Creating digital experiences for the future with Nico Köhler

In this episode of Delivered, you can learn about building innovative digital products customers will love for years to come.

We sat down with Nico Köhler, the head of product experience at the legendary Leica Camera, to discuss his approach to product management and Leica’s track record of launching innovative products.

Key learnings:

• Learn from Leica Camera’s digital transformation journey and how they became a market leader
• Discover the key to creating a great product experience with a focus on connected devices
• Understand the concept of minimum lovable product and how it can benefit your business
• Identify and avoid the common mistakes businesses make in digital product development
• Stay ahead with insights into future trends in the digital product space

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Delivered is brought to you by a leading digital product agency, Infinum. We've been consulting, workshopping, and delivering advanced digital solutions since 2005.

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Hello, Nico, welcome to Delivered. Hello. 

Hey Chris. Thanks for having me. 

Hey, it is an absolute pleasure. I'm super excited to get into our conversation today because I'm sort of an obsessive about customer experience, user experience and just producing great products. And I know obviously you are the man that has the experience in this world. So I think before we start, let's just talk about you. Let's start from you, your career path, how you got to Leica and what you do at Leica. 

Yeah, thanks for the intro. I'm Nico, head of product experience at Leica. I've been the product manager for connectivity for seven years at Leica and now leading a small team, bringing more product experiences to all our products. 

Amazing. And I guess really we should probably just start about what it means to even talk about product experience, customer experience, and I think people always lean into things. The obvious thing is like an Apple device or something like that. Let's just talk about to you, what is products experience? What does that entail for a customer? 

Product experience for us is something that comes to all our product lines. That is, for example, the user experience on a camera. We just recently launched a product where we completely redesigned the user interface, that is part of my team. And secondly, it can be completely new experiences, like the Content Credentials which we launched with the M11P. That is cryptographically signing photos that you take. So that is product experience also includes of course the companion app I was building for the last six, seven years. So it's everything that comes on top to make our products outstanding and have a great experience using them. 

Amazing. And it's something that we always basically endeavor to do every single thing we build at Infinum and it's like you can build products and you can build a great technology, but actually unless it has a connection to the person, it has a memorable experience or something that almost delights them. It's kind almost like why would you build a product in the first place to make it such a human centered thing? And I know from kind of the Leica's point of view, they've done that for many years and I've also went up to do my research around what you do and why you do it. I know there's a feature you created called Content Credentials. I'd love to just dig into that a bit more and maybe talk about what that feature is to delight customers. 

Exactly. So Content Credentials is a technology first of all, but second is really important in a day of AI today to actually show what images or which content is actually real and which is generated. There's nothing against generated content, but obviously if you want to capture real world and make sure that people know that there is something actually captured in time, you have to ensure that. And then there is actually an initiative that's called Content Authenticity Initiative launched a couple of years back, we joined initiative, we had the idea to bring what Leica always stands for with authentic photos and bring in a digital age and to protect our photos. This is how we launched the M11P last year with Content Credentials. And it's literally when you take a photo, it's cryptographically signed and you can inspect it. There's really taken on Leica Camera. 

Wow. Yeah, that's such a good point because yeah, I've never thought about it, but you're right. With the age of impending AI, I suppose the controversy around plagiarism slash replication of artists and creatives, I suppose what you are really building there is not just a great product, but actually a need state that needs to be met by products in the industry right now by changing times of AI. And I suppose I'm trying to avoid diving too far into AI. I know every conversation leads to it in some way, shape or form, but I think that's such a smart way just to add value to what you do as a product. And I suppose in the age of what we are about to experience with generative AI, that kind of things, where do you stand on that in terms of the initiatives that you run at Leica and are you tackling that head on by embracing it, like you're saying with your Content Credentials? Is there anything around that that you're taking as a philosophy or a way to handle this AI revolution we'll call it? 

Yeah, we definitely started with our brand stands for Authentic Images and that led us directly into having Content Credentials. It took us about one to two years to actually bring it into camera, but we look at the market and we have seen the adoption of generative AI technologies and then we thought let's do something to show that our content, our products are actually producing can be somehow protected or proven. This is how Content Credentials actually capture from how photos are captured until editing. There can be a chain of trust and this is what we observed the market actually we've seen the initiative and thought that would be fantastic for brand. So we built first a software prototype in actually three months. We announced that Adobe Conference and then it took a year to actually bring it into hardware product. We wanted to make sure that it's proven technology and then we have a special chips and I could go, no, very deep, but it's really important that we had a look at what is happening in the market and we thought, let's go into it and bring it to our products that everyone knows this is taken on a Leica instead of a generated photo. 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I heard something there about the process of how you created that going through the motions of most classic product design where it's concepts, prototyping almost MVPing into then testing to product, et cetera. The beautiful arc that is product design. I know for a fact that there's a philosophy that you like to embed into your products as opposed to MVP. It's MLP, minimal lovable product. I'd love to maybe just explore that a little bit more as well, which I think is a super nice play on words, but equally as important as the product being viable, of course it needs to be lovable otherwise who's going to buy it? So I'd love to maybe just dig into that. 

Yeah, thanks for that intro. It's like when you look at the Lean Startup I think it was 2012, where minimum products were actually the main thing. Let's build something and then get it out and get it to customer's hands and get feedback. I feel always when people want to build minimal viable products, sometimes it feels very technical driven, but I really believe, and this is something Leica has been out there for the hardware part as well, we always want to build products that people love when they touch them. So I really thought how can we bring that notion from the hardware world to the software world? And then it came to my mind why to build minimal viable products actually build minimal lovable products. I followed an article on Medium which exactly described that and it fits so well the first in the product exploration phase, you go to customers, you see what they really would like to see and then actually build that minimal lovable product. 

Yeah, I think yeah, that concept seems to resonate really well with me. So all you need is love, isn't it really in many things. And it's like, well, why couldn't that live in a product that you basically invest a lot of money and resources into and you carry around with you quite a lot, so why couldn't it bring you joy and that kind of emotion as well versus just being functional and practical. I think that's a great way of putting things. I love that. So I guess maybe just talk a bit about this and not to deep dive too far into Content Credentials. So I know that is a big part of what you do and it could be a huge conversation itself, but what really interested me about that is it's a great example of innovation in an already innovative business and obviously you've got a wealth of experience in innovation like management and how to deploy that in companies. Just I'd be curious to understand what's innovation mean to you as a person, as an expert in the field of I guess products? 

I mean always when you look into products you have to look what the market is doing, what our customers actually worrying about. And we really heard already a couple of years back that they're worrying that the value of the content they are creating is actually decreasing due to being generated. And that was the perfect thing to see what could we build? We actually investigate also having own solutions for credibility, but we thought is the best to jump on with other partners like Adobe to bring Content Credentials. So when you talk about innovation, it's always looking at the market, look what the customers really, really want, what their problems are, and then try to come up with the best technology that fits to that product market fit and then really try to bring it to market. Sometimes that is faster, sometimes that is slower. As I said, it's like we were really fast in having the first software prototype in three months, but then it took really long making sure that it's actually a secure solution that will be good in the market. So when you talk about innovation is always keeping an eye on what's going on in the market, what's going on in technology, but also play close attention to what customers are really missing, where the problems are. 

Yeah, that's so true. And I think from a past life when I used to work in innovation consultancy, which is about as vague as it sounds as a title, it's like what does it even mean innovation? And it's obviously about making a significant change somehow, somewhere. And I think you touched on a really important part there. It's about actually whatever change we're going to make, it must be positive of course, but how does that actually help the customer? How does it manage expectations of the customer? Like you were saying before, does it even delight the customer as well when you've done that change? Because change is hard and sometimes stressful. And I think also as well, this is something that I know again we're super passionate about at Infinum is if you're going to make a change in any way, of course you want to make sure that you are discovering and working out first of all how that change is done. 

And like you're saying about your product, it can be rapidly done between two to three months of discovery just to figure out what it is we're building, why we're building it, how it connects to people. And I think from that point on you then almost de-risk the idea of what you're doing by knowing the market wants it and you set up minimal viable products. There's also, I guess I like to think the slight segment down from that, which is minimal viable segment, which is like can we get even more precise to test that even like a niche before we go wider? And that's something we always look at as well. I think from our point of view, an infinite process. And I think for me the biggest part of innovation I suppose is how do you blend the big idea with what the market wants with a strategy as well? 

And I'm quite biased because that's kind of my job, but it's like if you've got infinite amount of ideas and options, but limited resources, i.e. money, time, people, sanity, whatever, it's like which direction do you take that innovation to make it tick all those boxes, market fit, customer delighting selling? So yeah, it's really interesting to hear your take on it. And of course because Leica is innovative for such a long time now, and I actually had to do some research to see how old the company actually is because what I found was back in 1869 it was created, so it was a pretty, pretty legacy big brand in a sense. But equally it's a true example of what I guess digital transformation is in a real world example. So I suppose just touch on that as a bit of a history back to where it came from to wherever it's now it's a market leader. Yes, in analog photography back in the day and now it's like one of the largest manufacturers of digital cameras in the world. And this is just me regaling what I've learned from my research. But what is interesting and what I'd love to hear from you is making that switch between the worlds of analog to digital, old to innovative new company, the course to do that can't be easy. And I suppose you are, if you want to call it a man inside the machine, how would you describe like's way of achieving such a feat essentially? 

I mean the company is really old or over a hundred years as you said, but it's always actually a changing business. As you know, there was a change from digital, from analog to digital, which we nearly missed. And this is why I think the company really has opened eyes to always see what's coming and adapting. And after 2006, 2008 even there was a big market for compact cameras that is more or less gone. So we are always keeping an eye on really where's the market going? What do customers actually want? Where are things going? This is where I came on board seven years ago where we thought let's build the best companion app in the market, and this is exactly what you described. We came with a strategy, let's build the best companion app in the market with the best user experience. We start to do product discovery, talking to customers and then actually building first prototypes going back to them. 

And then we discovered that some of the things are maybe interesting for the camera market in general, but not for our customers. For example, this remote functionality. So with the companion app, you can remote control your camera, it's not important for our customers. This is how we discovered actually that that product should be built around transferring your photos to your mobile device to have a look at not actually remote controlling your camera. So I think this is really important that you pay constantly attention to customers and markets. This is I think from the history change from analog to digital change also from cameras to full frame mirrorless in the last 10 years. But it's also nowadays when generative comes, we observe and build things like Content Credentials or we really try to build the best companion app in the market. 

Yeah, I love that because I think it's very easy to, especially when you're like you say you are an old or a vintage company, we'll call it a certain size, you can easily rest on your laurels and just say, well, we're selling what we're selling, we've got the market share. We'll keep going on that and not necessarily look out for those changes or descriptions. And I love the fact that you guys have also thought about the fact you've come from the analog to the digital survive that I always think back to those kind of classic comparisons between Instagram disruption, Kodak and other brands, and then there's a ton of similar things like that. We have a thing here in the UK which was called Blockbuster Video, that got disrupted by things like Netflix and stuff like that where they were a video store. So I love the fact that you guys are kind of looking at markets, but not only just watching you actually going, yeah, there's a change coming, we need to just keep moving forward on this. 

And you're right, the shift now you've done the leap from analog, digital AI is now coming. We understand that's going to be a big deal. And I suppose a question I'm sure people listening will want to know is, and you are a man that's in the mix of this a lot, there's a lot of hype always about new technology and I think that maybe three or four years ago about Web3 obviously overshadowed by things like crypto and Bitcoin, but Web3 was a big deal and it still is to its degree, but now AI's here and that's generating a bunch of imagery, et cetera. I just wonder from your point of view, how do you look at something and go, is it hype or is it real? And how do I then distinguish between the two to then inform me to do the next step in my business innovation? How do you deal with that from a liker point of view? 

Super good question. And that is something really, really hard. If there's a new hire, should you actually look into it or should you not? I think my experience is more or less ask customers, is it really solving a real problem they are having? To be fair, it's like when the content credentials started the initiative in 2019, and to be fair, I put a poster that would fit pretty well to Leica as a brand. But actually the first three years we asked customers and yeah, that was important, but they haven't seen any threat, any problem. And just lately, especially last two or three years, they seen that there could be a change of how content could be generated either taken or actually generated. And this is when we said now it makes sense because customers say that isn't actually a problem for us. So it's really paying attention if it solves a problem your customer's having that is really easy to say is really hard to, if you're into the fields, it's really hard if that is actually true and you should jump on that train or not. 

Yeah, it's a really good question. I appreciate and it's a hard one too, and I think this is no way a plug or a sell by any chance, but I guess that's why companies who don't specialize in these things probably need to then lean into innovation teams inside their own ecosystem like yourself. Or they hire people like Infinum who specialize in that to help them guide them along the way. I'm a big believer in being the guide, not the hero, and it's like that way of looking at these things and going, okay, it could be hype, but we need to understand it first, the technology, then we need to secondly understand does it help you, like you say, solve a problem for a client and how would it do that? And then it has a meaning then I suppose rather than just, Hey, we're just building an AI thing. Hey, we're building a Web3 thing for what reason? So it's a really good point actually, hard to answer, but could be answered by innovation teams if you have one or can high on. 

Yeah, innovation teams is I think a really good term. I always talk about product teams to set up a team really of one product manager, understanding the customer needs. One designer that can build prototypes even without going to development. And then a solution architect, developer basically that really looks into how can we build things. And this is normally when you talk about innovation teams, I'm thinking about product teams and then actually let them discover is it a real problem to customers? This is how we currently look into computational imaging. We have a team that is actually looking into the space and designer and a solution architect trying to build prototypes, give it to customers, see if that is something and then go forward. But that is true. I think for every new thing you should first of all discover, build a prototype and then go in product discovery, really understanding if that solves any need and then actually building it. Because I think we all know that in product delivery things get really expensive, time intensive and costly. So I think it's really good to spend especially also a good time in discovery than also delivery. 

You can't say a better sentence to me personally. I think that the art of discovery in product is so valuable in terms of alignment, de-risking, like you were saying about when you get to production, when it gets expensive and timely, that is the, I guess, antidote to try and reduce or mitigate the problems that can happen in that phase to reduce that cost. So I totally understand that. And I suppose really just on the back of that thought process, what's the biggest, I guess, mistakes or things similar to a mistake that you've seen in building digital products? I guess being in the industry like myself for a while, I'm sure you've maybe seen one or two classic mistakes that happen and sometimes I know an obvious one is don't really do discovery, let's just build something and ship it that whole move fast break things, which I guess work for Facebook fine, but not everyone is Facebook. So what are the things that you've seen maybe in your career we'll say? 

Yeah, I would totally agree. One thing is that you could do wrong is first not to do discovery and then just build something that others already have. And then you actually just try to keep up building what is already there instead of trying what is the right thing for our customers, for our company, and then building maybe something that is a bit smaller, a little bit more focused, but really fits well to your customers. So I think that is really important that you do product discovery and then go into delivery. And I think then you can be also trapped in a delivery way. So you have to make sure that while one part of your team is delivering, you still do at the same time discovery. That's maybe something I did wrong at the beginning. We were first in a discovery phase, went into a delivery phase, and then I seen that maybe we should go back and see are we still building the right thing and then look back and try new things that could actually add significantly more value than just changing smaller things. 

Yeah, that's so true. I feel like as well. And it's again, you're sort of pressing all the buttons. I'm like, you're right, you're right. It's like, I guess what we look at as well from an Infinum standpoint is the idea of continuous discovery and delivery working as one, which I guess you could kind of in the diagram do the whole infinite thing. It's like 

That is a perfect. 

On a cliffhanger. Nico has left the building. So on that note, we'll pause for a second, see if Nico can come back on that cliffhanger and see if he can finish his continuous discovery point, which I'm super pleased he's about to join and do that hopefully, because I think in terms of his product delivery, here he is, he's back. I was just saying I'm so pleased you are talking about continuous delivery. I was like, what's he going to say? Okay, so welcome back. So yeah, so continuous discovery delivery, let's go. 

No, absolutely. And I think between the discovery and delivery I think is really what is also a part of the lean startup is like build, measure, learn. So you have a team that's set up as a product team with a product manager, designer and an engineer, and then always build, measure, learn. And I think this applies for both the discovery part where you build prototypes and also as a delivery part where you have to also build, measure learn, but on your customer base. So I totally agree and the perfect comparison with Infinum. 

Absolutely. It fits nicely into our logo too. And I also feel like if you're not doing continuous discovery delivery, are you just basically back to doing waterfall again if you're not doing stuff behind the scenes and like you say, when things get shipped to production, of course building's hard, it takes time and money that should be happening, but actually the discovery team should be still looking at like, well, what features in it? What's the market saying? And I think that is the way in which products get built right today. And I think people sometimes say, yeah, we're agile, we do this, we do that, but when it's like we discover it, we deliver it, we ship it, that's not necessarily doing the virtuous circle that's just going downstream to, anyway, you know what I'm saying? I'm just very passionate about this topic as you can probably tell. So okay, let's talk about head of product. This is your title. So of course. So it's not just about building beautifully crafted and lovable products, but how do you get the best from your product team as well? 

I mean product team, the first important, the most important thing is having a great team. I think this is really important is actually products get built by people and great teams are built by great people. So I really, really always say the best products get built by the best teams. So first of all, have a great team. Always the setup is important to have a good mix from product design and engineering. And then there's of course whole engineering team behind. Sometimes you have a data scientist on the team, and I think the important thing there is always together look into where do we want to be in the future looking a year two, three ahead, but also on the same time having the cadence of sprints where you deliver and all together, all together look at the product all together, look at what we have built in the last two weeks, what will we build in the next two, but keep a focus also on two years. I think this is really important, having a team where you are all together, look into what we have built and do, build, measure, learn on that cycle.  

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're right. I mean from my experience, every problem in a business is a people problem. So you're right, it's almost like everything kind of starts and ends with people and by having that team at the core that understands what they're doing is aligned. This is why I took a lot about workshopping and discovering quite aggressively because it's like you need that people connection and true alignment around what the product is and could be and will do and who it's going for at the start. So I think that fundamentally is the foundation of any great product. And then you can layer in great design, great engineering buzzwords like AI, ML, Web3, whatever, but underneath it all, you're right, it's like the people building it for the people that want it. That's where the connection needs to be made. 

Yeah, that's really good point. That is a perfect description and my analogy is always first get the right people on the bus and then decide where to drive it. And I think this is true for every product team first when you want to start something new, a new product experience, a new product first, get the team and then empower them doing the right things, doing the discovery and the delivery. And I think then the bus will drive in the right direction, actually more or less by its own if you have the right people on the bus. 

Yeah, absolutely. And just to rinse that metaphor even more because we'll have metaphors in tech is like if you've got the right bus, the right people, but they have the right strategy laid in to tell you to map where to go on that bus to avoid all the different pitfalls and roadblocks and you'll get there in a smooth away. And that's why people sometimes, what do you mean what is strategy? I'm like it's the simplest way to get to your end goal with a nice roadmap progression step to show people where they're going at every point who's on the bus. So yeah, that's a nice way to put it. I also heard a rumor that you may have done something academic around this, maybe a PhD perhaps around different products.

Yeah, I tried a PhD 10 years ago exactly around that we looked into how can product development be improved? Is it the product side, the process side or the people side? And back there is when we definitely thought from an academic perspective it must be the process or the product side because everything gets really complicated and complex and then we actually find out doing five case studies that actually is the people complexity where you have the biggest improvement to do better product development. I never finished my PhD, but my takeaway is really people and teams are the most important thing to build great products. 

Love it, I love it. I love how I focus in as well. And just like the fundamental things in life, people love that kind of thing. It's less about cold robotics and tech as such. It's a great lens to look through. So obviously in your line of work you've got a bunch of experience in connected devices, mobile experiences, the in connectivity of the two worlds together. How do you balance and your team balance the user experience of these technologies and the new advancements in connected devices? What is the way you ensure this seamless journey through the different worlds? Obviously you're pairing sometimes like you say the software world with the physical world. So how did your team tackle that at the UX level? 

That's a really good question. I think the hardest, especially when you build connected experiences with companion apps on the one side and then actually the hardware on the other side, because hardware has a significantly different cycle. It can take 1, 2, 3, 4 years to have actually improvements and then you'll have to have firmware updates. But that is something we really now work together is kind of like the software side is working with the hardware side in order to make sure that we have the right things coming already in the next hardware generation or in the next firmware update so that the companion app, the connected experiences are coming exactly at the same time. So it involves a little bit more planning to be fair if you're not building just an app, but you do a connected experience. But I think it's really important that you think the teams from the hardware product and software product in a way that they go forward. They both have their roadmaps, but they especially sync on when things need to be delivered and yeah. 

Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose within that approach to good user experience equally has to come that word that I think sometimes can get forgotten in products but should be at the forefront always is accessibility. Are we working into accessibility standards? And I guess from what you do in your world, I guess there must be some trends as well around that space to make sure that things are usable to everyone regardless. So do you have any trends that you've maybe seen in your line of work that apply to that? 

I think a really good transition that we started actually a couple of years ago. We started to build a design system not only for mobile app but also for our hardware products in order to have one digital experience from hardware and the companion app. And we hear more and more that accessibility is becoming a thing. To be fair, embedded devices is not as easy as a mobile app where in the mobile app you have the great ecosystem. We are just saying let's do accessibility and everything is more or less there. And then embedded devices is a little bit more complicated, but we are currently exactly looking into that space to enable accessibility both on our mobile app and also on our cameras. 

Absolutely. There's probably actually a good plug I can send you as well. I know Infinum have done a lot of work recently, design level on accessibility, so I'll be sure to send you some of the accessibility research and things we've done there, which I think would be useful. It's what we do. And speaking of research, actually it's a good nice segue into something we've done as well. We've done some massive research into connected smart devices and IoT, that kind of world. And of course what we learned is about a doubt, not too obvious about making sure that product is simple, it's pleasant to use, it's very intuitive, it's obviously part of the adoption rates that anyone would need to take on a good product. But in terms of the experience that I guess you see from your world as well, is there a particular feature or type of experience or quality or experience that you really focus on at Leica? Is there one thing or an important feature you go, we have to have this non-negotiable or is it too broad to even have just one? What's your thoughts on that? 

I mean for Leica it is actually pretty simple because our slogan is focused on the essential which we have for our hardware products. When you look at the Leica product, you see significantly less knobs and buttons. And so we really want to focus on the essential. This is the same thing we are taking on our software products, really focus on the essential and really it is probably similar to the Apple approach, really think twice if you need the additional feature and do people really need it and use it. And sometimes even I observe in my product that things are not used and then you probably should get rid of it if no one uses it. I mean it would probably a hard, hard thing because you invested so much energy as a product team, but if you see it is not used by customers, get rid of it in order to actually build products where there's not too much and not too little, but it's a perfect product market fit, which people really love to use because you probably know most of the products are long on the market, more and more complicated, and at some point you probably have to look back and see what is kind of the focus on essential for your product. 

Yeah, it's so true actually. I chuckled to myself a little bit before setting up the TV here I was thinking about, I was just looking down at my devices, you've got this versus this, which if you're listening to this versus watching this is remote control for a TV, which is insanely complicated to find brightness levels versus just simplicity of it of an iPhone. I love one thing, I don't want to, the other thing. 

Yes, I will know, not sure competitor, but it's definitely if you look at the Leica product, you see exactly the same. We really focus on essential and hardware level and this is what we bring 

To some of our customers as well. Yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah, anyone that's just listening to this versus watching this, that is a beautifully simple camera I'm seeing here, here. It's lovely. Okay, so conscious of time. So I'm just going to ease it into the last kind of question from me at least Nico, then we'll jump to our audience. Sure. But okay, so I'm a business leader, I'm a product manager. I have to deliver something in the future that's impactful, a great digital experience. What is the advice you would give someone like that from your repertoire of skills and knowledge at Leica? What is that look to the future? What is that advice you would give someone just to build great products that connect to people in the future? 

That's always really hard in general to say, but I think the most important thing is, as I said, get the right people on the bus, get a product team, product manager, designer, and an engineer. Then second, do product discovery. See if there's something you can build that your customers actually love. So minimal lovable product. And then I think is delivery will take time, but don't give up. I think it is really important when you put your first product on the market, the version one will not be the best lovable product out there. So make sure you continue at least to what I always say is version three of it. Because normally you do V1 and then you try to make things better with V2, you do some mistakes there. Normally on a V3 of a product, you see a really good product market fit. So I would say product team, discovery, delivery, and then really making sure that you go through until version three of a product where you see people love it. 

Love it. Simple to the point. Makes sense. Coming from a man that works in this space, I completely agree. So thank you for delivering such a great answer on that one. Okay, so that's enough for me, Nico, you're pleased to know. That's my questions for you, done, but we do have some great ones coming through from the viewers and if I may, I'm going to read some out to you and get your knowledge and expertise on this. So we have one here, which is do you think minimal level products can achieve the status without any help of branding? So basically, do you need branding to create this lovable product? 

I mean that's really hard for me to say because we have a great brand and before I worked on other companies that actually have a great brand, I think brand definitely helps when you do a V1 version because you get awareness pretty fast. But I still think there are lots of examples out there also from independent companies that actually build really good products and then build a brand around it. So I don't think a brand necessary to build minimal lovable products, but I think it definitely helps. 

I love that. Yeah, basically it's not mandatory, but it will definitely speed up the love of that product or the awareness of it at least. Okay, sweet. Okay, so second question we have here from Diana, where do you draw the line between generated images and edited slash manipulated images? Interesting. From an AI point of view, I assume. 

I think this is a really good question. The good thing about what we've built with the Content Credentials is really the idea of the Content Credentials. You embed them in capture, in edit, but also in publication, in order you have a complete history of photos captured. But there might be manipulation changes in the editing process and then the Content Credentials really make sure that you know what things have been changed to a photo until the publication where people can actually see what has been changed. So the question is where's the difference between edit and generation? I think the line is thin, but I think you need to be transparent, which needs to be generated or altered. 

Yeah, yeah. Such a, like you said, the line there is super thin, isn't it?  

From a camera perspective edit I would say is probably changing pixels and probably generation is coming up with new pixels, as simple as that. Love that. 

First principles. Love it. Okay, fine. Okay, and we'll do one more question then I think and then we'll wrap up. So how do you balance customer requests with brand fit? And I guess this question is more around the lens of you obviously, like you say, look at the market and know what's happening, so you can kind of almost invent the future, but equally you'll getting feedback loops from customer requests, but equally you've got the brand and market fit you're trying to push like it towards. So yeah, how do you balance those together? 

I think there's also a really great question because normally the customer feedback you are getting to your product is normally from really enthusiast specialists, really people that are really loving your product and are missing here and there things to be fair for my product, the companion app, like a photos, we had the same thing. There were lots of feature requests in the direction of the remote functionality, but we set out to have the best user experience to transfer your images. So here and there we're getting great feedback for the remote experiences, but we decided strategically to drive the bus in the more getting access to your photos and your videos path. This is why we sometimes strategically decide not to build those experiences because it's not our strategic direction. So I think it's really important to see where you want to drive and is that thing which customers request? Is that in the direction you're driving or is it completely off track? I mean, if lots of customers say you should go off track, maybe you should adopt your strategy direction. But I think if just couple of customers actually ask to go off track, then you have to steer your boss in the direction you set. 

Love that. I love that. Keeping it in the metaphor world is the best way to contextualize this space. For sure. I love it. Well look, that is Nico, super helpful. I really do appreciate all the energy insights you've given us here and just taking the time today to be with us. So look, thank you again for being in Delivered. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. 

Thank you so much. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.