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  • Opportunities for AI in Accessibility

    Opportunities for AI in Accessibility

    In reading Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility innovation strategist who helps run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways; and it can also be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well.

    I’d like you to consider this a “yes… and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to refute any of what he’s saying but rather provide some visibility to projects and opportunities where AI can make meaningful differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t real risks or pressing issues with AI that need to be addressed—there are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday—but I want to take a little time to talk about what’s possible in hopes that we’ll get there one day.

    Alternative text

    Joe’s piece spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision models generating alternative text. He highlights a ton of valid issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision models continue to improve in the quality and richness of detail in their descriptions, their results aren’t great. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor—especially for certain image types—in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they’re in (which is a consequence of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant (that should probably have descriptions) and those that are purely decorative (which might not need a description) either. Still, I still think there’s potential in this space.

    As Joe mentions, human-in-the-loop authoring of alt text should absolutely be a thing. And if AI can pop in to offer a starting point for alt text—even if that starting point might be a prompt saying What is this BS? That’s not right at all… Let me try to offer a starting point—I think that’s a win.

    Taking things a step further, if we can specifically train a model to analyze image usage in context, it could help us more quickly identify which images are likely to be decorative and which ones likely require a description. That will help reinforce which contexts call for image descriptions and it’ll improve authors’ efficiency toward making their pages more accessible.

    While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way (even for humans), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s suppose that you came across a chart whose description was simply the title of the chart and the kind of visualization it was, such as: Pie chart comparing smartphone usage to feature phone usage among US households making under $30,000 a year. (That would be a pretty awful alt text for a chart since that would tend to leave many questions about the data unanswered, but then again, let’s suppose that that was the description that was in place.) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart (because an onboard model concluded this), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:

    • Do more people use smartphones or feature phones?
    • How many more?
    • Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
    • How many is that?

    Setting aside the realities of large language model (LLM) hallucinations—where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts”—for a moment, the opportunity to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for blind and low-vision folks as well as for people with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and so on. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

    Taking things a step further: What if you could ask your browser to simplify a complex chart? What if you could ask it to isolate a single line on a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to swap colors for patterns? Given these tools’ chat-based interfaces and our existing ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools, that seems like a possibility.

    Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For example, perhaps it could turn that pie chart (or better yet, a series of pie charts) into more accessible (and useful) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be amazing!

    Matching algorithms

    Safiya Umoja Noble absolutely hit the nail on the head when she titled her book Algorithms of Oppression. While her book was focused on the ways that search engines reinforce racism, I think that it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A lot of this stems from a lack of diversity among the people who shape and build them. When these platforms are built with inclusively baked in, however, there’s real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.

    Take Mentra, for example. They are an employment network for neurodivergent people. They use an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on over 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. On the employer side, it considers each work environment, communication factors related to each job, and the like. As a company run by neurodivergent folks, Mentra made the decision to flip the script when it came to typical employment sites. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in; reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

    When more people with disabilities are involved in the creation of algorithms, that can reduce the chances that these algorithms will inflict harm on their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so important.

    Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For example, if you were to follow a bunch of nondisabled white male academics who talk about AI, it could suggest that you follow academics who are disabled or aren’t white or aren’t male who also talk about AI. If you took its recommendations, perhaps you’d get a more holistic and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward) those groups.

    Other ways that AI can helps people with disabilities

    If I weren’t trying to put this together between other tasks, I’m sure that I could go on and on, providing all kinds of examples of how AI could be used to help people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:

    • Voice preservation. You may have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement or you may be familiar with the voice-preservation offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This is, of course, the same tech that can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something that we need to approach responsibly, but the tech has truly transformative potential.
    • Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they have plans to expand this to other conditions as the project progresses. This research will result in more inclusive data sets that will let more people with disabilities use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as well as control their computers and other devices more easily, using only their voice.
    • Text transformation. The current generation of LLMs is quite capable of adjusting existing text content without injecting hallucinations. This is hugely empowering for people with cognitive disabilities who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions of text or even text that’s prepped for Bionic Reading.

    The importance of diverse teams and data

    We need to recognize that our differences matter. Our lived experiences are influenced by the intersections of the identities that we exist in. These lived experiences—with all their complexities (and joys and pain)—are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences need to be represented in the data that we use to train new models, and the folks who contribute that valuable information need to be compensated for sharing it with us. Inclusive data sets yield more robust models that foster more equitable outcomes.

    Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you have content about disabilities that’s authored by people with a range of disabilities, and make sure that that’s well represented in the training data.

    Want a model that doesn’t use ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. That being said, when it comes to sensitivity reading, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon. 

    Want a coding copilot that gives you accessible recommendations from the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.


    I have no doubt that AI can and will harm people… today, tomorrow, and well into the future. But I also believe that we can acknowledge that and, with an eye towards accessibility (and, more broadly, inclusion), make thoughtful, considerate, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.


    Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for helping me with the development of this piece, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

  • The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    The Wax and the Wane of the Web

    I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.

    The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.

    How we got here

    I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

    The birth of web standards

    At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

    Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and .NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems (particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress). In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.

    These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. But we still relied on tons of hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes (such as rounded or angled corners) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks). Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning (or both). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. And JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.

    The web as software platform

    The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, and that led to the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages (which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools came others, including collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

    At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, and they gave us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

    This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and consume. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that that entails.

    Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? Jeremy Keith wrote “Of Time and the Web.” Or check out the “Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Neal Agarwal also has a fun tour through “Internet Artifacts.”

    Where we are now

    In the last couple of years, it’s felt like we’ve begun to reach another major inflection point. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to make a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all flavors. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools of the IndieWeb can help with this, but they’re still relatively underimplemented and hard to use for the less nerdy. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

    Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has accelerated, especially through efforts like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I often learn about a new feature and check its browser support only to find that its coverage is already above 80 percent. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

    Today, with a few commands and a couple of lines of code, we can prototype almost any idea. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. But the upfront cost that these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes due as upgrading and maintaining them becomes a part of our technical debt.

    If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks—which used to let us adopt new techniques sooner—have now become hindrances instead. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail (whether through poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors), there’s often no alternative, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

    Where do we go from here?

    Today’s hacks help to shape tomorrow’s standards. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks—for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we’re unwilling to admit that they’re hacks or we hesitate to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

    Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. Weigh the costs of those developer-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What’s the cost to users? To future developers? To standards adoption? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve grown accustomed to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

    Start from standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. The same isn’t always true of third-party frameworks. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the ’90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of sites built with frameworks even after just a couple years.

    Design with care. Whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes, consider the impacts of each decision. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Rather than rushing headlong to “move fast and break things,” use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with deliberation.

    Always be learning. If you’re always learning, you’re also growing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. You might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year, even if you were to focus solely on learning standards. (Remember XHTML?) But constant learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the hacks that you learn one day may help to inform different experiments another day.

    Play, experiment, and be weird! This web that we’ve built is the ultimate experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be courageous and try new things. Build a playground for ideas. Make goofy experiments in your own mad science lab. Start your own small business. There has never been a more empowering place to be creative, take risks, and explore what we’re capable of.

    Share and amplify. As you experiment, play, and learn, share what’s worked for you. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

    Go forth and make

    As designers and developers for the web (and beyond), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s imbue our values into the things that we create, and let’s make the web a better place for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, make it better, make it again, or make something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Every time you think that you’ve mastered the web, everything will change.

  • To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    To Ignite a Personalization Practice, Run this Prepersonalization Workshop

    Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many cautionary tales, no overnight successes, and few guides for the perplexed. 

    Between the fantasy of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong—like when we encounter “persofails” in the vein of a company repeatedly imploring everyday consumers to buy additional toilet seats—the personalization gap is real. It’s an especially confounding place to be a digital professional without a map, a compass, or a plan.

    For those of you venturing into personalization, there’s no Lonely Planet and few tour guides because effective personalization is so specific to each organization’s talent, technology, and market position. 

    But you can ensure that your team has packed its bags sensibly.

    There’s a DIY formula to increase your chances for success. At minimum, you’ll defuse your boss’s irrational exuberance. Before the party you’ll need to effectively prepare.

    We call it prepersonalization.

    Behind the music

    Consider Spotify’s DJ feature, which debuted this past year.

    We’re used to seeing the polished final result of a personalization feature. Before the year-end award, the making-of backstory, or the behind-the-scenes victory lap, a personalized feature had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized. Before any personalization feature goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a backlog of worthy ideas for expressing customer experiences more dynamically.

    So how do you know where to place your personalization bets? How do you design consistent interactions that won’t trip up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many budgeted programs to justify their ongoing investments, they first needed one or more workshops to convene key stakeholders and internal customers of the technology. Make yours count.

    ​From Big Tech to fledgling startups, we’ve seen the same evolution up close with our clients. In our experiences with working on small and large personalization efforts, a program’s ultimate track record—and its ability to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and organize its design and technology efforts—turns on how effectively these prepersonalization activities play out.

    Time and again, we’ve seen effective workshops separate future success stories from unsuccessful efforts, saving countless time, resources, and collective well-being in the process.

    A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a switch-flip moment in your tech stack. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps: 

    1. customer experience optimization (CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation)
    2. always-on automations (whether rules-based or machine-generated)
    3. mature features or standalone product development (such as Spotify’s DJ experience)

    This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. You won’t need these cards. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

    Set your kitchen timer

    How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The surrounding assessment activities that we recommend including can (and often do) span weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here’s a summary of our broader approach along with details on the essential first-day activities.

    The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

    1. Kickstart: This sets the terms of engagement as you focus on the opportunity as well as the readiness and drive of your team and your leadership. .
    2. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
    3. Work your plan: This phase is all about creating a competitive environment for team participants to individually pitch their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its operating model.

    Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

    Kickstart: Whet your appetite

    We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience.” It explores the personalization possibilities in your organization. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. This could be a content-management system combined with a marketing-automation platform. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

    Spark conversation by naming consumer examples and business-to-business examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions (such as onboarding sequences or wizards), notifications, and recommenders. We have a catalog of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

    This is all about setting the table. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? If you want a broader view, here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework.

    Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature (or something similar). In our cards, we divide connected experiences into five levels: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to focus the conversation on the merits of ongoing investment as well as the gap between what you deliver today and what you want to deliver in the future.

    Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is critical because it emphasizes how personalization can not only help your external customers but also affect your own ways of working. It’s also a reminder (which is why we used the word argument earlier) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

    Each team member should vote on where they see your product or service putting its emphasis. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. The intention here is to flesh out how different departments may view their own upsides to the effort, which can vary from one to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

    The third and final kickstart activity is about naming your personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will data and privacy compliance be too big of a challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? (We’re pretty sure that you do: it’s just a matter of recognizing the relative size of that need and its remedy.) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. Our Detractor card, for example, lists six stakeholder behaviors that hinder progress.

    Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential barriers to your future progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. As studies have shown, personalization efforts face many common barriers.

    At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? Good—you’re ready to continue.

    Hit that test kitchen

    Next, let’s look at what you’ll need to bring your personalization recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are sweeping and powerful, and they present broad options for how your organization can conduct its activities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

    What’s important here is to avoid treating the installed software like it were a dream kitchen from some fantasy remodeling project (as one of our client executives memorably put it). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

    The ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together over the course of the workshop. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

    The dishes will come from recipes, and those recipes have set ingredients.

    Verify your ingredients

    Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure—andyou’ll validate with the right stakeholders present—that you have all the ingredients on hand to cook up your desired interaction (or that you can work out what needs to be added to your pantry). These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together. 

    This isn’t just about discovering requirements. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team: 

    1. compare findings toward a unified approach for developing features, not unlike when artists paint with the same palette; 
    2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar; 
    3. and develop parity across performance measurements and key performance indicators too. 

    This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

    Compose your recipe

    What ingredients are important to you? Think of a who-what-when-why construct

    • Who are your key audience segments or groups?
    • What kind of content will you give them, in what design elements, and under what circumstances?
    • And for which business and user benefits?

    We first developed these cards and card categories five years ago. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And we still encounter new possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

    Here are three examples for a subscription-based reading app, which you can generally follow along with right to left in the cards in the accompanying photo below. 

    1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with  a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
    2. Welcome automation: When there’s a newly registered user, an email is generated to call out the breadth of the content catalog and to make them a happier subscriber.
    3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

    A useful preworkshop activity may be to think through a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, although we’ve also found that this process sometimes flows best through cocreating the recipes themselves. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

    You can think of the later stages of the workshop as moving from recipes toward a cookbook in focus—like a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual “cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

    Better kitchens require better architecture

    Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Beware anyone who says otherwise. With that being said,  “Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes.”

    When personalization becomes a laugh line, it’s because a team is overfitting: they aren’t designing with their best data. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. Your AI’s output quality, for example, is indeed limited by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

    You can definitely stand the heat…

    Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach will bring about the necessary focus and intention to succeed. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, hit the test kitchen to save time, preserve job satisfaction and security, and safely dispense with the fanciful ideas that originate upstairs of the doers in your organization. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

    This workshop framework gives you a fighting shot at lasting success as well as sound beginnings. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. But if you use the same cookbook and shared recipes, you’ll have solid footing for success. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

    While there are associated costs toward investing in this kind of technology and product design, your ability to size up and confront your unique situation and your digital capabilities is time well spent. Don’t squander it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

  • User Research Is Storytelling

    User Research Is Storytelling

    Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the characters and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting adventures. I even dreamed up ideas for movies that my friends and I could make and star in. But they never went any further. I did, however, end up working in user experience (UX). Now, I realize that there’s an element of theater to UX—I hadn’t really considered it before, but user research is storytelling. And to get the most out of user research, you need to tell a good story where you bring stakeholders—the product team and decision makers—along and get them interested in learning more.

    Think of your favorite movie. More than likely it follows a three-act structure that’s commonly seen in storytelling: the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. The first act shows what exists today, and it helps you get to know the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two introduces the conflict, where the action is. Here, problems grow or get worse. And the third and final act is the resolution. This is where the issues are resolved and the characters learn and change. I believe that this structure is also a great way to think about user research, and I think that it can be especially helpful in explaining user research to others.

    Use storytelling as a structure to do research

    It’s sad to say, but many have come to see research as being expendable. If budgets or timelines are tight, research tends to be one of the first things to go. Instead of investing in research, some product managers rely on designers or—worse—their own opinion to make the “right” choices for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get teams some of the way, but that approach can so easily miss out on solving users’ real problems. To remain user-centered, this is something we should avoid. User research elevates design. It keeps it on track, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the issues with your product and reacting to them can help you stay ahead of your competitors.

    In the three-act structure, each act corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is critical to telling the whole story. Let’s look at the different acts and how they align with user research.

    Act one: setup

    The setup is all about understanding the background, and that’s where foundational research comes in. Foundational research (also called generative, discovery, or initial research) helps you understand users and identify their problems. You’re learning about what exists today, the challenges users have, and how the challenges affect them—just like in the movies. To do foundational research, you can conduct contextual inquiries or diary studies (or both!), which can help you start to identify problems as well as opportunities. It doesn’t need to be a huge investment in time or money.

    Erika Hall writes about minimum viable ethnography, which can be as simple as spending 15 minutes with a user and asking them one thing: “‘Walk me through your day yesterday.’ That’s it. Present that one request. Shut up and listen to them for 15 minutes. Do your damndest to keep yourself and your interests out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography.” According to Hall, [This] will probably prove quite illuminating. In the highly unlikely case that you didn’t learn anything new or useful, carry on with enhanced confidence in your direction.”  

    This makes total sense to me. And I love that this makes user research so accessible. You don’t need to prepare a lot of documentation; you can just recruit participants and do it! This can yield a wealth of information about your users, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their lives. That’s really what act one is all about: understanding where users are coming from. 

    Jared Spool talks about the importance of foundational research and how it should form the bulk of your research. If you can draw from any additional user data that you can get your hands on, such as surveys or analytics, that can supplement what you’ve heard in the foundational studies or even point to areas that need further investigation. Together, all this data paints a clearer picture of the state of things and all its shortcomings. And that’s the beginning of a compelling story. It’s the point in the plot where you realize that the main characters—or the users in this case—are facing challenges that they need to overcome. Like in the movies, this is where you start to build empathy for the characters and root for them to succeed. And hopefully stakeholders are now doing the same. Their sympathy may be with their business, which could be losing money because users can’t complete certain tasks. Or maybe they do empathize with users’ struggles. Either way, act one is your initial hook to get the stakeholders interested and invested.

    Once stakeholders begin to understand the value of foundational research, that can open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making process. And that can guide product teams toward being more user-centered. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s like winning an Oscar in movie terms—it often leads to your product being well received and successful. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. Storytelling is the key to this process, and knowing how to tell a good story is the only way to get stakeholders to really care about doing more research. 

    This brings us to act two, where you iteratively evaluate a design or concept to see whether it addresses the issues.

    Act two: conflict

    Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in act one. This usually involves directional research, such as usability tests, where you assess a potential solution (such as a design) to see whether it addresses the issues that you found. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. Like act two in a movie, more issues will crop up along the way. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act. 

    Usability tests should typically include around five participants according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can usually identify most of the problems: “As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.” 

    There are parallels with storytelling here too; if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. Having fewer participants means that each user’s struggles will be more memorable and easier to relay to other stakeholders when talking about the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

    Researchers have run usability tests in person for decades, but you can also conduct usability tests remotely using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You can think of in-person usability tests like going to a play and remote sessions as more like watching a movie. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. In-person usability research is a much richer experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. You also get real-time reactions—including surprise, agreement, disagreement, and discussions about what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors’ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

    If in-person usability testing is like watching a play—staged and controlled—then conducting usability testing in the field is like immersive theater where any two sessions might be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can go out to meet users at their location to do your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. As researchers, you have less control over how these sessions go, but this can sometimes help you understand users even better. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. In-person usability tests provide another level of detail that’s often missing from remote usability tests. 

    That’s not to say that the “movies”—remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. And they open the doors to a much wider geographical pool of users. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working. 

    The benefit of usability testing, whether remote or in person, is that you get to see real users interact with the designs in real time, and you can ask them questions to understand their thought processes and grasp of the solution. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Furthermore, you can test hypotheses and gauge whether your thinking is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is the heart of the story—where the excitement is—but there can be surprises too. This is equally true of usability tests. Often, participants will say unexpected things, which change the way that you look at things—and these twists in the story can move things in new directions. 

    Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. And too often usability testing is the only research process that some stakeholders think that they ever need. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users (foundational research), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. That’s because you’re narrowing the focus of what you’re getting feedback on, without understanding the users’ needs. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. It’s only feedback on a particular design in the context of a usability test.  

    On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This illustrates the importance of doing both foundational and directional research. 

    In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can help motivate stakeholders to address the issues that come up.

    Act three: resolution

    While the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can propel stakeholders into action, the third part is about resolving the problems from the first two acts. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That means the whole product team, including developers, UX practitioners, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other stakeholders that have a say in the next steps. It allows the whole team to hear users’ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it lets the UX research and design teams clarify, suggest alternatives, or give more context behind their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

    This act is mostly told in voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They give the stakeholders their recommendations and their guidance on creating this vision.

    Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. “The most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved,” writes Duarte. “That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently.”

    This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides evidence for “what is”—the problems that you’ve identified. And “what could be”—your recommendations on how to address them. And so on and so forth.

    You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick mockups of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the end of the session when you’ve wrapped everything up in the conclusion by summarizing the main issues and suggesting a way forward. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage gives stakeholders the next steps and hopefully the momentum to take those steps!

    While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. All the elements of a good story are there in the three-act structure of user research: 

    • Act one: You meet the protagonists (the users) and the antagonists (the problems affecting users). This is the beginning of the plot. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. The output of these methods can include personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards.
    • Act two: Next, there’s character development. There’s conflict and tension as the protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. The output of these can include usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices.
    • Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. In act three, researchers may use methods including presentation decks, storytelling, and digital media. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures. 

    The researcher has multiple roles: they’re the storyteller, the director, and the producer. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters (in the research). And the stakeholders are the audience. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users’ stories through research. By the end, the stakeholders should walk away with a purpose and an eagerness to resolve the product’s ills. 

    So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. Ultimately, user research is a win-win for everyone, and you just need to get stakeholders interested in how the story ends.

  • Win by Focusing on Your Core Users

    Win by Focusing on Your Core Users

    Win by Focusing on Your Core Users written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

    The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Shane Murphy-Reuter In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Shane Murphy-Reuter, President of Go-To-Market at Calendly. Calendly, best known for revolutionizing scheduling software, is now redefining its space by expanding deeper into relationship management and SMB tools without losing sight of its core value: simplifying […]

    Win by Focusing on Your Core Users written by Jarret Redding read more at Duct Tape Marketing

    The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Shane Murphy-Reuter

    In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Shane Murphy-Reuter, President of Go-To-Market at Calendly. Calendly, best known for revolutionizing scheduling software, is now redefining its space by expanding deeper into relationship management and SMB tools without losing sight of its core value: simplifying time.

    During our conversation, Shane shared the behind-the-scenes strategy behind Calendly’s evolution—from a simple time management tool to an intelligent, AI-powered business automation platform. As the company scales, its unwavering focus on serving solopreneurs, SMBs, and customer-centric roles like sales and coaching has set it apart in a saturated SaaS market. Shane emphasized the importance of aligning sales, marketing, and customer experience—a key piece of Calendly’s GTM strategy that supports sustainable SaaS growth.

    Key Takeaways:

    • Customer Obsession Wins: Calendly’s success is rooted in its deep understanding of time-sensitive professionals like coaches, therapists, and salespeople—its most fervent users.

    • Grow Without Diluting: Rather than chasing every trend, Calendly avoids becoming a “one-trick pony” by strategically expanding within its strongest customer base.

    • Enterprise Can Still Be Personal: Even as it moves into enterprise scheduling, Calendly maintains the simplicity and flexibility that made it popular with individuals.

    • Smart Product Expansion: By anchoring new offerings in its scheduling core and enhancing them with AI, Calendly innovates while staying true to its mission.

    • Blending Sales Models: Shane discussed merging product-led growth with a tailored sales approach—ensuring that customers get value whether they click “buy now” or engage a sales rep.

    • Category Creation + Innovation: Calendly isn’t just a tool; it’s shaping how modern professionals manage relationships and time—key pillars of any successful business.

    Chapters:

    • [00:09] Introducing Shane Murphy-Reuter
    • [00:51] Extending Your Core Business
    • [04:47] How Hyperfocus Protects Your Business
    • [06:51] Find your Unique Advantage
    • [10:28] Messaging for Clients with Different Needs
    • [15:05] Shifting Mindset to Deal with Growth
    • [17:00] Incentivizing Sales Teams
    • [19:00] How Will AI Effect Scheduling Software

    More About Shane Murphy-Reuter: 

    • Check out Shane Murphy-Reuter’s Website
    • Connect with Shane Murphy-Reuter on LinkedIn

    John Jantsch (00:00.93)

    Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Shane Murphy-Reuter. He’s the president and go-to-market. I guess you just call that GTM, don’t you? At Calendly, the platform helping individuals, teams, and organizations create better meeting experiences by simplifying complex scheduling. He’s focused on driving brand awareness and demand by ensuring alignment between sales.

    marketing and CX. So Shane, welcome to the show.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (00:32.607)

    Great to be here. Yes, we shorten it to GTM, but call it whatever you want. Yeah, no, it’s awesome to be your big fan of the show. So great to talk.

    John Jantsch (00:41.07)

    Thank you. So I’m going to talk about, I’m going to ask this question in the context of Calendly, but I think that this applies really to a lot of businesses out there. I Calendly started as a small idea of a technology for scheduling, just scheduling. And it’s certainly grown to something much bigger. That’s something that I think happens to a lot of companies you want to talk a little bit about. I know you’re

    You haven’t been there from the beginning, but you want to talk a little bit about the evolution of that thinking in Calendly?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (01:13.087)

    Yeah, of course. Well, I’ve actually only been at Calendly now, I think four months. I like to write it down, know, the expectations are lower. And so, yeah, I haven’t seen the journey from inside, but actually I’ve known Tope for, who’s the CEO of Calendly for about five or six years. You know, I’ve been very much watching it from the sidelines. And I would say also, if you look at my background, the companies that I tend to join are at a very similar stage to Calendly where

    they’ve invented some new technology to solve some sort of pain point for a customer type and then have that exponential growth when they sort of like crack the market a little bit to get that product market fit. And then they start to think about, where maybe growth is starting to slow a little bit in that original market and where to go from here. And I think Calendly has been on that journey. Originally,

    John Jantsch (01:51.778)

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (02:03.561)

    we solved just that scheduling problem, that one problem around how do two people schedule meetings together. And it’s been very, very successful. But now the question is, well, how do you extend from here? And I think a lot of companies get that wrong, frankly. Like think there’s broadly two paths, right? You either take the technology that you’ve built and apply it to different markets.

    John Jantsch (02:28.077)

    Yes.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (02:28.409)

    Or you take a target market or a customer segment that you have strength with with your original product and then extend the product offerings that you provide to those customers. And certainly, Canley’s strategy from here and hopefully very, very soon we’ll be launching our second major, major product is to really extend the products that we offer within a certain target market because we just believe there’s massive opportunity there to like.

    solve other points in the relationship management lifecycle for our customers. it’s been, yeah, I’ve been here four months, but I think that the account is on like a pretty, classic journey that I’ve seen a lot of companies go through.

    John Jantsch (03:07.394)

    Do you, do you feel like you are on the journey to define a category or you have defined a category? You mentioned relationship management. I don’t know that people would have applied what, what Cowan Lee initially started doing to that term. mean, do feel like you’re, you’re categorizing, you know, a new way of working.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (03:24.641)

    It’s a great question. think scheduling, our original product, we created the category, right? We are now basically the Kleenex for scheduling, which is amazing. I think the challenge though with it is different categories of different towns, right? Different total addressable markets. And I think for scheduling, it is a relatively narrow use case, right? Like it’s, while it’s extremely important for our customers, it’s narrow, but we have this incredible hook into the customer.

    John Jantsch (03:28.034)

    Yeah. Right.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (03:54.753)

    How can we add more? And to be fair, I think for a go-forward strategy, we think about relationship management software more generally. No, I think the new areas that we’ll go into are existing categories like, I don’t want to give up our product roadmap, but you can imagine the types of other relationship management softwares that are out there, like the CRMs, et cetera. I think where our unique advantage is really in the customer types that we’ll go in service. And I think that we can

    if we can build the software with hyper focus on kind of these SMBs and solopreneurs, I think that we can have great success relative to the incumbents that are in the market. So to answer the question more directly, I think we’ve done this category creation thing with scheduling and we’ll continue to hopefully dominate that market. From here though, I think it’s more about innovating within how we deliver in existing categories.

    John Jantsch (04:52.974)

    I’m sure you maybe talk about this in closed door meetings, maybe worry about it even sometimes, but how does a company like Calendar, especially in the early days when you essentially created a product that had a certain set of features and the Microsofts, the Googles of the world could easily squash that. You know, one day wake up and say, we’re going to do that. How do you kind of ward off that? do you worry about, again, I know you’ve grown to the point where,

    You probably have more market share in scheduling than some of the big people that, you know, that could have done that. But do you ever sit around and worry about, Hey, we have to create more features or get more hooks in, so that we’re not just this one trick pony that gets squashed.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (05:36.421)

    Yeah, that’s a great question. And for sure, I think if you look at it from the outside, you may imagine that something like scheduling is very, very easy to replicate. And I think this is where this hyper focus on your most fervent customers is so important. If you talk to the majority of our customers, their time is their money. A lot of them actually sell their time. If you’re a coach,

    John Jantsch (06:03.032)

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (06:03.263)

    you know, your therapist, et cetera. And then others are, if you’re in sales, like your time is how you get out there. And therefore an incredible scheduling experience is really important. So for sure, there are many competitors out there, lots of competitors, but because they just don’t have that hyper focus like we do around the true intricacies of the details of the problem set of our customers, they have not been able to compete. And for what it’s worth,

    When we look at our data, for sure we’re hearing a little bit more about other competitors popping up as you would expect as any company scales. But in reality, it’s not impacted our business in the way that I think from the outside in you would expect. And so we actually think that we have a better opportunity to disrupt other incumbents than the other way around, given just how critically important this is for our customers. They’re not going to go and buy a slightly less

    John Jantsch (06:53.304)

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (07:01.419)

    good product, they’re just not gonna do it, they want the best.

    John Jantsch (07:04.962)

    One of the things I’ve seen software companies do as they they grew is like, let’s take on this and this and let’s do email and let’s do the CRM part of it. And it makes a lot of sense, right? It’s like, I’ve got this end to end product, but then they make compromises in every single category because it’s very hard to have the one thing that fits all. mean, is there any danger you think in trying for somebody to actually start trying to take market share by adding

    you know, more product that’s already out there and actually diluting what they’re good at.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (07:37.345)

    is an absolute risk and one that you need to be extremely careful of. So every company I’ve worked at as we’ve gone on this multi-product journey, there is a constant debate around how much resource should you put into continuing to improve your core product versus how much should you put into new innovative areas. So it is a debate and we will never stop innovating on our core of scheduling. I do think though, as you think about like,

    the product areas that you move into, the question has to be, what’s your unique advantage to win there? And I don’t like, I’ve seen companies just sort of go, we’re just going to go in there, we’re going to build in and say, well, okay, well, you really thought about the strategy and it can’t just be like a price thing, right? That’s not enough. And I think typically that unique advantage tends to come from, as I said before, one either is some sort of technology advantage that you have.

    John Jantsch (08:12.792)

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (08:33.375)

    I’ll give an example of Webflow where I worked last. Webflow’s unique technology advantage was that built a way for you to manipulate code in a visual environment. Very easy for them to take that technology and move it beyond just building websites into how you build other types of technology. They have a technology advantage they can apply to different markets. For Calendly, think the reason Calendly has been so successful are two things. One,

    I do think that we have a unique penetration within a type of customer that I mentioned before, that we really understand and can, as we go into these new areas, make sure that we’re addressing their unique needs for a new product. like cars, right, before it used to be Model T, any color you want as long as it’s black, which is fine when you’ve got a technology advantage like Henry Ford had. He had a technology advantage, so you mass market it.

    John Jantsch (09:24.27)

    you

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (09:30.205)

    Now that’s crazy because that technology advantage no longer exists. You have every million type of car for different types of very specific segments of the market. And so as we think about our go for product strategy, think some of it, I wouldn’t say we necessarily have a technology advantage, but I think that we have a data advantage in being so hooked so clearly into the customer’s most important thing, which is their time and the data around that.

    And then we have a unique advantage, I think, in making sure that when we build those new product areas, they’re beautifully connected and integrated with scheduling and that we build for that segment. And we don’t try and build the Model T, we try and build a very, very, very tailored experience for the customer set that we know that we have the greatest right to win in. And for what it’s worth, we also believe that the incumbents in the relationship management software market have left that market behind. And so I think there’s a…

    great opportunity for us to win. But back to the original question, yes, of course we need to balance and make sure that we’re not under-investing in our core. I use the phrase internally at companies that if you kill the cash cow, nobody gets milk. And so, yeah, you want to make sure that the core business, which is for us scheduling, continues to, we continue innovating.

    John Jantsch (10:55.394)

    One of the things that’s really tempting as companies grow to the size that Connolly has now, I mean, some of your original customers clicked on a button, signed up. It was just them in their house doing scheduling and it worked for them. It was awesome. It was easy, no friction. And now you’re starting to have enterprise con. That security and adoption and uptime and all these kinds of things really have to be sold.

    How do you message first off? Let’s let we can talk about operationally as well, but how do you message to such distinctly different sales channels?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (11:38.185)

    Yeah, it’s a great question. I think about this through two different lenses. The first one is obviously the who you’re going after. And for what it’s worth, typically in enterprise companies, particularly for a company like Calendly, the user within that company tends to test it out first. And the user is the person that has that problem. So a salesperson within an enterprise company will go, this is really painful scheduling.

    John Jantsch (12:00.429)

    Mm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (12:06.625)

    I’ve heard by Cano, you’ll go check it out and they’ll come in through our PLG funnel, our self-serve funnel. And there, how you sell to them and the message for them is extremely similar as the message to a solopreneur and SMB because they are the user, they have this actual direct pain of the product solves. And so I think that when, in a lot of ways that is consistent. Now, of course, if you’ve got that person in your funnel, right, who is the user within an enterprise,

    Your job now is to use other channels to go and directly target the procurement team, the security team, the actual economic buyer with very targeted messaging. This is typically through a sales team. We can also be using things like account-based marketing to go do that so that you bring your enterprise value proposition to them. And this is classic in SaaS. This is why if you go to most SaaS websites, unless they are purely focused on the enterprise market,

    the homepage will be very directed at the end user, and they will have an enterprise section which tells the full enterprise value proposition. And the price in the packaging, most of the packages are designed for the actual users, and they’ve got an enterprise package designed for those other people that you’re trying to sell to. I think it’s about, and finding the balance of that depends on your business and the degree to which it’s like your opportunities in the enterprise versus in the SMB.

    John Jantsch (13:08.675)

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (13:33.409)

    So I think you needed to do both, but I think my key point there is that even in the enterprises, are where you’re to get the adoption is getting a end user to love it because they end up becoming what we call in the, in sort of go to market, the champion. They’re going in, Hey boss, we’ve got to use this thing. Here’s how much time it will save me. If you don’t get the champion, if you don’t get that user to care, the

    John Jantsch (13:50.894)

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (13:59.883)

    Procurement team, the security team, they don’t give a shit. Oops, sorry, shouldn’t have said it. They don’t care. And so I think that’s the key thing that I think oftentimes people miss.

    John Jantsch (14:09.402)

    So is part of what you’ve been brought to do is build a sales team or is there already a sales team that’s on the ground?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (14:17.457)

    Yeah, we already had a sales team. when I joined, Cal and Lee had already gone on the journey to build an enterprise product offering an enterprise sort of package and team. think what I’m trying to do is blend the self-serve and sales experience in a more natural way. So again, a lesson that I’ve had at pretty much every single company I’ve worked for in B2B has had a combination of self-serve or product-led growth and sales led growth.

    And typically speaking, they tend to be pretty siloed on islands. And so what happens is you either have this experience for the customer that’s fully self-serve, maybe a reactive support team, but pretty much self-serve. And then if you’re willing to buy the enterprise package, now you go through this like really human intensive experience. The SDR goes to the AE, goes to the account management team with implementation. And it’s like, it makes actually no sense if you think about it from first principles, why it would be such a

    binary distinction between the two. And so I think a lot of companies are now realizing, you know, things like velocity sales or, you know, much more softer touch sales to still support the customer, but also get out of the way if they want to just like adopt and use. And so the team had already started to do some of that work, but it’s a lot of what I think about day in day out is how to blend the two in a more natural way.

    John Jantsch (15:37.496)

    Yeah.

    Just get rid of a few of the acronyms, that would help, right? So have you found, and this may be a tough question for you to answer, you may not want to answer this, but have you found that the role that you’ve been brought into play is new and has that required a mindset shift because of the way the company’s grown, because of the company culture? Again, you don’t have to talk specifically about your experience as much as…

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (15:45.353)

    yeah.

    John Jantsch (16:10.242)

    I’m sure other companies have experienced those kind of growing pains too.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (16:14.465)

    Yeah, it’s a great question. Like I think what a lot of companies are starting to realize is, and in my experience is that particularly technology companies are founded by technologists. And so a lot of the time they start self-serve, right? They go, well, we can just set up a signup link and people can just buy it. And then at some point a board member, somebody said, hey, you’ve got a bunch of larger customers here. You need to build an enterprise offering. They go and hire a head of sales from some enterprise company.

    John Jantsch (16:25.612)

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (16:42.591)

    And that person brings a playbook and drops this like very classic sales experience on top of the self-serve base, creating this sort of siloed nature in this kind of like a, and so I think a lot of companies, there’s probably been about 10 years of evolution of that happening. A lot of companies have started to really feel the pain of those things being so disconnected. And so it is becoming more common.

    John Jantsch (16:54.082)

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (17:10.305)

    to bring in a person running all of go-to-market, particularly in companies where they have both experiences in their business for all the reasons that I described because in the traditional model of having maybe a CMO who runs the self-serve side and a CRO or head of sales who runs the sales side, that traditional model actually beds in the fact that these two things are on a silo. And so…

    John Jantsch (17:35.054)

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (17:37.205)

    I do think that it’s increasingly happening that whether it’s they just use the term CRO, it’s your tone, all of it, or a president of GoToMarket like I am, a lot more companies are doing it now.

    John Jantsch (17:50.982)

    I’m going to get you in trouble here probably. But do you think that the way that salespeople are incentivized really actually exacerbates that problem?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (18:02.387)

    It’s a really great question. actually remember listening to Bill Macias on a podcast who was the, he was head of CMO at Slack. I think he was at Zendesk, like kind of a goat in the industry. He talked about, I think it was at Slack bringing in for the sales team that part of their compensation was linked also to a customer satisfaction of the sales process. And so anyway, I just thought I’d share that. But yes, I do think that there is a, there is a.

    I think in the more enterprise end of sales, having incentivization to ensure that, you know, the sales team do a good job of maximizing the revenue potential is important. So like, if I’m not incentivized, what I’ll do is I’ll say, yeah, okay, well, maybe I’ll maximize the discount that I give, or I’ll say, I won’t try and bother some multi-product sell. I’ll just say, just get them in and on this one product. And so in certain instances, you do want incentives for the sales team to

    John Jantsch (18:50.968)

    Yeah, yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (19:01.761)

    push for the largest value sell as possible and incentivization around with commission structures, et cetera, can be important there. And so, for example, at Calendly, our enterprise sales team absolutely are commission-based and I think that’s the right approach. In a more velocity sales model that I mentioned before where it might be lighter touch, you’re semi-helping the customer like a support, right? You’re answering questions, you’re doing somewhat of a value sell but not the full thing.

    you, you, do think that you want to be very careful not to have like a traditional model. And so for example, I currently, we don’t write their more salaries. And so I think you just need to apply the right incentive structure based on what, what are you trying to incentivize these people to do? And, and, and so I do think that there is a place for it as I mentioned, but maybe not across the board on a sales team.

    John Jantsch (19:58.75)

    All right. Let’s end today on a product question. I think this might be a record. think we’re 20 minutes in exactly. And I’m the first mention of AI. So how is AI going to impact the product from what you know so far?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (20:16.935)

    Yeah, that’s a great question. I mentioned that we believe this is an opportunity to innovate in the relationship management software space for SMBs and solopreneurs, know, the smaller companies. One of the reasons that up until now, it’s been difficult to build this type of software for those customers is that typically those software types of software need like an army of operations people to set them up and manage them like

    If you talk to companies, have Salesforce or Marketo or any of these, there’s like, there’s like job boards of like, you know, kind of, all these ops to manage these tools. And so if you’re at SMB, that’s really challenging, right? The beautiful thing is that we’re going to start entering the space just as AI is getting to the point where they can start automating a bunch of the, used to be, take a lot of operational, time and effort. And so.

    John Jantsch (20:45.314)

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (21:12.033)

    You can imagine a world where like, you know, today, a CRM, even in most cases, still looks like one of these sort of like databases, right? Line items of people or whatever. Exactly. Right. And why does that exist? Because it was a record keeper. It was just a database, right? In the world of AI, that all happens automatically. Now a CRM or relation management software can be actually about surfacing the insights and actions of things that can truly lead to you creating better relationships. And so I think.

    John Jantsch (21:18.722)

    Yeah, it’s just a relational database, right?

    John Jantsch (21:25.422)

    the

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (21:41.601)

    I think it’s a beautiful time for any company that we start thinking about innovating into a new space because you have a blank sheet of paper to define the way you interact with this product in an AI first way, which I think the incumbents are going to really struggle with. And that’s why a lot of the incumbents are doing the co-pilot thing, right? We’ve got this chunky, hard to use software. So how we use AI will give you a clip.

    John Jantsch (22:00.589)

    Yeah.

    John Jantsch (22:04.162)

    Right.

    button.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:10.517)

    to help you to figure out how to use a really hard software. Well, the other way you could do it is actually design it from first principles in a way that’s really easy to use. And so anyway, we think that there’s a huge opportunity there. And for sure, our product roadmap from here is like AI first. And we are trying to think about everything from that lens.

    John Jantsch (22:28.142)

    Yeah.

    Well, Shane, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there anywhere you’d want to invite people to connect with you? I know obviously Calendly is where they can find out about the product, but anywhere you like to hang out?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:45.117)

    LinkedIn is the best one. I used to be in other places, but I think we can safely point people to LinkedIn for now.

    John Jantsch (22:51.692)

    Yeah, awesome. Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter (22:56.893)

    Thanks so much, John. It was a pleasure.

    powered by

  • How Small Businesses Can Use AI (Without the Hype or Overwhelm)

    How Small Businesses Can Use AI (Without the Hype or Overwhelm)

    Read more at Duct Tape Marketing’s article, How Small Businesses Can Use AI ( Without the Hype or Overwhelm ) by John Jantsch.

    Cut the Noise: A Practical AI Guide for Small Business Owners AI is everywhere, and if you’re a small business owner, you’re probably wondering:” How do I actually make this work for my business without adding complexity or draining my budget”? Here’s a quick check. You’re not only. Many small businesses are stuck between the]… ]

    Jarret Redding‘s book Win by Focusing on Your Main People can be found at Duct Tape Marketing.

    The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Shane Murphy-Reuter

    I spoke with Shane Murphy-Reuter, President of Go-To-Market at Calendly in this season of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Calendly, best known for revolutionizing planning technology, is now redefining its area by expanding deeper into relation management and SMB tools without losing sight of its core value: improving time.

    During our chat, Shane shared the behind-the-scenes approach behind Calendly’s evolution—from a basic time management tool to an intelligent, AI-powered company automation system. As the business expands, its unwavering commitment to providing solopreneurs, SMBs, and customer-centric tasks like sales and coaching has made it stand out in a crowded SaaS business. Shane emphasized the importance of matching sales, marketing, and customer experience—a essential piece of Calendly’s GTM plan that supports green SaaS development.

    Important Remarks

    • Customer Obsession Wins: Calendly’s success is rooted in its deep knowledge of time-sensitive experts like coaches, therapists, and salespeople—its most sincere people.
    • Develop Without Diluting: More than chasing every pattern, Calendly avoids becoming a “one-trick mare” by carefully expanding within its strongest client base.
    • Business Can Still Be Personal: Calendly maintains the convenience and freedom that made it popular with people even as it transitions into business planning.
    • Smart Product Expansion: By anchoring innovative products in its timing base and enhancing them with AI, Calendly innovates while staying true to its goal.
    • Blending Sales Models: Shane discussed combining a customized sales approach and product-led growth, ensuring that customers receive value whether they choose to buy now or speak with a sales representative.
    • Category Creation + Innovation: Calendly isn’t just a tool, it’s shaping how modern professionals manage relationships and time—key pillars of any successful business.

    Chapters:

    • ]00: 09 ] Introducing Shane Murphy-Reuter
    • [00:51] Extending Your Core Business
    • ]04: 47] How Hyperfocus Protects Your Business
    • Find your Unique Advantage at [06: 51]
    • ]10: 28 ] Messaging for Clients with Different Needs
    • ]15: 05 ] Shifting Mindset to Deal with Growth
    • [17 :00] Encouragement Sales Teams
    • ]19: 00] How Will AI Effect Scheduling Software

    More About Shane Murphy-Reuter

      Check out Shane Murphy-Reuter&#8217, s Website

    • Connect with Shane Murphy-Reuter on LinkedIn

    John Jantsch ( 00: 00. 93.)

    Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. Shane Murphy-Reuter is my guest today. He’s the president and go-to-market. You probably just call that GTM, don’t you? At Calendly, the platform helping individuals, teams, and organizations create better meeting experiences by simplifying complex scheduling. He’s focused on driving brand awareness and demand by ensuring alignment between sales.

    CX and marketing. So Shane, welcome to the show.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 00: 32.607 )

    Great to be here. Yes, we shorten it to GTM, but call it whatever you want. Yes, no, being a huge fan of the show is awesome. So great to talk.

    John Jantsch ( 00: 41.07 )

    Thank you. So I’m going to talk about, I’m going to ask this question in the context of Calendly, but I think that this applies really to a lot of businesses out there. I Calendly began with a meager notion of a scheduling technology, or simply scheduling. And it’s certainly grown to something much bigger. That’s something I believe many businesses do when you want to talk a little bit about. I know you’re

    You haven’t been there from the beginning, but you want to talk a little bit about the evolution of that thinking in Calendly?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 01: 13.087 )

    Yeah, of course. I’ve actually only been at Calendly for four months, I believe. I like to write it down, know, the expectations are lower. And so, yeah, I haven’t seen the journey from inside, but actually I’ve known Tope for, who’s the CEO of Calendly for about five or six years. I’ve been closely watching it from the sidelines, you know. And I would say also, if you look at my background, the companies that I tend to join are at a very similar stage to Calendly where

    They’ve developed some new technology to address a customer type’s pain point, and then they experience exponential growth when they sort of like market-catch a little to get that product market fit. And then they start to think about, where maybe growth is starting to slow a little bit in that original market and where to go from here. And I think Calendly has been on that journey. Originally,

    John Jantsch ( 01: 51.778 )

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 02: 03.561 )

    we solved just that scheduling problem, that one problem around how do two people schedule meetings together. And it’s been very, very successful. But the question is now, well, how do you leave this place? And I think a lot of companies get that wrong, frankly. Like, you believe there are generally two paths, right? You either take the technology that you’ve built and apply it to different markets.

    John Jantsch ( 02: 28.077 )

    Yes.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 02: 28.409 )

    Or you take a target market or a customer segment that you have strength with with your original product and then extend the product offerings that you provide to those customers. And in all likelihood, Canley’s plan from this, and hopefully very soon, will be to release our second major, major product because we think there is a lot of potential there.

    solve other points in the relationship management lifecycle for our customers. it’s been, yeah, I’ve been here four months, but I think that the account is on like a pretty, classic journey that I’ve seen a lot of companies go through.

    John Jantsch ( 03:07.394 )

    Do you, do you feel like you are on the journey to define a category or you have defined a category? You made mention of relationship management. I don’t know that people would have applied what, what Cowan Lee initially started doing to that term. mean, do feel like you’re, you’re categorizing, you know, a new way of working.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 3: 24. 641 )

    It’s a great question. Think scheduling, our first product, we created the category, right? We are now basically the Kleenex for scheduling, which is amazing. I think the challenge though with it is different categories of different towns, right? various total markets that can be addressed. And I think for scheduling, it is a relatively narrow use case, right? Although it’s very important for our customers, it’s narrow, like it’s, but we have this incredible hook into the customer.

    John Jantsch ( 03: 28.034 )

    Yeah. Right.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 03: 54.753 )

    How can more be added? And to be fair, I think for a go-forward strategy, we think about relationship management software more generally. No, I think the new areas that we’ll go into are existing categories like, I don’t want to give up our product roadmap, but you can imagine the types of other relationship management softwares that are out there, like the CRMs, et cetera. I believe that the key to our success lies in the types of customers we’ll serve. And I think that we can

    If we can create software with a particular focus on these SMBs and solopreneurs, I believe we can achieve great success in comparison to the market’s current leaders. So to answer the question more directly, I think we’ve done this category creation thing with scheduling and we’ll continue to hopefully dominate that market. From here though, I think it’s more about innovating within how we deliver in existing categories.

    John Jantsch ( 04: 52. 974 )

    I’m sure you maybe talk about this in closed door meetings, maybe worry about it even sometimes, but how does a company like Calendar, especially in the early days when you essentially created a product that had a certain set of features and the Microsofts, the Googles of the world could easily squash that. You know, when you wake up, you say,” We’re going to do that.” How do you kind of ward off that? do you worry about, again, I know you’ve grown to the point where,

    You are likely to have more market share in scheduling than some of the big people who, you are aware, might have been able to do that. But do you ever sit around and worry about, Hey, we have to create more features or get more hooks in, so that we’re not just this one trick pony that gets squashed.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 5: 36.421 )

    Yeah, that’s a great question. And for sure, I think if you look at it from the outside, you may imagine that something like scheduling is very, very easy to replicate. And I believe that this hyperattention to your most devoted customers is crucial. If you talk to the majority of our customers, their time is their money. Many of them actually sell their time. If you’re a coach,

    John Jantsch ( 06: 03.032 )

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 06: 03.263 )

    you know, your therapist, et cetera. And then there are people who think your time is how you get paid if you’re in sales. And therefore an incredible scheduling experience is really important. So for sure, there are many competitors out there, lots of competitors, but because they just don’t have that hyper focus like we do around the true intricacies of the details of the problem set of our customers, they have not been able to compete. And for what it’s worth,

    When we look at our data, for sure we’re hearing a little bit more about other competitors popping up as you would expect as any company scales. However, in reality, it hasn’t had the same impact on our business as I would have hoped. And so we actually think that we have a better opportunity to disrupt other incumbents than the other way around, given just how critically important this is for our customers. They’re not going to go and buy a slightly less

    John Jantsch ( 06: 53. 304 )

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 07: 01.419 )

    good product, but they won’t do it because they want the best.

    John Jantsch ( 07: 04.962 )

    One of the things I’ve seen software companies do as they they grew is like, let’s take on this and this and let’s do email and let’s do the CRM part of it. And it makes a lot of sense, don’t you think? It’s like, I’ve got this end to end product, but then they make compromises in every single category because it’s very hard to have the one thing that fits all. Essentially, do you believe there is a chance that someone will actually try to take market share by adding more?

    you know, more product that’s already out there and actually diluting what they’re good at.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 07: 37.345 )

    is a risk that you must be very cautious of and is an absolute risk. So every company I’ve worked at as we’ve gone on this multi-product journey, there is a constant debate around how much resource should you put into continuing to improve your core product versus how much should you put into new innovative areas. Therefore, there is a debate, and we will never stop creating new ideas for our scheduling fundamental. I do think though, as you think about like,

    the product areas that you move into, the question has to be, what’s your unique advantage to win there? And I don’t like it because I’ve seen businesses kind of go,” We’re just going to go in there, we’re going to build in,” and say,” Well, okay, well, you really thought about the strategy and it can’t just be like a price thing, right?” That’s not enough. And as I said before, I believe that the most distinctive advantage typically comes from having some sort of technological advantage that you have.

    John Jantsch ( 08: 12.792 )

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 08: 33.375 )

    I’ll provide an example of Webflow from the last time I worked. Webflow’s unique technology advantage was that built a way for you to manipulate code in a visual environment. Very simple for them to incorporate that technology into how you build other types of technology beyond just building websites. They have a technology advantage they can apply to different markets. For Calendly, think the reason Calendly has been so successful are two things. One,

    I do think that we have a unique penetration within a type of customer that I mentioned before, that we really understand and can, as we go into these new areas, make sure that we’re addressing their unique needs for a new product. like cars, right, before it was a Model T, you can get any color you want as long as it’s black, which is fine if you have a technology advantage like Henry Ford did. He had a technology advantage, so you mass market it.

    John Jantsch ( 09: 24.27 )

    you

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 09: 30.205 )

    Now that’s crazy because that technology advantage no longer exists. You have every single car made for a number of distinct market segments. And so as we think about our go for product strategy, think some of it, I wouldn’t say we necessarily have a technology advantage, but I think that we have a data advantage in being so hooked so clearly into the customer’s most important thing, which is their time and the data around that.

    And then we have a unique advantage, I think, in making sure that when we build those new product areas, they’re beautifully connected and integrated with scheduling and that we build for that segment. And we don’t try to build the Model T; instead, we try to create a very, very specific experience for the customer base that we believe has the greatest right to enjoy. And for what it’s worth, we also believe that the incumbents in the relationship management software market have left that market behind. And so I believe there is a…

    great opportunity for us to win. But back to the original question, yes, of course we need to balance and make sure that we’re not under-investing in our core. I say to employees at companies that if you kill the cash cow, nobody will get milk. And so, yeah, you want to make sure that the core business, which is for us scheduling, continues to, we continue innovating.

    John Jantsch ( 10: 55. 394 )

    One of the things that’s really tempting as companies grow to the size that Connolly has now, I mean, some of your original customers clicked on a button, signed up. It was just them in their house doing scheduling and it worked for them. It was fantastic. It was easy, no friction. And you’re starting to have business con now. That security and adoption and uptime and all these kinds of things really have to be sold.

    How do you message first off? Let’s say we can discuss operational issues as well, but how do you communicate to such distinctly distinct sales channels?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 11: 38.185 )

    Yes, that’s a really good question. I think about this through two different lenses. The first one is obviously the who you’re going after. And for what it’s worth, typically in enterprise companies, especially for a company like Calendly, the user within that company typically tests it out first. And the user is the person that has that problem. This is very painful scheduling because a salesperson will leave an enterprise company.

    John Jantsch ( 12: 00.429 )

    Mm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 12: 06.625 )

    You’ll go check it out, and they’ll enter via our PLG and self-serve funnel, as I’ve heard from Cano. And there, how you sell to them and the message for them is extremely similar as the message to a solopreneur and SMB because they are the user, they have this actual direct pain of the product solves. And so I believe that when, in many ways, is consistent. Now, of course, if you’ve got that person in your funnel, right, who is the user within an enterprise,

    Your job now is to use other channels to go and directly target the procurement team, the security team, the actual economic buyer with very targeted messaging. A sales team typically handles this. We can also be using things like account-based marketing to go do that so that you bring your enterprise value proposition to them. And this SaaS classic is. This is why if you go to most SaaS websites, unless they are purely focused on the enterprise market,

    the homepage will be very directed at the end user, and they will have an enterprise section which tells the full enterprise value proposition. And the cost of the packaging: the majority of the packages are made for the real users, and there is an enterprise package made specifically for those customers you’re trying to sell to. I think it’s about, and finding the balance of that depends on your business and the degree to which it’s like your opportunities in the enterprise versus in the SMB.

    John Jantsch ( 13: 08.675 )

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 13: 33.409 )

    So I think you needed to do both, but I think my key point there is that even in the enterprises, are where you’re to get the adoption is getting a end user to love it because they end up becoming what we call in the, in sort of go to market, the champion. They are entering, and we need to use this, boss. Here’s how much time it will save me. The champion is the only thing that you can do if you don’t get that user to care.

    John Jantsch ( 13: 50.894 )

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 13: 59.883 )

    The security team, the procurement team, they don’t give a damn. Oops, sorry, shouldn’t have said it. They are uninterested. And so I think that’s the key thing that I think oftentimes people miss.

    John Jantsch ( 14: 09.402 )

    So, is one of the things you’ve been given to do is create a sales team, or is there already a sales team that is operational?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 14: 17.457 )

    Yes, we already had a sales team. when I joined, Cal and Lee had already gone on the journey to build an enterprise product offering an enterprise sort of package and team. think what I’m trying to do is blend the self-serve and sales experience in a more natural way. Again, a lesson I’ve learned from almost every B2B company I’ve worked for was a combination of self-serve or product-led growth and sales-led growth.

    And typically speaking, they tend to be pretty siloed on islands. So what happens is that you either have a completely self-serve experience for the customer or have a reactive support team that is essentially self-serve. And then if you’re willing to buy the enterprise package, now you go through this like really human intensive experience. The SDR goes to the AE, goes to the account management team with implementation. And it’s like, if you think about it from the beginning, it actually makes no sense. Why would it be such a big deal?

    binary distinction between the two. And so, I believe that many businesses are now realizing things like velocity sales or, you know, much more soft touch sales to support the customer while also getting out of the way if they want to just adopt and use. And so the team had already started to do some of that work, but it’s a lot of what I think about day in day out is how to blend the two in a more natural way.

    John Jantsch ( 15: 37.496 )

    Yeah.

    Just get rid of a few acronyms, right? That would be helpful. So have you found, and this may be a tough question for you to answer, you may not want to answer this, but have you found that the role that you’ve been brought into play is new and has that required a mindset shift because of the way the company’s grown, because of the company culture? Again, you don’t need to discuss your experience in particular as much as you do…

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 15: 45.353 )

    yeah.

    John Jantsch ( 16: 10.242 )

    Other businesses have certainly experienced those kinds of growing pains.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 16: 14.465 )

    Yes, that’s a really good question. Like I think what a lot of companies are starting to realize is, and in my experience is that particularly technology companies are founded by technologists. And so a lot of the time they start self-serve, right? They go, well, we can just create a signup link so that customers can simply purchase it. And then at some point a board member, somebody said, hey, you’ve got a bunch of larger customers here. An enterprise offering is necessary. They go and hire a head of sales from some enterprise company.

    John Jantsch ( 16: 25.612 )

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 16: 42. 591 )

    And that person brings a playbook and drops this like very classic sales experience on top of the self-serve base, creating this sort of siloed nature in this kind of like a, and so I think a lot of companies, there’s probably been about 10 years of evolution of that happening. Many businesses are beginning to understand the pain caused by that disconnect. And so it is becoming more common.

    John Jantsch ( 16: 54.082 )

    Mm-hmm.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 17: 10.305 )

    to bring in a person running all of go-to-market, particularly in companies where they have both experiences in their business for all the reasons that I described because in the traditional model of having maybe a CMO who runs the self-serve side and a CRO or head of sales who runs the sales side, that traditional model actually beds in the fact that these two things are on a silo. And so…

    John Jantsch ( 17: 35.054 )

    Sure.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 17: 37.205 )

    I do believe that it’s becoming more common for businesses to use the term CRO, whether it’s their tone or a GoToMarket president like I am.

    John Jantsch ( 17: 50.982 )

    I’m likely going to get you in trouble here. But do you think that the way that salespeople are incentivized really actually exacerbates that problem?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 18: 02.387 )

    It’s a really excellent question. actually remember listening to Bill Macias on a podcast who was the, he was head of CMO at Slack. I believe he was working at Zendesk, which he describes as a goat in the sector. He talked about, I think it was at Slack bringing in for the sales team that part of their compensation was linked also to a customer satisfaction of the sales process. And so anyway, I just thought I’d share that. However, I do believe there is a and that there is a.

    I think in the more enterprise end of sales, having incentivization to ensure that, you know, the sales team do a good job of maximizing the revenue potential is important. So, for example, if I’m not incentivized, what I’ll do is say, yeah, okay, well, maybe I’ll maximize the discount that I offer, or I’ll say, I won’t try to bother some multi-product sales. I’ll just say, just get them in and on this one product. And so in certain instances, you do want incentives for the sales team to

    John Jantsch ( 18: 50. 968 )

    Yeah, yeah.

    ( 1976 ) Shane Murphy-Reuter

    push for the largest value sell as possible and incentivization around with commission structures, et cetera, can be important there. And so, for example, at Calendly, our enterprise sales team absolutely are commission-based and I think that’s the right approach. You’re semi-helping the customer like a support in the earlier, more clocked sales model, where it might be lighter touch, right? You’re answering questions, you’re doing somewhat of a value sell but not the full thing.

    You, you, do you believe you should be very cautious in order to avoid acting like a typical model. And so for example, I currently, we don’t write their more salaries. And so I think you just need to apply the right incentive structure based on what, what are you trying to incentivize these people to do? And so, I do believe there is a place for it on a sales team, though perhaps not across the board.

    John Jantsch ( 19: 58.75 )

    Okay. Let’s end today on a product question. I think this might be a record. Think exactly 20 minutes in. And I’m the first mention of AI. So, based on what you know so far, how will AI affect the product?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 20: 16.935 )

    Yeah, that’s a great question. I mentioned that we think SMBs and solopreneurs, as well as smaller businesses, have a chance to innovate in the relationship management software market. One of the reasons that up until now, it’s been difficult to build this type of software for those customers is that typically those software types of software need like an army of operations people to set them up and manage them like

    There are like, there are like job boards of like, you know, kind of, all these ops to manage these tools if you talk to companies that have Salesforce or Marketo or any of these. And so if you’re at SMB, that’s really challenging, right? The beautiful thing is that we’re going to start entering the space just as AI is getting to the point where they can start automating a bunch of the, used to be, take a lot of operational, time and effort. And so.

    John Jantsch ( 20: 45.314 )

    Yeah.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 21: 12.033 )

    You can imagine a world where like, you know, today, a CRM, even in most cases, still looks like one of these sort of like databases, right? Line items of people or whatever. Absolutely. Right. And why is that possible? Because it was a record keeper. It was just a database, right? That all happens automatically in the world of AI. Now a CRM or relation management software can be actually about surfacing the insights and actions of things that can truly lead to you creating better relationships. And so I believe it.

    John Jantsch ( 21: 18.722 )

    Yeah, it’s just a relational database, right?

    John Jantsch ( 21: 25.422 )

    the

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 21: 41.601 )

    You have a blank sheet of paper to define how you interact with this product in an artificial intelligence first way, which I believe the incumbents will struggle with, so I think it’s a great time for any company to start thinking about innovating into a new space. And that’s why a lot of the incumbents are doing the co-pilot thing, right? We’ve got this chunky, hard to use software. So how we use AI will give you a clip.

    John Jantsch ( 22: 00.589 )

    Yeah.

    John Jantsch ( 22: 04. 162 )

    Right.

    button.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 22: 10.517 )

    to help you to figure out how to use a really hard software. The other way to do it would be to actually design it from the ground up in a way that’s really simple to use. And so anyway, we think that there’s a huge opportunity there. And for sure, AI comes first on our product roadmap from here. And we are trying to think about everything from that lens.

    John Jantsch ( 22: 28.142 )

    Yeah.

    I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast for a moment, Shane. Is there anywhere you’d want to invite people to connect with you? Where do you like to hang out, besides Calendly, where can you find out about the product?

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 22: 45.117 )

    LinkedIn is the best one. Although I used to work elsewhere, I believe we can still safely point people to LinkedIn for the time being.

    John Jantsch ( 22: 51.692 )

    Yes, that’s awesome. Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

    Shane Murphy-Reuter ( 22: 56.893 )

    Thank you so much, John. It was a pleasure.

    powered by
  • Daredevil: Born Again’s Successful First Season Is a Good Sign for the MCU

    Daredevil: Born Again’s Successful First Season Is a Good Sign for the MCU

    This article contains year 1 clues for Daredevil: Born Once. The information are the devil in the information. When the author’s attack forced them to halt Daredevil: Born Again, a long-awaited revival series, Marvel realized that. Although six of the 18 designed shows had been finished, Marvel fired artists Chris […]…]…

    The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again’s productive first season was a positive sign for the MCU, and it was the first post.

    The Black Mirror show 8220, Hotel Reverie, has clues in this article. &#8221,

    You know what I mean when I say that Black Mirror is about systems, but it isn’t about it.

    Sorry about that; perhaps an illustration from Hotel Reverie&#8221 would help. Issa Rae plays Brandy Friday, a current movie star who assumes the role of the female lead in the remake of her all-time favourite black-and-white classic. In this season 7, Issa Rae portrays her in the role of the female lead. Like many other Black Mirror figures, Brandy is guilty of No Reading The Instructions and is unaware that remaking the movie means online stepping in and persuasively playing her part to the finish.

    cnx. powershell. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Hotel Reverie isn’t just about technologies, it’s. Redream is basically what initiates events, and the episode, which was directed by Haolu Wang and was written by Charlie Brooker, can address difficult issues involving digital personhood, copyright laws, and adore itself. However, the story wouldn’t be able to observe those issues in the first place without that technology as a starting point. Issa Rae’s attraction to the position was fueled by the relationship between sci-fi criticism and the human condition.

    I can recall being extremely excited to receive a Black Mirror text and also being considered for it, and then being completely immersed in each of the amounts of it. Rae tells Den of Geek and other sources at a roundtable trip that I was going to say yes anyhow, but I was unquestionably in that situation.

    Rae, a long-time Black Mirror lover, was well aware of Brandy’s trademarked systems that made its entrance to Hotel Reverie. A little device that is placed on a person’s temple to interact with a virtual reality interface has been seen before and is still relevant throughout the show’s canon. It first popped up in season 3&#8217, s &#8220, San Junipero, &#8221, then made appearances in season 4&#8217, s &#8220, USS Callister, &#8221, and season 5&#8217, s &#8220, Striking Vipers &#8221, ( where it was referred to as an &#8220, Experiencer Disk&#8221 ,). A variation of it also turns up in winter 7&#8217, s &#8220, Eulogy. The system has never had an established name up until now, and it was manufactured by TCKR Systems.

    &#8220, Charlie]Brooker ] calls it a &#8216, Nubbin, &#8217, but Awkwafina&#8217, s character calls it a &#8216, Mesmerizer. &#8217, I don&#8217, t know if that &#8217, s the vernacular version of it, &#8221, Rae says. &#8220, I didn&#8217, t have the &#8216, real&#8217, type on display. I’m supposed to reveal this, but I had a smaller, false type with double-sided audio. So I was really excited to hold a true one more just. &#8221,

    The real, real, and 8221 Nubbin that Rae recently obtained was certainly the one used to picture this season 7 meta commercial.

    @nubbin #blackmirror authentic audio &#8211, BlackMirror issa wright taking a fast trip to another real #nubbin #blackmirror

    Similar to that ad campaign, a Netflix-hosted stimulation provided the opportunity for guests to experience the device that is unquestionably called a Nubbin with a company logo and all. On this one, Charlie Brooker seems to have found a way to win. Sorry, Awkwafina&#8217, s figure!

    The use of the doohickey, which is now known as a Nubbin, has an additional level of frequency around. Hotel Reverie is ultimately a touching like story where two women make a connection between themselves and space, much like that timeless event of the show. The story also comes to an end with a San Junipero spring egg as it turns out that Brandy Friday’s address is 3049 Junipero Drive, which is revealed as &#8220. &#8221,

    Charlie claimed that this is the first season he has written for this season and that is #8220. San Junpiero has a lot of work to load, so I really hope people can look at them both differently but also enjoy them as suits to one another, Rae says.

    Netflix currently has all six bouts of Black Mirror time 7.

    The second article on Den of Geek was How Hotel Reverie Expands Upon the Black Mirror Canon.

  • Doctor Who: What’s Stopping the TARDIS From Returning to Earth?

    Doctor Who: What’s Stopping the TARDIS From Returning to Earth?

    Trailers appear in the Doctor Who show” The Robot Revolution.” Oh, the TARDIS’s endless potential. That tiny blue box can transport you through every sun that has ever existed, every event that has ever occurred or will ever occur, except when it doesn’t. That is what Belinda Chandra ( no Miss ) discovered in […]…

    What’s preventing the TARDIS from returning to Earth in Doctor Who? second appeared on Den of Geek.

    The Black Mirror show 8220, Hotel Reverie, has clues in this article. &#8221,

    You know what I mean when I say that Black Mirror is about systems, but it isn’t about it.

    Sorry about that; perhaps an illustration from Hotel Reverie&#8221 would help. Issa Rae plays Brandy Friday, a current movie star who assumes the role of the female lead in the remake of her all-time favorite hotel Reverie classic in season 7. Like many other Black Mirror figures, Brandy is guilty of not reading The Instructions and is unaware that remaking the movie means technologically stepping into the original version where she must sing her part eloquently enough to get to the end.

    cnx. command. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Hotel Reverie isn’t just about systems, it’s. Redream is basically what initiates events, and the episode, which was directed by Haolu Wang and was written by Charlie Brooker, can address difficult issues involving electric personhood, copyright laws, and adore itself. However, the story wouldn’t be able to discover those issues in the first place without that technology as a starting point. Issa Rae’s attraction to the position was fueled by the relationship between sci-fi criticism and the human condition.

    I can recall being extremely excited to receive a Black Mirror text and also being considered for it, and then being completely immersed in each of the amounts of it. Rae tells Den of Geek and other sources at a roundtable trip that I was going to say yes anyhow, but I was unquestionably in that situation.

    Rae, a long-time Black Mirror lover, was well aware that Brandy’s method for entering Hotel Reverie was incredibly well-known. A little device that is placed on a person’s temple to interact with a virtual reality interface has been seen before and is still relevant throughout the show’s canon. It first popped up in season 3&#8217, s &#8220, San Junipero, &#8221, then made appearances in season 4&#8217, s &#8220, USS Callister, &#8221, and season 5&#8217, s &#8220, Striking Vipers &#8221, ( where it was referred to as an &#8220, Experiencer Disk&#8221 ,). A variation of it also turns up in winter 7&#8217, s &#8220, Eulogy. The system has never had an established name up until now, and it was manufactured by TCKR Systems.

    &#8220, Charlie]Brooker ] calls it a &#8216, Nubbin, &#8217, but Awkwafina&#8217, s character calls it a &#8216, Mesmerizer. &#8217, I don&#8217, t know if that &#8217, s the vernacular version of it, &#8221, Rae says. &#8220, I didn&#8217, t have the &#8216, real&#8217, type on display. I’m supposed to disclose this, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to, but I had a smaller, false version with double-sided tape. So I was really excited to schedule another one soon. &#8221,

    The real-life Nubbin that Rae recently captured was certainly the one used to picture this season 7 metaadvertisment.

    #nubbin #blackmirror unique audio &#8211, BlackMirror issa jones taking a quick trip to another fact

    Visitors may experience the unit, which is unquestionably called a Nubbin with a company trademark and everything, as well as the same ad campaign and associated Netflix-hosted activation. Looks like Charlie Brooker got his way with this one. Sorry, Awkwafina&#8217, s figure!

    The use of the doohickey we now know as a Nubbin was first used in San Junipero, and it has an additional layer of frequency. Hotel Reverie is ultimately a touching like story where two women make a connection between themselves and space, much like that timeless event of the show. The story also comes to an end with a San Junipero feast egg as it turns out that Brandy Friday’s address is 3049 Junipero Drive, which is revealed as &#8220. &#8221,

    Charlie claimed that this is the first season he has written for this season and that is #8220. I only hope that people can look at San Junpiero and San Junpiero separately and also enjoy them as supports to one another, Rae says.

    Netflix currently has all six bouts of Black Mirror time 7.

    The first article on Den of Geek: How Hotel Reverie Expands Upon the Black Mirror Canon was second published.

  • Sinners Review: Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan Throw Tasty Vampire Party

    Sinners Review: Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan Throw Tasty Vampire Party

    The Mississippi leader, blues singer, juke shared prodigy, and legend of Robert Johnson is a myth. Johnson, a guitarist who had a talent for plucked his cords that even strangers thought he had it, passed away before the age of 30 from unknown reasons. He did, however, live longer enough to spread the rumor.

    On Den of Geek, Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s Throw Tasty Vampire Party appeared second.

    This article contains spoilers for the Hotel Reverie show of Black Mirror. &#8221,

    You know what I mean, Black Mirror is about systems, but it isn’t about it, you know what I mean?

    *gets down * Sorry about that; perhaps an example from &#8220, Hotel Reverie &#8221, can help. Issa Rae plays Brandy Friday, a current movie star who assumes the role of the female lead in the remake of her all-time favourite black-and-white classic. In this season 7, Issa Rae portrays her in the role of the female lead. Like many other Black Mirror figures, Brandy is guilty of not reading The Instructions and is unaware that remaking the movie means technologically stepping into the original version where she must sing her part eloquently enough to get to the end.

    cnx. powershell. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Hotel Reverie isn’t just about technologies, it’s. Redream is basically what initiates events, and Charlie Brooker and Haolu Wang’s film, which explores nuanced issues of electric personhood, copyright law, and love itself. However, the account wouldn’t be able to begin to explore those issues without that technology as a starting point. Issa Rae’s attraction to the position was fueled by the relationship between sci-fi criticism and the human condition.

    I can recall being extremely excited to receive a Black Mirror text and yet being chosen for it, and then being completely immersed in each of its various levels. Rae tells Den of Geek and other sources at a roundtable trip that I was going to say yes anyhow, but I was unquestionably in that situation, &#8221.

    Rae, a long-time Black Mirror lover, was well aware of Brandy’s trademarked technology that made its entrance to Hotel Reverie. A little plate used to activate a virtual reality interface on a person’s temple has been seen before and is repeated throughout the show’s canon. It first popped up in season 3&#8217, s &#8220, San Junipero, &#8221, then made appearances in season 4&#8217, s &#8220, USS Callister, &#8221, and season 5&#8217, s &#8220, Striking Vipers &#8221, ( where it was referred to as an &#8220, Experiencer Disk&#8221 ,). A variation of it also turns up in winter 7&#8217, s &#8220, Eulogy. The machine has never had an established name up until now, and it was manufactured by TCKR Systems.

    &#8220, Charlie]Brooker ] calls it a &#8216, Nubbin, &#8217, but Awkwafina&#8217, s character calls it a &#8216, Mesmerizer. &#8217, I don&#8217, t know if that &#8217, s the vernacular version of it, &#8221, Rae says. &#8220, I didn&#8217, t have the &#8216, real&#8217, edition on display. I’m supposed to disclose this, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to, but I had a smaller, false version with double-sided tape. So I was really excited to schedule another one soon. &#8221,

    The real-life Nubbin that Rae recently captured was certainly the one used to picture this season 7 metaadvertisment.

    @nubbin #blackmirror unique noise &#8211, BlackMirror issa jones taking a quick trip to another fact

    Visitors may experience the system, which is unquestionably called a Nubbin with a company trademark and everything, as well as the same ad campaign and associated Netflix-hosted activation. Looks like Charlie Brooker got his way with this one. Sorry, Awkwafina&#8217, s figure!

    The use of the doohickey we now know as a Nubbin was first used in San Junipero, and it has an additional layer of frequency. Hotel Reverie is ultimately a touching love story involving two women who form distance relationships with time and space, much like that timeless traditional event. As Brandy Friday’s tackle is revealed to be 3049 Junipero Drive, the story actually comes to an end with a San Junipero spring egg. &#8221,

    Charlie claimed that this is the first season he wrote for this period. [San Junpiero] has a lot of work to do, but I just hope people can look at them differently but also enjoy them as complements to one another, Rae says.

    Netflix currently has all six bouts of Black Mirror time 7.

    The first article on Den of Geek: How Hotel Reverie Expands Upon the Black Mirror Canon was second published.

  • Black Mirror: Cristin Milioti Learned to Code for USS Callister Sequel

    Black Mirror: Cristin Milioti Learned to Code for USS Callister Sequel

    The Black Mirror season” USS Callister: Into Infinity” has clues in this article. Since the beloved Black Mirror season” USS Callister” first aired on Netflix in soon 2017, a lot has happened. Three new seasons of technodystopia ( plus a choose-your-own-adventure movie ) have been released from Charlie Brooker’s beloved sci-fi anthology. [Star Trek ] has debuted…

    On Den of Geek, Cristin Milioti learned to protocol for the USS Callister movie.

    This article contains spoilers for the Hotel Reverie show of Black Mirror. &#8221,

    You know what I mean when I say that Black Mirror is about systems, but it isn’t about it.

    Sorry about that; perhaps an illustration from &#8220, Hotel Reverie &#8221, may help. Issa Rae plays Brandy Friday, a current movie star who assumes the role of the female lead in the remake of her all-time favourite black-and-white classic. In this season 7, Issa Rae portrays her in the role of the female lead. Like many other Black Mirror figures, Brandy is guilty of not reading The Instructions and is unaware that remaking the movie means online stepping into the original version where she must sing her part eloquently enough to get to the end.

    cnx. powershell. push ( function ( ) {cnx ( {playerId:” 106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530″, }). render ( “0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796” ), }),

    Hotel Reverie isn’t just about systems, it’s. Redream’s program is only what triggers events, and Charlie Brooker’s and Haolu Wang’s film explores nuanced issues of modern personhood, copyright law, and enjoy itself. However, the story wouldn’t be able to observe those issues in the first place without that technology as a starting point. Issa Rae’s attraction to the position was fueled by the relationship between sci-fi criticism and the human condition.

    I can recall being extremely excited to receive a Black Mirror text and yet being chosen for it, and then being completely immersed in each of its various levels. Rae tells Den of Geek and other sources at a roundtable trip that I was going to say yes anyhow, but I was unquestionably in that situation.

    Rae, a long-time Black Mirror lover, was well aware that Brandy’s method for entering Hotel Reverie was incredibly well-known. A little device that is placed on a person’s temple to interact with a virtual reality interface has been seen before and is still relevant throughout the show’s canon. It first popped up in season 3&#8217, s &#8220, San Junipero, &#8221, then made appearances in season 4&#8217, s &#8220, USS Callister, &#8221, and season 5&#8217, s &#8220, Striking Vipers &#8221, ( where it was referred to as an &#8220, Experiencer Disk&#8221 ,). A variation of it also turns up in winter 7&#8217, s &#8220, Eulogy. The system has never had an established brand up until now, and it was reportedly manufactured by TCKR Systems.

    &#8220, Charlie]Brooker ] calls it a &#8216, Nubbin, &#8217, but Awkwafina&#8217, s character calls it a &#8216, Mesmerizer. &#8217, I don&#8217, t know if that &#8217, s the vernacular version of it, &#8221, Rae says. &#8220, I didn&#8217, t have the &#8216, real&#8217, edition on display. I’m supposed to reveal this, but I had a false, smaller type with double-sided strip. So I was really excited to schedule a second one soon. &#8221,

    The real-life Nubbin that Rae recently captured was certainly the one used to picture this season 7 metaadvertisment.

    @nubbin #blackmirror unique audio &#8211, BlackMirror issa jones taking a quick trip to another fact

    Visitors may experience the unit, which is unquestionably called a Nubbin with a company trademark and everything, as well as the same ad campaign and associated Netflix-hosted activation. On this one, Charlie Brooker seems to have found a way to win. Sorry, Awkwafina&#8217, s figure!

    The use of the doohickey we now know as a Nubbin was first used in San Junipero and has an additional touch of polarization. Hotel Reverie is ultimately a touching like story where two women make a connection between themselves and space, much like that timeless show of the show. The story also comes to an end with a San Junipero spring ovum as Brandy Friday’s address is revealed to become 3049 Junipero Drive, and it ends with a San Junipero spring egg. &#8221,

    Charlie claimed this was his first season of this year and that it was titled &#8220. San Junpiero has a lot of work to load, so I really hope people can look at them both differently but also enjoy them as suits to one another, Rae says.

    Netflix is currently streaming all six of the seventh year of Black Mirror.

    The second article on Den of Geek was How Hotel Reverie Expands Upon the Black Mirror Canon.