Product Storytelling: How Matthew Arnold Used a Comic to Share His Product Strategy
Storytelling is a critical skill for product people. And it’s often not enough to tell your story one time in one format—you need to experiment with sharing it many times in many formats to find what works best for your company and stakeholders.
This is why I love this story from my coachee, Matthew Arnold, Director of Product at Brain in Hand. Matthew knew that he needed a way to communicate his product vision and strategy—or “stratevision” as he calls it—and he landed on a solution that’s both simple and effective: a comic.
Let’s hear what Matthew has to say in an interview mit Melissa Suzuno about the experience.
Can you share an overview of your company and your role? Who are your customers and what types of goals are you helping them achieve?
Brain in Hand is a hybrid support service combining mobile and web apps with 24/7 human support and coaching to help neurodivergent people and others with challenges with anxiety and overwhelm to live more independently.
How did you decide to start working with Petra and what were you hoping to get out of the experience?
I had been in my role for a year and realized that I could be making better decisions faster if I had the support of an experienced third party. I met with three great coaches and decided to go with Petra because of her incredible product knowledge. I felt she’d give me honest and direct feedback (which she did!). I was hoping to be able to more confidently coach and lead in my organization by creating clearer direction and making it easier for my team to make decisions.
Can you share more about your process of writing your product strategy and turning it into a short comic series? Did you encounter any initial challenges?
I first wrote a six-page document about the future of our product and user experience, and I used this to create a very simple future state user journey map. I got input from key team members around the business and, while much of it was positive, I realized it wasn’t achieving what I needed it to. It wasn’t helping people understand where we were headed, it wasn’t memorable enough, and it wasn’t getting people excited.
We had also been doing a lot of discovery work to better articulate our user needs (with job stories) and to understand the challenges in the business, but I hadn’t been running “product strategy discovery,” which meant some key people didn’t see it coming at first. In retrospect, being economical with the research may have caused more issues than it solved.
What were some wins or moments of clarity?
After my first false start, and with some direction from Petra, I forced myself to write three versions of the document: short, medium, and long. This forced me to reframe my document and I came up with a simpler structure around four key pillars of the user and client experience.
With this written document, I spent a lot of time doing 1:1 walkthroughs with my team and key people throughout the business. I learned a huge amount from this process, which allowed me to iterate and hone in on the final written doc.
What I ended up creating was a mid-term vision/strategy hybrid or “stratevision,” which is the right horizon for our current stage of business. This wasn’t immediately clear and I was getting myself mixed up with trying to think too far into the future and focusing too much on novelty. Grounding it in the appropriate time frame and focusing on the core user and client challenges we need to overcome to reach our business goals sounds obvious, but simplified the process a lot.
What inspired you to turn the strategy into a comic strip? How did you go about doing this?
Petra was clear that I needed to be able to deliver the strategy in a number of formats. I have always found many of the visual examples of future product states/visions to be a little alienating… a John Deere video of the future of agriculture is often cited in product vision and strategy blogs, but it wasn’t a useful example for my context (or budget). However, I did understand the importance of bringing the document to life, making it as accessible as possible and exciting the team.
First, I started by storyboarding the key messages we needed to get across and then I worked with one of the Product Designers in my team, Dave. He had worked on a similar exercise previously (for a bank) and suggested the style of comic, which is just a keynote template. We worked together over two to three sessions to flesh out the story and then Dave worked his magic and created the final doc (after a few iterations).
A few of the panels from the comic. Matthew says they’re normally presented live or via video and not consumed as is, but we wanted you to see what they look like.
Does this content exist in other formats?
Currently it exists in a Word document, the comic strip slides, and I’ve recorded a video presenting the slides that I’ve posted on our internal Product Hub.
What are your learnings or key takeaways from this experience?
Setting direction takes time. The output is important, but the process and conversations are probably most valuable. It’s mostly about listening, synthesizing, and presenting things back to the business.
What advice would you offer someone who might want to try something similar?
The process takes time. There’s no way around that, but I think getting started and not overthinking it was key for me. I don’t believe there is a right way to present/communicate a strategy or vision; it’s the process that is most important. As with everything else, approach it iteratively and get feedback often.
It’s got to be based on your organizational goals, so if you don’t have those, get clarity on them first.
It’s got to be based in reality—it should be backed by user and market research that back up the underlying assumptions. There should be consistency between this document, user and client job stories, and your understanding of the market.
Final thoughts from Petra
There is not much to add here. Matthew said it all and I can only shine a light on the most important aspects once again. If you are a product lead and need to provide your team with some directional clarity, take these steps:
Make sure you understand the high-level organizational goals and strategy first.
Start writing down whatever is currently in your mind for the future of your product(s).
Refine: Talk to as many of your colleagues as possible and make sure your ideas are grounded in some market and user research.
Work on the storytelling: Have it ready in short, medium, and long as well as in a written, spoken, and illustrated form.
And no sugar coating here: It is a lot of work. But once you’ve done it, you’ll be able to provide everybody with the necessary information to make decisions faster, with more confidence, and in line with the company and product strategy. So it is time well invested.
Thanks Matthew for sharing!