was just doing it on one piece of paper, after a while I thought this is super helpful for me, maybe this is something that I can push out there into the world.
<blockquote>I think that I’m a huge procrastinator. That’s why I also build the system so that I don’t have to rely on me doing these things; I can almost rely on a system.</blockquote>
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<h3>Curious to know about your collaboration with the NY times best selling author<a href="https://jakeknapp.com/"> Jake Knapp</a> and the journey with Design sprint workshops?</h3>
I met Jake in March 2017. I flew to San Francisco to meet him. I was speaking at<a href="https://www.udacity.com/course/design-sprint-foundations--nd201"> Udacity</a> Conference. While I was there, I asked Jake if I could meet him, he was interested in seeing what we were doing for the<a href="http://www.un.org/"> United Nations</a>.
We were working on a few projects for the UN. We were working on two projects<a href="https://sprintstories.com/helping-the-un-solve-big-challenges-with-design-sprints-4b9887dfa617"> Share the Meal</a>, which is an app and<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgjbdnjl5SF/"> Share Foods</a>, a physical product that just launched. Jake was interested in seeing those, so I went to the<a href="http://www.gv.com/sprint/"> GV</a> office, met him and I think we hit it off pretty fast, our personalities clicked. We were travelling around doing Design sprint workshops like as a training course, and he wasn’t doing that yet. I told about it, and I asked him whether he want to do one with us.
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*_Hq5-moX0moYS4qUbJpF-A.png">
<blockquote>Jake was excited to see what that would even look like and now we’ve been travelling around for a year teaching design sprints for cool companies like<a href="https://www.airbnb.com/"> Airbnb</a>,<a href="https://slack.com/"> Slack</a>,<a href="https://www.ge.com/"> General Electric</a>, Google. It’s really fun!</blockquote>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*xzFmhfhq4pGmnCMPaJfysw.png">Image courtesy <a href="http://ajsmart.com">ajsmart.com</a>
<h3>Business thinking is essential before starting any project. So how do you convince your customers to invest money in the design sprint process?</h3>
This question is a tricky one.
We usually ask these questions with customers. What if you tried without a design sprint? What if you do it how you’ve been doing it right now? How long is that going to take? How is that going to be for the morale of your team?. How is it going to turn out?
Maybe the same project will take eight months long and a lot more stress and a lot more money If you don’t align things in the beginning with the design sprint.
<blockquote>So we make it clear to them that there’s an opportunity cost to not doing the design sprints.</blockquote>
Without the design sprint, you’re going to be going in circles debating and not making progress for a long time at the start of the project while everyone’s trying to figure out what they’re doing- that’s usually pretty helpful to sell the design sprint.
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<h3>Do you think ‘Design thinking’ is an overrated design practice?</h3>
Design Thinking is being sold incorrectly. I guess it’s being sold as a system for creating innovative products or it creating innovation. But for me, it’s more of a mindset. It’s not practical, and the outcomes are not efficient enough. It’s extremely difficult to implement and especially if you’re a larger company with minimal experience and how to do things like that.
Design thinking is sold like a magic pill that just makes innovation happen but I don’t believe in it.
Over the last ten years most companies that I’ve seen with starting a design thinking initiative. They just sort of stopped after a while or sort of forgot about it.
<blockquote>That’s why I think I pushed the sprint so much because I think the sprint is like a practical application of design thinking as much easier to implement.</blockquote>
And also you see results immediately whereas Design Thinking is like a slow burn.
It’s good fun, but If I was starting a company today that I won’t be doing a design thinking initiative.
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<h3>I am a big follower of your podcast series ‘<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/the-product-breakfast-club/id1320916842?l=en&amp;mt=2&amp;i=1000395595606">Product Breakfast Club</a>’ and an active member of your Facebook group ‘Innovation Hackers’. What inspired you to come up with these great initiatives?</h3>
We do all these free design events in Berlin. And people are always quite excited about the things that we’re saying, but I always feel only 30–50 people have just heard what we said.
Maybe there’s a better way to have a bigger platform, and that’s why we started our YouTube channel, the podcast, the Innovation Hackers group. Just to have a bigger audience of engaged people get to see and hear our content. It’s kind of feels natural for me, I’m a person who enjoys using social media.
<blockquote>I want to give away as much as possible because most agencies don’t do that. I like the feeling that we’re almost giving away too much and it feels good.</blockquote>
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/the-product-breakfast-club/id1320916842?l=en&amp;mt=2&amp;i=1000395595606">The Product Breakfast Club by Jake Knapp &amp; Jonathan Courtney on Apple Podcasts</a>
<h3>What you think is the exact role of a product designer in today’s data- driven world?</h3>
The role of a product designer is to help the entire company figure out what it is that the user is going to be using. People are overly optimistic about what data can actually do.
First of all, you need to start collecting and creating some context out of it. Data doesn’t just tell you; “Oh, put a button on here, or hey, you need this screen.” You still need to interpret that data.
The designer can be the conduit between the data coming in and the information coming from the users and the team who is actually building it there sort of orchestrating the product.
It doesn’t matter how good data gets; you still need someone actually to construct the thing. Basically like saying “we have the data to figure out what a building should look like, why do we need an architect”. People still also want to have things that are unique and delightful to use as well.
<blockquote>You could probably build a product using just some algorithms, but It might not be very relevant for the business of the users.</blockquote>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*YFHo9Nj_s8IlH2fvxOt2vA.jpeg">Image courtesy <a href="http://ajsmart.com">ajsmart.com</a>
<h3>According to you, what are the 3 most important things that a design studio should follow to run a successful business?</h3>
Number one- focus on sales.
I think that this is something that a lot of companies forget and I also made a lot of mistakes. You want to figure out what people actually want to spend their money on. That’s important if you’re going to keep your agency running and moving ahead.
You want to keep getting better, you need time to get better, and you need time to gather that experience, and for that time, you need money. You really need to understand how to make money. And you really need to optimise how you are making money.
You need not be making decisions based on not having enough money. And this is a huge, huge problem with the number one.
Number two — the leader having a strong opinion
Almost not necessarily a vision but that people within the company have a feeling that the person running it is also passionate about what they do. Not necessarily having to be designed but having the leader being like someone who’s out there teaching, talking and constantly pushing the company forward. I think for me working in a company I would need to have someone like that, and I try to be that for AJ&amp;Smart, an evangelist for the brand, and I think that’s important because the company has a face, a real human face and I’m not just a cool hipster logo.
Number three- invest in longevity
Invest in keeping people as long as possible by making it such a great environment and keeping the work challenging instead of investing in short-term gains with money.
<blockquote>Always think as long-term as possible while keeping your company open in the short-term. I guess that’s something that I would give out as an advice.</blockquote>
Follow Jonathan <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/the-product-breakfast-club/id1320916842?l=en&amp;mt=2&amp;i=1000395595606">Podcast</a> / <a href="https://medium.com/@jicecream">Medium</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeB_OpLspKJGiKv1CYkWFFw">Youtube</a> / <a href="https://www.instagram.com/zhenyary/">Instagram</a> /<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/">LinkedIn</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/Jicecream">Twitter</a>
Give your 50 clap 👏🏻 if you like this interview. Thanks!
<blockquote><a href="http://www.rapidgems.com/abstracts">Abstracts </a>— A curated perspectives section with seasoned artists from the fields of Design, Art, Photography, Motion Graphics &amp; Advertisement. Hear from the experienced and creative, as they share their ‘art’ process and sources of inspiration. An initiative from <a href="http://www.rapidgems.com">RapidGems</a> Design Studio.</blockquote>
<h3>Other Abstracts</h3>
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<li><a href="https://medium.muz.li/abstracts-an-interview-with-sergey-andronov-e9b3cf06f9d2">Abstracts — An Interview with Sergey Andronov</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://medium.muz.li/abstracts-an-interview-with-lorenzo-bocchi-c9e7b114ee95">Abstracts — An Interview with Lorenzo Bocchi</a></li>
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<blockquote>Stay tuned for more interviews! <a href="http://www.melvinthambi.com">Melvin Thambi </a>works as a creative director at <a href="https://www.rapidvaluesolutions.com/">RapidValue Solutions</a> &amp; Founder of <a href="http://www.emmandenn.com">Emm&amp;Enn</a> Art Studio. <a href="https://medium.com/@melvinthambi">Medium</a> / <a href="https://www.behance.net/melvin">Behance</a> / <a href="https://dribbble.com/melvinthambi">Dribbble</a> / <a href="https://www.instagram.com/melvinthambi/">Instagram</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/ThambiMelvin">Twitter</a> / <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/melvinthambi/">LinkedIn</a> / <a href="https://unsplash.com/@melvinthambi">Unsplash</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/abstracts-an-interview-with-jonathan-courtney-4635fde5d143">Abstracts — An Interview with Jonathan Courtney</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">Prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Abstracts — An Interview with Jonathan Courtney

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