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A new company rallying cry, streamlined services and the latest episode of Foxbox Live

Foxbox Founder's Update - Summer 2024 | Foxbox Digital

My espresso machine has become a more significant pillar of my life than I’d care to admit. It’s the cornerstone of my morning routine, my reliable rescue for sleepy afternoons, and my favorite ritual to perform for guests around our kitchen table.

Would I survive without my espresso machine? Arguably yes. Am I interested in such experiments? Absolutely not. To me, it’s become 

Which is the exact rare distinction any digital product should aim for. With that in mind, Foxbox is rallying around a new north star that guides both how we approach our work, and what we encourage anyone spearheading a digital product to do: 

In short: When a product becomes indispensable to customers, it becomes indispensable to the business that built it. For us, it’s more than a tagline, but a built-in way to ensure we approach our work with intention, enthusiasm and an eye on creating long term impact.

Everything we do is about building digital 

 that businesses and their customers can’t live without. With that in mind, we’ve reoriented our services to map to the stages any world-class product depends on:


Define what’s worth building. Build it properly. Maintain it proactively. If you’re interested in learning more about any of the above, click through for more info and let us know 

We hosted our third episode of Foxbox Live with the brilliant Zac Siegel in a deep dive conversation about Kotlin Multiplatform, the flexibility and efficiency it provides to tech leaders building across mobile platforms, and why it’s uniquely suited for industries like 

Sincerely grateful and debatably over-caffeinatedRob Volk, Foxbox Founder & CEO

Foxbox Founder's Update - Summer 2024

Product mindsets, espresso machines and what makes technology stick.


Aim for indispensable | Foxbox Digital

Would I survive without my espresso machine? Arguably yes. Am I interested in such experiments? Absolutely not. To me, it’s

Which is the exact rare distinction any digital product should aim for. Whether it’s a telehealth app to make checking symptoms easy and fast, or a digital key to your apartment door, the goal should be to deliver people something that becomes so ingrained in their routines that they can’t imagine life without it.

The kind of consistent, hyper relevant reliability whose absence is felt, and whose value becomes hard to replace.

In any project, it’s good to debate how success should be measured. But we should always aim for something that’s hard to replace.

When a product becomes indispensable to customers, it becomes indispensable to the business that built it.

Staples for customers = growth engines for you. No matter the industry or how narrow the   target user, I believe it to be the North Star that’s always worth following. For us at Foxbox, it’s is far more than a tagline, but rather a built-in way to ensure we:

Understand your customers on a human level

Delivering a product customers feel like they “can’t live without,” is only possible if we first understand how they live. Not just how they perform a single isolated task, or their preferred menu screen, but who they are, what they care about, and what type of experience they’re longing for, even if they can’t articulate it yet.

Finding the answers to those questions is 

 of any digital product. It makes strategists, designers and developers hyper aware of points of friction in a user’s journey, the kind that are easy to overlook or accept as “the nature of the beast.”

Good UX researchers, designers and product leaders just know how to keep digging. Because the good stuff rarely lies at the surface.

Since our founding, our development philosophy hasn’t changed but only gotten sharper: Iterate constantly, build cross functionally, and treat things like CI/CD, automated testing, Agile, and user validation as 

non-negotiable pieces of every puzzle we solve for our clients.

It’s how we ensure we’re not only testing early assumptions about users, but also every key development decision that will actually bring the product to life. Why? Because harmony between user expectations, technical performance, and measurable business value isn’t always struck on the first chord.

Shortsighted, rushed products find their way to the recycling bin just as quickly as they’re built. Building a product that delivers sustainable long-term value means nobody loses sight of the bigger picture.

It means building platforms, products and systems that are designed for both immediate performance and long-term scalability and flexibility.

It means leveraging things like continuous delivery, scrum and automation to deliver with ease and working meticulously to address  intricate security and privacy requirements unique to our clients’ business. It’s also why 

 to delivering on promises to customers, proactively identifying issues and ensuring processes are in place to resolve issues and respond to user requests.

As the pages of barely used apps on my phone can attest, all it takes is a brief dip in functionality for a digital product to be put on the proverbial shelf. Like any relationship, trust between users and a product is earned over weeks, months and even years. But it can be lost in mere moments. So plan accordingly.

If you can deliver your customers an experience that lives up to that standard of “indispensable”, the product itself takes on the same role within your business.

It becomes much more than just a product. It becomes the beating heart of your organization, the stalwart foundations that sustains new opportunities, revenue sources, insights, and invaluable industry advantage.

Indispensable is not easy to reach. But it should always be the direction that tells us where to go 

If you agree, and want to define what indispensable looks like for your customers and your business, 

Aim for indispensable

Oof. We’re feeling headwinds in the market and I’m sure you are too. Despite that, we welcome Elliott Torres, brought folks together to talk AI, and we share how we helped Airspace Data build a product to route air traffic more efficiently. Read on!

Foxbox Founders Update 2024 Q1

Oof. We’re feeling headwinds in the market and I’m sure you are too. Businesses of all industries are grappling with a “do more with less” mandate unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years.


Our business is certainly no exception. We’re adapting constantly. We’re leaning into our healthcare focus and have expanded into AI advisory and implementation. We’re excited about what’s ahead.


With that in mind, a few updates to share.


Last quarter we formed the Foxbox AI Lab and I’m happy to announce that Elliott Torres is joining our team as AI Advisor & Architect. Elliott brings over 10 years of experience in designing large-scale AI solutions at healthcare and other companies and over 20 in software. He’s as capable as they come in this space, and I’m thrilled to have him on board to help shape the Foxbox AI Lab as we continue to expand how we solve problems for our clients.


We hosted an open conversation about Generative AI Chicago with our friend Plamen Petrov.

Elliott & I also talked AI Roadmaps via LinkedIn Live! Miss the live stream? 

Click here a clip of Elliott talking about using LMMs without compromising customer data,

New LinkedIn Live event about Product Success Metrics will be announced shortly so stay tuned!


Making a Case for Sound Product Strategy in the Age of AI

Generative AI is making it easier than ever to build the wrong thing

. While the path to building and launching a product might be faster than ever, generative AI tools can also act as a high-speed train to the wrong destination. So how do you build the right thing?


An average of 45,000 flights are routed through US Airspace 

Imagine what 45,000 planes in one place would look like. Here’s what DALL•E gave me when I gave it the same prompt. Not bad, if a little ominous feeling?


All of those planes fly around a huge amount of airspace reserved for use by the military. And it’s often unoccupied. I’m thrilled to finally share more about the product we helped build to route air traffic more efficiently. Link to the case study below and check out 

Airspace Data: Delivering a Properly Calibrated MVP

How we built a flexible, scalable and user-focused product for Airspace Data

Airspace Data: Delivering a Properly Calibrated MVP | Foxbox Digital

United States airspace spans a staggering 

 square miles. Of that amount, approximately ¼ is reserved for use by the military for training and testing of aircraft, new technologies, and advanced weapons.

Who occupies that space at any given moment is the result of close communication between the FAA, airline dispatchers and the US Department of Defense. With 45,000 commercial and civilian flights traveling through US airspace every day, even the most seemingly incremental improvements to this process can create a profound positive domino effect.

Airspace Data is a technology company aiming to do exactly that.

The short of it: Airspace reserved for the military is often unoccupied. But without a real time view of that valuable airspace, the FAA, the airlines, and private pilots can’t utilize it.  Similarly, the military increasingly needs access to civilian airspace, and needs a better way to make those requests.

By equipping military-range operators, the FAA and airline dispatchers with the precise, timely data indicating the availability of military-controlled airspace, 

Airspace Data helps airlines plan routes more efficiently

 - leading to lower carbon emissions, faster flights, reduced fuel costs, and the type of dynamic transparency that elevates the aviation industry as a whole.

The military sees reduced manual workload in its communications with FAA, and enhanced mission readiness for key training and test objectives.

Having gained early traction with major US airlines, a web-based MVP became the critical missing piece Airspace Data leadership needed. They looked to Foxbox to get it off the ground.

Building our solution with the military, FAA, and the airlines happens in scarce,  high-stakes meetings. I can’t bluff my way through it, the product has to work. So what Foxbox did is really important because it does. It works.

Understanding, contextualizing and interrogating the problem was top priority.

Through a combination of collaborative workshops, user interviews, and design exploratories, our team gathered the pieces necessary to bring the puzzle into focus. While the client’s existing proof of concept and strategic vision helped us ask the right questions, we sought a first-hand perspective to find the right answers.

Alongside Airspace leadership, members of our UX and Product Strategy team visited with all stakeholders to deepen our contextual understanding and help inform upcoming interviews with airline dispatchers. One such interview revealed a pivotal flaw in our underlying assumptions.

“Having access to this type of data would be a game-changer,” one dispatcher said, “but not for my role.”


At their particular airline, the dispatcher explained, the 

would glean much more direct value from the tool.


While just one step upstream in the flight planning process, reframing the product strategy to serve both navigation analysts and airline dispatchers became critical to ensure we built the right thing the right way.

Without that understanding of who's really going to use it, we would have completely missed the mark.

We built a detailed product roadmap, outlining how to serve both navigation analysts and dispatchers, as primary and secondary users respectively. Our team of Product Specialists and UX / UI designers then began to bring product concepts to life. Early low fidelity design mockups allowed us to elicit feedback from both Airspace Data leadership as well as the airline stakeholders we had now more precisely defined.

Because no two airlines operate the same way, and no two navigation analysts / dispatchers within those airlines focus on the same regions of airspace, a rapidly iterative design process helped us bring a methodical approach to the product’s central challenge: The user experience needed to be 

robust enough to manage the totality of relevant US airspace data, yet simple enough to fit seamlessly into existing route planning workflows.

Recognizing that our solution would introduce an additional step, pinpointing the role of user notifications became central to our ability to craft a seamless and impactful user experience. 

With an emphasis on simplicity and precise communication, the Airspace Data interface minimizes cognitive load, while maximizing the type of context-dependent, time-sensitive information users require. Optimizing for simplicity also meant deliberately avoiding a map-centric format, in favor of a focused interaction model that mirrors the needs, preferences and priorities of both primary and secondary users.

 Working in close collaboration with Airspace Data’s technical leaders, we moved high-fidelity designs into production.

For our team of front end developers, engineers and QA specialists, success depended on a combination of continuous end-to-end testing, automated deployments and an ability to navigate the industry’s unique complexities and existing data infrastructure.

Airspace Data 1.0 was released to both commercial airlines and cargo carriers in December 2023. Version 2.0 was completed with the help of ongoing Foxbox development support in April of 2024, and is already being received very positively by major US Airlines.      

 For airlines engaging in city pair trials, the financial and environmental impact of the product is already on full display. The company and its airline partners have completed more than 2,700 flights, saving 2 million pounds of CO2 emissions, 60,000 flight miles, and 100,000 gallons of fuel.


With a product properly rooted in the end user’s perspective, Airspace Data Leadership is now better equipped than ever before to focus on building new customer relationships, expanding  to new users, and evolving revenue models to best position the company for long-term success.

Foxbox was crucial to our ability to stay agile

Airspace Data VP of Engineering George Song

Foxbox built the Airspace Data web application with the following technologies:

The democratization of software, product strategy, and the case for proper experimentation. 

Generative AI is making it easier than ever to build the wrong thing.

"The democratization of software” long promised by no-code software and AI-enabled development tools is soon to actually arrive, thanks to ChatGPT and AI development tools like GitHub Copilot. Businesses of all sizes can undoubtedly benefit from the ability to build digital products in a fraction of the time. But the problem is this: 

The decisions that shape high performing digital products are made long before a line of code is written.

So while the path to building and launching a product might be faster than ever, generative AI tools can also act as a high-speed train to the 

So how do you build the right thing? Here’s a few things to keep in mind.

It’s easy to fall in love with a slick interface. We’ve all done it. And the next wave of generative AI tools will only compound the problem.


When a few prompts and shiny drag and drop tools can churn out UX & UI mockups or even functional applications, it’s easy to create a digital product that appears well-designed on the surface, but whose foundation is shaky at best.

For the same reason you’d never design a car around the upholstery, AI-powered development tools can be your friend, but not as a replacement for things like user research, persona development, technical assessment and competitive landscape analysis.


Particularly when development can be so dramatically accelerated, the ability to test, experiment and challenge your own assumptions is more critical than ever. When building a digital product, being wrong early is a gift.


It’s how we discover that there’s more nuance to various target users than initially assumed. It’s how “happy paths” emerge through careful research and usage analysis. It’s how refined product roadmaps clarify the future development plan that mitigates cost while still making substantial progress.


Don’t squander the gift of being wrong early in the name of being done fast.

The age of generative AI will make the gap between the two wider than ever. A well crafted digital product solves the right problem the right way. Which takes an intimate understanding of your business, your customer and broader cultural context that AI will fall short of reaching.


When it’s easier than ever to build the wrong thing, we’ll see a proliferation of software in search of a problem to solve. Perhaps circling the problem, even approaching it or pointing to it, but not built soundly enough from the jump to actually solve it.


So should you invest in AI tools capable of writing software? Sure.


But remember: software’s not really what you’re after.

Ready to learn more about building a practical AI roadmap for your organization? Join our  free workshop: AI Roadmaps for the Real World on LinkedIn Live on April 18th.

Click here to  learn more and save your spot!

Embarking on a project is like setting sail on an epic adventure - a quest for success sprinkled with challenges, triumphs, and enough coffee to power a small army. 

Numbers Worth Knowing: How We Think About Project Metrics

Embarking on a project is like setting sail on an epic adventure - a quest for success sprinkled with challenges, triumphs, and enough coffee to power a small army.

As you can imagine, before we start our journey, just like setting sail, we have to make sure our rigging is right, our people are ready, and we at least roughly know our destination.  Recently, we helped a client work on a fast and furious front end project to bring their ideas to life with a very aggressive 3 month timeline. After delivery, we took some time to take a look at what it means to partner, even for a short time, simply to show what it takes to foster a collaborative environment.  We’ve crunched the numbers to show you what you could expect in working on a custom build product development project.

In this blog post, we're not just diving into the intricate metrics of our project but also infusing it with a generous dose of humor because, let's face it, laughter makes any journey more enjoyable, and, full disclosure, the author of this post loves idioms. Join us on this joyous ride as we explore the metrics that defined our project, where 9 dedicated Foxboxers and 6 client folks joined forces.

A team of 9 Foxboxers and 6 client folks – because, as the saying goes, "Two heads are better than one," and apparently, 15 heads are even better. Each person played a key role in delivering the end result, and as you can imagine, 15 people keeps a project manager busy!

1 meticulously crafted Figma file with dozens of iterations – it's like a treasure map, but for our application. X marks the pixel-perfect spot, and once again, collaboration and calibration gave us exactly what we needed to bring our client’s vision to life.

148 Jira issues developed, reviewed, merged, QAed, and closed – With a mix of user stories, subtasks, bugs, and chores, it’s crucial to always log the work you’re doing, both for transparency and for documentation.

An average sprint velocity of 64 – we're not saying we're faster than a cheetah, but have you ever seen a cheetah close a Jira ticket? Yeah, we didn't think so.

9 demo meetings were held – because we believe in transparency, and also, we had to show off all those beautiful UI features to someone other than ourselves. Without the demo, we would not be able to speak to our hard work, nor would our client be able to tell us what they’re seeing, and if what we built met their expectations.

32% automated test coverage achieved – like a warm, automated security blanket, ensuring our code doesn't get the chills. We believe in covering our code like we cover our late-night snack cravings – thoroughly and without compromise.  What does this look like?  Well,  we automed the happy path most of our users will take.  This is important to create a benchmark of what the tests will look like, and to free up our awesome QA engineer to file bugs and write test cases.

169 PRs expertly merged – because nothing says "team spirit" like a well-merged pull request, or in our case, a code-coordinated group hug.

125 manual test cases written and leveraged – proving that sometimes, a human touch is necessary, especially when the machines get a little too binary. We like to think of manual testing as the project's spa day – indulgent, meticulous, and oh-so-necessary, cucumbers on the eyes are optional of course.

2,300 Slack messages exchanged – because sometimes, the best project decisions are made with GIFs, emojis, and the occasional pun.

98 Daily Standups - Ever heard the phrase, "A stitch in time saves nine"? Well, spending 15 minutes collaborating daily is our version of that wisdom. While Slack is the heartbeat of our remote work, there's magic in face-to-face (well, screen-to-screen) conversations. When it comes to clarifying a user story, hashing it out in real-time during our standups beats waiting for those Slack messages to ping back and forth. Sometimes, a quick chat saves hours of back-and-forth typing!

As the project unfolded over 3 months, the metrics weren't just numbers; they were a testament to our unwavering focus and the output of every single one of the actions we took each day. From the inception where our diverse team united, to the meticulous crafting of the UI, and the comprehensive testing processes, resilience and collaboration were our secret sauce, and maybe now you can imagine what working together could look like for you!