Interview With Data.ai’s CPTO Yardley Pohl

Yardley shares her behavior change mantra with me: If you want to help users sleep better, eat well, or de-stress, you can’t start with the big goal. You have to break it down into smaller steps. Microsteps, she says, allow users to make a small movement in the right direction toward their big, bold, ambitious goals.

And with 20+ years in product management, she knows a thing or two about reaching goals. Yardley has led product innovation at Thrive Global, Apple, Meta, eBay and Zillow. She says the secret is to build products that users don’t just think they should use, but want to use.

She likens the average tech product to broccoli, asking: How can we help users feel like their broccoli is not just a healthy vegetable that they are supposed to eat, but a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth indulgence that they look forward to savoring? In this interview with Yardley, her commitment to using behavioral design for good comes through as she shares how she’s designed a range of reward systems to help users take each microstep toward their larger goals.

Tell me something I don’t know. (Anything!)

I love doing pottery and baking bread! I find both activities to simulate my creativity and allow me to stay present in the moment.

Which fiction book would you recommend to product leaders? Why?

I’m not a big fan of fiction books, so I’m going to recommend the nonfiction book Think Again by Adam Grant. The notion of consistently being open to challenging our own thoughts and opinions to embark on a lifelong journey of learning is valuable. The book brings actionable tools to help ourselves recognize when we need to rethink – to let go of what we have always known so that we can have the mental flexibility to consistently learn with curiosity.

How have you leveraged behavioral design in your work? What was the result?

At Thrive Global, our mission was to develop a product that creates daily habits for employees to better manage their well-being – including sleep, exercise, and other facets to bring your full selves to work. First, these daily habits need to start small as microsteps, so that each individual can embark on their well-being journey no matter where they are. A microstep is just that, so small that there should be no mental hurdles in taking just that one tiny step to better oneself. Second, to create daily habits, a reward system that resonates is important. For example, daily streaks can be a good motivation for some who want to build their longest streak ever as a reward. Or another example would be taking the microstep toward a reward to donate to a favorite charity (which activates the feeling of giving back to others).

What’s your biggest barrier to getting things done as a product leader?

As I have matured in my profession, the biggest barrier to getting things done is the ever-constant calibration with myself on my operating range. It’s critical for me to understand when I should dive deep into the details with the team, or when I should stay strategic at a high level and be an effective leader. It has been a mindful practice for years, and I’m happy to say that I have now gotten pretty proficient at it!

What gap do you see in typical product strategy that behavioral insights can fill?

Behavior insights allow us to develop products with a user-centric lens. Knowing users’ motivation to use the product as a daily habit is key. Many want to create products that drive engagement and retention, but miss the opportunity to think about the reward system that will keep the users motivated in using the product in a value-add manner. We all know that eating vegetables is healthy for us, but not enough of us actually do it. Why? It’s because we need motivation to do what’s best for us. Similarly, deeply understanding what will motivate users to take the key actions in a product now and in the longer, sustained term will naturally drive engagement and retention and successful KPIs for the product.

How do you see product management evolving over the next 5 years? What are your hopes for the practice?

As AI applications start to mature, product managers will be able to go beyond their current function and into adjacent areas such as engineering with no-code tools and design with text-to-creation tools. With advancement of these tools, product managers will have increasing responsibilities to create delightful products end-to-end. I hope that every product manager will better understand human behavior and motivation so that we can bring a human element into creating products that will better the world overall.

What advice would you give product leaders hoping to design for humans?

Go beyond focusing on KPIs alone by going a level deeper to understand what will motivate users to love your product. Step into the users’ shoes and imagine 1) the hurdles and how your product will help them overcome these barriers, and 2) the rewards that will motivate users to continually use your product with delight.

Yardley Pohl is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Data.ai, where she leads the vision, strategy, and execution of data-driven products and solutions that leverage artificial intelligence to transform and grow businesses across various industries. She has over 20 years of experience in building and scaling innovative products and platforms that create value for customers, partners, and stakeholders at Apple, Meta, eBay, and Zillow.

Yardley is passionate about empowering and supporting women in technology and product leadership. She co-founded and serves on the board of Women in Product, a global non-profit organization that fosters a strong community of 35,000 women builders and leaders. Additionally, she is a board member and NACD Board Governance Fellow. She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from UC Davis and an MBA from the University of Chicago.