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Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from a 20-year corporate product designer on best practices for developing med tech devices.

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Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast,

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Narrator: the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product developers,

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Narrator: manufacturers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product

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Narrator: and scale your product business. Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for small product businesses. Now, onto the show.

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Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Rob Crowder to the show. Rob is the head of product at Nutromics, a high-growth medical sensor device company. Rob has over 20 years in the product development

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Kevin Mako: field. He's worked for General Electric, PWC, and more. Today, Rob is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can learn from the best practices on user journey mapping for medical devices, but also how to apply these med tech best

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Kevin Mako: practices to your next product, whether it's a medical device or other physical product invention. Now on the episode.

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Kevin Mako: Rob, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Kevin. Excited to have you on. Talk about user journey mapping and all the goodies about figuring out who your customer is and how to best approach that. First and foremost, you're on the other side of the world right now. It's COVID free there.

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Rob Crowder: And I understand that at the start of this whole madness, you had a major career change to joining over with Neutromics. I did. Yeah. So it would have been a year ago now.

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Rob Crowder: So, yeah, April 2020, just before everything kind of fell apart with COVID. So it was an interesting time to change roles. I was previously a GM of a product development company.

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Rob Crowder: And one of our clients was Neutromics, who were developing a really interesting device. And I couldn't help but be excited by what they were trying to do. So I was really keen to join the team.

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Rob Crowder: It was just a strange time to do it.

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Kevin Mako: But it's been a really, really busy and fruitful years. So that was good. That's great. And you've dealt with over 100 hardware products from, you know, concept through to realization. So, you know, very excited to talk about all that.

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Kevin Mako: First and foremost, let's jump into user journey mapping because I know that's something you're quite passionate about really getting to know and understand the pain point that you're solving with the customer and

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Kevin Mako: the tools that you use to best prepare that so that our listeners who have, you know, whether they have an invention idea or they're in the development process or they're looking to make

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Rob Crowder: their next version of their product, they can use these tools to, you know, create something amazing out of their next innovation.

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Rob Crowder: Yeah. Yeah, I'm really keen to talk about this. Over the years, I've tried out lots of different techniques that you try and draw out the key things that you need to be thinking

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Rob Crowder: about in the product development journey. And particularly at the start, it can be really confusing about where to start, what to consider.

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Rob Crowder: And the best framework I come across and I use every day is user journey mapping.

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Rob Crowder: And it's a technique where you map out the narrative of use for the product that you imagine and it's okay to be full of assumptions at the start

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Rob Crowder: but it's an end-to-end story of use and you put it up on a wall you can use system cards

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Rob Crowder: that's not very modern I know but that's what I do and it's really powerful to do that and it can be

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Rob Crowder: built by yourself to begin with but then the power in it lies in bringing everyone else that's going to be involved in the product around that they can stand around they can look at it. And then industrial designers start to draw things. Coders start to think about

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Rob Crowder: how they could code for that particular part. And all of the assumptions and interdependencies start to fall out. And you can start to build this really large and detailed picture of what your

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Kevin Mako: product is going to be. And it's a great way to get started because it feels like there's momentum building. You feel like you're taking action early and you're starting to really get into the core assumptions you have about the product.

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Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's, you know, it's, it's a great exercise to think about the user, right, to put yourself in their shoes. How do they use the product? What benefits do they derive from the product? What does it look like? Like,

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Kevin Mako: imagine it, draw it, sketch it. Like you said, you put it right up onto the wall and you're

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Rob Crowder: bored, right? So let's unpack this a bit and jump into those steps. First and foremost, you know, how you're kind of kicking off this, this journey and understanding your customer and what the individual little bits and pieces are that you're actually putting up onto your customer journey app wall.

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Rob Crowder: Yeah. So traditional techniques, I guess, would be things like observational studies. So if someone comes to you with an idea and says, I think this person will do this with this product and it's useful because of these reasons, and go and look at the problem, observe it,

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Rob Crowder: go and see who this problem that you're thinking of solving is impacting. And in what ways does it impact them? So that's one of the start points. The observational studies, you write down the notes. And then that becomes part of your assumptions about narrative reviews.

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Kevin Mako: Personas. So when you go and see these people and you interview them and you talk to them about the problems they're facing and why and you do those traditional kind of interviews,

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Kevin Mako: then you can stick that up in the user journey map as well. And it got points off to them at various points. So you can see how they fit together.

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Kevin Mako: That's great. So you're really combining all these different elements of what essentially the user looks like. And I find that one of the ways to do it, I know a lot of offices do that, they actually build that physical persona and sit them in a chair.

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Kevin Mako: Right. Yeah. Here's what we think our user looks like. Here's how they think. Here's what they're interested in. Here's their pain points. And then of course that, you know, the magic, which is your innovation, your invention, your

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Rob Crowder: product, whatever, it's figuring out, well, how does that actually fit into those pain points or whatever else. How do you solve those problems? So what does your mood board look like? What are some of the pillars on it?

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Rob Crowder: Any other tips that you can kind of advise into it? How we, you know, what are the easiest steps to actually start building this thing out?

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Rob Crowder: Yeah. So I agree. Like visual cues are really important, particularly with personas making them real. I've heard of various ways of expressing that. So having a cut out in a chair is it's pretty funny.

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Rob Crowder: But yeah, a huge representation of a person that you can relate to quite easily. So those attributes are then as a person. So you get this human aspect to it.

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Rob Crowder: I think the core pillars really are about dialing into the unmet needs. So that's one core pillar that I really try and zero in on really early.

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Rob Crowder: And it just takes work, I think.

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Kevin Mako: And if I think about outputs, then the one thing that I put next,

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Kevin Mako: to the personas as a blowout, like a larger kind of link to that persona, is what are those unmet needs that we're going to try and meet for this person and that product?

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Kevin Mako: What's it got to do for them that makes it valuable and useful?

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Rob Crowder: And that's generally the trigger point that gets the whole group focused. So that's one thing that I try and do.

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Rob Crowder: That's great. And so how can we expand upon, you know, those elements and apply it to like real world examples either that you've worked on or hypothetical or whatever else?

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Rob Crowder: So we could kind of paint a picture right now over audio on, you know, something that correlates to this, that we can put this theory essentially to paper, right? Yeah.

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Rob Crowder: So where I'm out right now with Neutromics, we're developing, it's a medical device. So we're a health technology company, and it's a small wearable patch that can monitor molecules

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Rob Crowder: in interstitial fluid, which sits just under your skin. That's like an information superhighway, basically. It's full of really interesting information about a person's health,

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Rob Crowder: and it hasn't been accessible before. I mean, the typical mode of understanding how your body is doing is blood tests. They're a single point in time camera snapshot of how you're doing.

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Rob Crowder: So with our patch, the premises that we can monitor in real-time molecules which can indicate how healthy you are in various aspects of your life, but it can also monitor drug concentrations,

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Rob Crowder: proteins, hormones, all kinds of interesting things. So we've been at it. Yeah, it is. It's really exciting. Like, you know, as I said before, it didn't really take much of us for me to jump on board and try to figure this out.

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Rob Crowder: So we've been trying to figure it out for the last. you know, a couple of years now. So this technique I'm talking about is one that we used really early on.

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Rob Crowder: So with a patch like that and with an opportunity like that, it could go in so many directions.

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Rob Crowder: And we had to try and figure out which direction should we go in first? Who should we solve a problem for?

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Rob Crowder: And those three crucial buckets of considerations around the product, the commercial aspect and the fact that it needs to be useful.

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Rob Crowder: They're the three elements that I wanted to try and figure out really early and I've built a kind of model how to work through that. The use journey map was the core part in understanding value and utility

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Rob Crowder: for the people that were going to end up using it. So in a real sense, in practical terms, went out there and spoke to clinicians.

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Rob Crowder: So one of the first areas we looked at was pre-diabetes. So this is a scourge on the world right now, particularly in Western countries

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Rob Crowder: where the prevalence of pre-diabetes is really high. Diabetes is really high. So we thought if we could build a patch

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Kevin Mako: that can help people make different choices in their life around food and exercise and those behavioral aspects, then we can get them off the pathway to diabetes. So that was one problem that we thought we could solve.

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Kevin Mako: So we went out there and started talking to clinicians, started talking to people who are in that situation.

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Kevin Mako: So directly, those techniques we were talking about before interviewing observational work, all those things,

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Kevin Mako: they were the lead in to start to build out the user journey. We knew that our tech could do something, but the aspects of would someone buy it and would they value using it, we're missing.

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Kevin Mako: And the part that gave us the kickstart and the process was the user journey map.

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Kevin Mako: So by doing those interviews, by observing people, we were able to write down the start point, put it on the wall, and then start to draw it out.

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Kevin Mako: I really like the fact that you really start first with that customer profile. I think of one of our clients, right go fish underwater fishing camera you could look at it and say hey look we've got a great

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Rob Crowder: underwater fishing camera idea or you could look at it and say okay who is going to buy this what is the pain point that we're solving and how does our solution um work essentially to solve

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Rob Crowder: that problem right and that and that's where you did the exact same thing there where you looked at you built your user profile you identified a problem um a bracket pre diabetes then you looked at said okay well how do we solve that problem and then how does your product fit into that solution.

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Rob Crowder: I think that's a beautiful way. And I would argue that a lot of inventors don't really think beyond the feature set, both in when you're thinking of developing the product, but especially when you're going to sell the product. And I would argue this exact same product,

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Rob Crowder: or sorry, the exact same process that you went through there is also a great process for when you're done development and you're trying to sell. So when you're trying to figure out how am I actually going to create my messaging, what you said right there is almost identical to,

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Rob Crowder: to building out your customer marketing messaging. And it really comes down to, rather than talking about the features, you instead think about them. And that's what you've done here with Nutromics. Yeah,

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Rob Crowder: exactly. We're trying to break apart that start point. It's not the right start point.

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Rob Crowder: And I would encourage anyone who's thinking of going through this journey to really start with those people that you think you're solving a problem for. That is it.

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Rob Crowder: I mean, as well, to be to be really critical of what you're doing, not in a negative way, obviously, but just to think pragmatically,

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Rob Crowder: are your assumptions being validated in those areas? So is someone going to use this and value the use of it, that it becomes a product they can't live without? Is it something that can make money for your business so you can exist and live?

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Rob Crowder: And critiquing that really early on is, I think is really important. For us at Neutromics, you know, that opportunity,

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Rob Crowder: if we analyzed it in a commercial sense, that's quite a busy space. There's lots of companies solving pre-diabetes, and it's only going to get bigger.

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Kevin Mako: So there were lots of other angles we could have looked at, and we've actually landed on therapeutic drug monitoring now, because there are many drugs which are used

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Kevin Mako: frequently that are either nephrotoxic or ineffective.

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Kevin Mako: So a drug in the US that's used quite heavily is vancomycin. So it's an antibacterial drug. And our patch is capable of monitoring that drug concentration in a person in real time.

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Kevin Mako: So a doctor can always know what is the right next dose to give a patient. Very simple. And the consequence of not doing that right now is that people get sick and they die.

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Kevin Mako: So a bacterial infection can lead to sepsis can lead to all. kinds of horrible complications,

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Kevin Mako: billions of dollars of healthcare costs in the healthcare system,

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Kevin Mako: and high degrees of mortality. So when we used that opportunity and we looked at the pain points that we could solve for, that felt like something we could just jump on and fix really quickly.

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Kevin Mako: It's acute, like the problem was right there in front of us and we could do something about it.

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Rob Crowder: So the framework has many uses. One of them is to just check yourself and realize perhaps you might be on the wrong part. And that's okay. That's all part of the fun. But it's a technique you can use to feel okay with that.

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Rob Crowder: I think that's particularly important when it does come to either scientific or medical or even other, you know, more technical discoveries because although it's great, okay, you found this new discovery.

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Rob Crowder: And in Nutromics case, it was, you know, a certain medical. measurement tools.

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Rob Crowder: But a lot of people don't think that one step further. Okay, so so what? Right. What is the actual implication of that? What is the benefit? And it's great to see that you've gone through that journey. You explored different options. You weren't afraid to fail or to

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Rob Crowder: check yourself in that discovery phase so that eventually you would use that as a learning opportunity to find what was actually that low hanging fruit or like you said, the acute

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Rob Crowder: opportunity to really make impact quickly and effectively with your particular tool. So let's talk a bit about med tech and some best practices around that because that exercise that you just described is a great example.

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Rob Crowder: But for folks who are in the medical or healthcare industry in any way, what are some best practices as you're going through this exercise to come up with your healthcare or medical product based on your experience being in the field and working with lots of other products

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Rob Crowder: as well at the design firm?

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Rob Crowder: Yeah, it's really interesting med tech.

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Rob Crowder: You know, if you looked at it in isolation, you probably wouldn't go after it because it's really difficult. It's like the ultimate challenge in product development.

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Rob Crowder: But then it's linked to, you know, solving really important problems that impact people's lives. And that is this really strong motivating factor that keeps you working on it.

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Rob Crowder: And I would say that generally with MedTech, the distinction between normal product development is that there's this really rigorous bar of evidence and

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Rob Crowder: outputs and work that you have to produce before a product can be in the market. Now, there's obviously various different classifications of medical devices. Some are reasonably straightforward and

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Rob Crowder: they don't need that full-on kind of FDA clearance path.

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Rob Crowder: But, you know, if you're building a diagnostic tool or something like that, then there would be. And generally, that evidence is around safety,

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Rob Crowder: efficacy.

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Rob Crowder: So when you think about that and you think about those initial areas of product like the technology, is it useful and valuable for someone? Will it make money?

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Rob Crowder: Then there are frameworks that exist in those buckets for MedTech that are very specific. So that's kind of like an assistance really, because you know exactly what you've got to go through to get it done.

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Rob Crowder: So for the technology, you've got to prove that it's safe. So you've got to do the work in an engineering sense to get it to a bar where it's passed its verification tests.

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Rob Crowder: You've got the results of those that documented, they're written down, you can do it repeatedly. So it forces you to go right down the rabbit hole and chase down everything

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Kevin Mako: to make sure it's done.

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Kevin Mako: In figuring out if something's useful and valid, the lens in MedTech is about clinical utility. So spending time with clinicians, running those traditional kind of interviews and observational studies with patients,

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Kevin Mako: with clinicians,

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Kevin Mako: that's powerful as well.

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Kevin Mako: But the core part is what indication is your device or idea working on solving? And this plays into the commercial model, particularly in the US, where you have to figure out the provider and pay a aspect of this.

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Kevin Mako: So again, traditionally in product development, you think I've got a customer, I want them to buy this product. I'm going to map out how they're going to use it in the world and they're going to give me some money for it. That's quite straightforward.

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Kevin Mako: But in MedTech, you've got this reasonably, particularly in the US, particularly kind of complicated model of healthcare,

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Kevin Mako: where you have to find a way through that pathway to the person that's going to, pay for it and the way they're going to pay for it and how that works linked to the problem you're

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Kevin Mako: solving for a patient and a clinician.

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Kevin Mako: So in that user journey map example and the personas we talked

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Rob Crowder: about, there's often multiples. So the clinician, the patient, the pay, we do all of those.

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Rob Crowder: And in the technology side of things, then you have to work really, really hard in the early stages of proof of concept. So getting your principles correct, but the core

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Rob Crowder: utility of the product that you know that it can do it before you push the pin on commercialization and all of that large machine of everyone getting involved and building the thing that you think

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Rob Crowder: is right. You have to know that it's more or less right before you start doing that because that's that can get quite lengthy and expensive. A couple of things that I kind of derive from that.

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Rob Crowder: But first and foremost, you mentioned earlier with Neutromics that you picked essentially a specific vertical that you would go after. And I think that, you know, there's something to derive from that.

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Rob Crowder: And we talk about it a lot on the show in a number of verticals, not just MedTech, but it's key that when you're in startup mode with a new technology that, first of all,

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Kevin Mako: you make it of a high quality or that's the redundancy you're talking about. Ensure that the core of your technology is good. But in order to do that, you're going to have to be very focused on a very specific niche and a very specific target because you can burn out, especially in med tech when

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Kevin Mako: you have all these different players. If you're trying to be too many things to too many people, that means a lot of extra costs, a lot of extra clinical trials, a lot of extra variables that you probably won't be able to ride through.

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Kevin Mako: So more than anything, even in regular products, we talk about feature creep to avoid it, try to focus on your one or two key benefits to one or two. absolutely key demographics, very targeted, very narrow, because it's a massive planet.

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Kevin Mako: So that narrow demographics still could be hundreds of thousands of potential customers around

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Rob Crowder: the world, but if you're trying to be too many things and trying to capture too much of the market too early, you're going to burn out. And I imagine that, you know, based on what you've said here, I kind of string in that similar theme in MedTech and with your user journey mapping

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Rob Crowder: mapping process that you put together.

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Rob Crowder: Yeah, that's exactly what we did, Kevin. Yeah, it's a great because in building out that evidence base for the product, as I said before, we have to

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Rob Crowder: focus on the indication, and the indication is bacteremia in our case, right? So there's a certain number of people that get bacteremia. It doesn't mean that the patch couldn't be used for other indications where infections are

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Rob Crowder: present, but that isn't going to get it done.

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Kevin Mako: Like it doesn't, that doesn't give us a start point. So it had to be really ruthless, and it's kind of horrible. because you're like, my product is so good and it can do so many things, but that just opens up a can of worms of work that you have to try and get through.

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Kevin Mako: And you don't always have the time and the resources to do that. And also, it will not get you the commercial outcome that you need for a med tech product. You have to

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Kevin Mako: be really clear and focused at the start. Decision making is key and it's really difficult in product to make those decisions because it's all based on assumptions and evidence that is kind of qualitative.

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Kevin Mako: a lot of the time but you know you have to do it have to be focused well and I guess it makes your job easier if from the very beginning you've thought of this user journey mapping process who is

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Kevin Mako: your end customer and then as you're going through making these decisions it comes back to that

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Rob Crowder: original guiding star and that I think really helps as you as you when you start with that it's in the middle of the process and it's at the end I talked about messaging right that's kind of the end of the process and messaging, you're going through that same process of journey mapping.

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Rob Crowder: Ideally, it's the same result because you want the product, the idea that you've come up with to match the person, to match the different stakeholders, and to eventually match the messaging

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Rob Crowder: that's all going to fit together seamlessly to make a commercially viable product, something that's actually making sales and also profiting on the back end. All of that comes from the first steps of journey mapping. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's a good point. The, I,

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Rob Crowder: One direct example is we used our map to figure out,

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Rob Crowder: start to figure out the commercial model. Because it quickly became apparent who this device was impacting.

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Rob Crowder: And they kind of fell out of the journey map. It was like, oh, yeah, OK, we're at this point in time now. And the device is doing this and it's producing this data. Who's going to look at that? What are they going to do with that? Where does it go? Why is it valuable?

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Rob Crowder: And all of a sudden, we had these stakeholders mapped out that we could go and validate with actual hospitals. say, are these people making decisions based on this data?

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Rob Crowder: Yes, they are. Great. What do they need it to look like? Sketch some stuff out.

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Kevin Mako: And it just, I'm such a fan of it. Like, it just unpicks so many things and allows you to challenge assumptions right across the board. So, yeah, commercial viability. It triggered that as well. Which is generally the end game for most hardware startups, right?

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Rob Crowder: You're trying to become financially viable. It's the only way you're going to be able to make that second version. Or like for you guys, I'm sure new traumas, you've got all kinds, like you said, all kinds of things that this can do.

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Rob Crowder: You need your first one to be a winner so that you can then springboard off of that success and start working on different verticals, different versions of the projects and so on. And that will evolve over time. Like every kind of brand, every big company heads, right?

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Rob Crowder: But it all starts from that very first user journey map, keeping it simple, pushing it through the ranks, understanding your market, understanding how your hardware fits into that, that end user, that end market. and doing that all the way through.

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Rob Crowder: Are there any last tips as we wrap this up here for hardware startups, whether it's in the MedTech space or in general,

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Kevin Mako: using this user journey map and such that you want to leave everyone with through your years of experience in developing these things? Oh,

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Kevin Mako: yeah, I mean, I think it would just be about not being afraid to be wrong

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Kevin Mako: and to gather around the people that are going to be involved in making the product real and really listening to their thoughts and opinions about the assumptions

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Kevin Mako: that are there and overlay them with the thoughts of the people that are going to be impacted by the product. But as a person trying to build out a product, my one go-to thing is to just

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Kevin Mako: take a breath, take a pause, when I feel myself getting particularly passionate about a position or an idea that I need to just take a second and think about the other considerations.

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Kevin Mako: I mean, I think product people are brilliant because they generally are pragmatic by nature and can think broadly and, you know, consider other aspects and draw that into a decision because ultimately you have to make a decision.

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Kevin Mako: So the way to do that I've found is just to realize that you perhaps don't have all of the answers

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Kevin Mako: and being precious about it doesn't allow progress to be made sometimes. So it would be, yeah,

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Kevin Mako: trust the people around you, get good people around you, and don't be afraid to be wrong, I think.

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Kevin Mako: Rob, great advice. Couldn't set it better. much appreciated for your time to come on the show and share all these valuable insights. How can we learn more about Neutromics and about yourself and whatever else? Where do we go? Yeah.

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Kevin Mako: So neutromics.com. You can see us and learn about what we're doing. We're very active on LinkedIn.

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Kevin Mako: Myself, also our co-founders, Peter and Hittish and the rest of the team. We talk about the problems that we're solving, the avenues we might go down. We talk about fundraising for startups a fair bit.

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Kevin Mako: We're due to close around soon, so we're pretty excited about life. But we talk about some of the challenges in that.

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Kevin Mako: So our website, LinkedIn, go and have a look. We're producing lots of useful content, which perhaps your listeners will find useful. Rob, thanks again. Appreciate it. No problem. Thanks, Kevin. Take care.

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Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success.

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Narrator: This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the original and leading firm in North America to provide global caliber in-to-in physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product

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Narrator: business clients. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com. That's M-A-K-O-D-D-D-com for a free consultation from

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Narrator: from one of Mako Design's Ford Design Studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.