Product Talk Is Growing: Meet New Instructor Ellen Juhlin

Teresa Torres announces that Product Talk has added Ellen Juhlin, a product coach and Senior Director of Product Management at Orion Labs, to its instructor pool. The post frames the expansion as part of Product Talk's goal of getting more product trios to adopt continuous discovery, and as a shift toward a course-first, more human way of teaching. Ellen shares her path from sound design and theater into product management, her experience introducing continuous interviewing and outcome mapping at Orion, and her view of the CDH community. She closes by explaining why hands-on practice on low-stakes problems is the most valuable part of Product Talk courses.

01Key takeaways

• Introduce continuous discovery practices incrementally by plugging in one piece at a time instead of forcing a full process overhaul.
• Ask customers about specific past behavior rather than hypothetical preferences to surface more useful insights.
• Use outcome mapping to revisit business goals during roadmap planning and shift conversations away from feature lists.
• Practice discovery techniques on low-stakes problems first so you can learn and course-correct before applying them at work.
• Bring team members into interview planning by rotating interviewer roles, which spreads learning and builds shared ownership.

02Key sections

Announcing the new instructor

Product Talk introduces Ellen Juhlin as a new teacher for its January 2023 Continuous Interviewing and March 2023 Opportunity Mapping cohorts. The announcement ties this hiring to the company's broader goal of scaling impact.

From theater to product

Ellen describes how a sound design background and work with audio hardware led her into product roles at Meyer Sound, then to a consumer-to-enterprise pivot at Orion Labs.

Adopting continuous discovery at Orion

After taking Teresa's course, Ellen introduced past-behavior interview questions and outcome mapping into roadmap planning, adding techniques gradually rather than all at once.

Community and teaching motivation

Ellen values the high-quality discussion in the CDH Slack community and enjoys coaching people who are eager to learn and apply new techniques.

Advice for course students

Ellen recommends practicing discovery techniques on theoretical problems in class, where feedback is safe, before applying them with high stakes at work.

03From the post

“Product Talk’s North Star metric is to increase the number of product trios who adopt a continuous cadence to their discovery work. Teresa shared this goal at the beginning of 2022 when describing her plans to scale the impact of Product Talk. Explaining why Product Talk has become a”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.