Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
When I talk to my clients about developing great products that offer fantastic User Experience, many of them ask me why, when and how to go about doing it. The most frequently asked question from customers is “what is that one thing that makes or breaks great user experience?”. My consistent response to them has always been one simple word that truly wields the real power. Yes, it is “Consistency”. That is the mantra for creating great products and services that stand the test of time, offering delightful experiences to customers and users! However, this by no means is a quick-fix, short-cut approach to creating successful products and services. In this post, I shall touch upon the important role consistency plays in offering compelling experiences to your customers and users.
Think different, but be consistent
In the constantly changing business and technology landscape that we are living in today, it is imperative that you have to stand out from the competitive me-too products and services in the crowded market place. There is a growing need for businesses and individuals to think and act different. This also works when you wish to develop a new product, concept or idea and especially with the start-ups. It is indeed the hallmark of good startups to be able to think differently from the others to cut the clutter and make their presence felt. However over a period of time, the product or service gets adopted and it gains sufficient market penetration and user acceptance. At that stage, having consistency in presentation and overall experience becomes critical for the long term success of the product.
Consistency – experience and expectations
What does consistency mean in a product development context? Does it mean repetition, cliche and mimicking the same, always and in all ways? No, on the contrary being consistent helps your users to focus on the right areas in your products so that they derive optimal usage experience. Consistency can be seen as an antidote to monotony and often the positives of being consistent far outweighs the negatives of being routine and repetitive. Do not restrict consistency to just one specific product of yours, but broad-basing it across the products in a product line would help your customers and users. Consistency though largely is a broader concept, does vary to some extent based on the users’ culture and geography. The concept of “business” has remained the same all through the centuries. Customers and clients raise a PO (Purchase order) and vendors propose and offer their products /services and then raise an invoice/bill towards the products or services offered. Customers then make payments to vendors against these invoices. This is a consistent way of engaging in business and doesn’t vary from country to country and also does not change with the times.
Sample this as a proof of why I think that consistency is of a great help to delivering great experience. People from across the different parts of the world have been driving cars over the last few decades. There have been a lot of variants like petrol and diesel, differences in engine capacity and volumes. Cars do come in different models, sizes and shapes - sedans, SUVs, hatchbacks and so on. They also differ in the transmissions like manual and automatic. The steering wheel could be on the left or right side of the car, depending on which country you drive. However, no matter where you are driving, what type, model, size or shape of the car, the pedals for brake, clutch and accelerator (also called gas) are always in the same place and in the same order. From left to right, it will be clutch, brake and accelerator and its no doubt that this is what simplifies the driving experience for most of the car drivers in any part of the world. This is just one example of how being consistent helps the users to adopt the products quickly to their context, expectations and experiences formed.
Why be consistent?
Consistency when used in the right manner has the power of giving freedom to your users. It ensures that your users put their focus on the goal rather than the medium. I like to draw an analogy for this with the cinema screen and the projected movie. Consistency in your products is akin to audience watching the movie and enjoying themselves without getting distracted and disillusioned looking at the screen beneath the movie. It makes the experience smooth and lends flow and fluency to what the users look, learn and do within the product.
Let us look at some of the benefits of consistency
- Is shaped on the prior experiences of users
- Helps direct users’ attention
- Sets the expectations of users
- Delivers stability and safety of users, in a few instances
- Aids users in strong brand and product association
Consistency doesn’t kill creativity
Quite a few people think that consistency kills the creativity and new ideas. I would argue that consistency doesn’t affect the innovative or imaginative thinking. Innovative product companies like Apple, Google implement consistency across their entire set of offerings. You can use standards and design principles as the basis for your product. These are the foundation based on which you should architect, design and develop the product. These are often sacrosanct and non-negotiable. Next in the order of priority are guidelines which are like rules of thumb. They are not prescriptive, but provide direction to what should be incorporated and how. But compelling user experience doesn’t stop at this level. Only when you start referring to heuristics and patterns, can the product start delivering delightful and superlative experiences to users. I drew the diagram below to bring out the main points.
How to incorporate consistency
In the context of product development, consistency translates into the overall user experience and not just the superficial visual design. You need to look at all the various dimensions that contribute to the overall experience and delight of users. The following diagram sums up how you can lend your product a consistent experience…
Through the optimal use of consistency, user should be able to feel that he/she knows:
- What I can do with this product
- Where I am now, where I can go from here and how I can go
- Why something works the way it does
- What a particular element means when it is in of a certain colour, shape and size
- How I can press, click, tap an element to get what I want it to do
Hope you find this post helpful. As always, please feel free to drop in your comments to help improve the quality and usability of my blog posts. Until next time, ciao!
Tags: Apple, business, cars, consistency, creativity, customer experience, design, Different, Google, guidelines, heuristics, ID, ideas, innovation, interaction, navigation, Pardha Mantravadi, patterns, presentation, products, services, standards, SUV, technology, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, usability, user experience, ux
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Interaction Design, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 2nd, 2012
This post walks you through with an overview of Texavi, what we do, who we are and where we serve. You will also get to see the core services and offerings, practices and focus areas of Texavi. With this presentation, you will know how we can help you and the benefits for you, working with us.
- Team Texavi
Tags: agile, Apps, behaviour, behaviours, BlackBerry, business analysis, clients, cloud, company, computing, conferences, consulting, Corporate, habits, ICT, India, innovation, iOS, IT, London, media, Microsoft, Mobile, Mumbai, new age, Overview, Pardha Mantravadi, partners, presentation, publishing, retail, social, social business, social media, solutions, STM, Tablet, technology, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, training, UK, usability, user experience, workshops
Posted in Agile Development, Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Innovation, Interaction Design, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Friday, September 7th, 2012
Thanks to the social media, businesses are now relying on the social channels besides the mainstream media. Apart from having a web presence, companies are now having their presence on social and professional networks. Because of this, there are more networks, more people and more content getting shared. As highlighted in my earlier posts, social business is not an option for organisations now. Businesses have now acquired thousands of followers, friends and fans on the social networks. But these numbers fail to indicate the true success of a social business. What then are the true indicators for the progress in a social business journey? Our Social Business Maturity Model helps! With the Key Progress Indicators (KPIs), you can easily assess the progress and measure your success. In this post, let us look at these KPIs and how they offer insights into the social business performance.
Measures and metrics in mainstream media
I would prefer to call traditional, digital and online media together as mainstream media. These incude print channels such as magazines,newspapers, electronic media including television and radio, web channels like web sites and web applications. As the saying goes, “measure it to manage it”, people have been measuring the progress of the effectiveness using these mainstream media. Measures and metrics like sales per region and ROI have become standard across industries. However, going by the current trends, their usage is limited and cannot be relied upon to judge the impact across all channels of the business. The following are some of the popular numbers, which are still helpful to get some understanding about the performance on the specific channels.
- Sales per region – all
- Number of impressions – newspapers and magazines
- Number of footfalls – Physical stores and shops
- TRPs – Television
- Conversion rates – Web sites
- Page views – Web sites
Social media brings new measures for businesses
Besides the above, social businesses now have newer measures added to manage, track and measure the social efforts. Since social networks are mainly focused on people and content aspects, businesses are engaged in connecting and following people and viewing, sharing and creating content. Alongside these activities, advertisements in Facebook, YouTube etc., help businesses generate leads and enable online transactions, smoothly. In line with the activities and social engagements, the newer social measures and metrics emerged that would help track these activities. These ranged from the simple measures like number of followers to more complex metrics like influence score and engagement score. However, these numbers alone are not helpful to see the activities on social networks and the results therefrom, in silos. They are not of much use in getting the big picture for social business. Our Social Business Maturity Model and the associated KPIs surely give a better visibility on the activities and results.
Social measures, metrics and analytics
According to the Social Business Maturity Model, there are 3 key areas that offer insight into how the social efforts are performing. These are the people, content and business. Within each of these 3 areas, there are measures, analytics and social business insights. The measures add up to the metrics and they in turn contribute to generate the usable insights.
- Social measures
- Metrics and analytics
- Social business insights
Social measures are pure numbers that are straightforward and do not depend on other measures. These are expressed typically in numbers, averages and time taken to perform an action. Examples for social measures are number of followers, views, likes, shares, votes etc. Metrics and analytics, on the other hand are derived from the social measures. For instance, influence score, engagement score and network reach are some of the popular analytics that we track and analyse for understanding the user behaviours, content quality and campaign’s performance. Social business insight is the overarching measure that would help understand the effectiveness of a campaign or series of activities on the social networks. Total value per action, for example is one such social business insight that is derived from the metrics and analytics.
Social Business KPIs
In the Social Business Maturity Model, the Social Business KPIs offer the true insights about the performance, progress and success of the social business efforts. While most of them are quantitative, a few of them are based on the qualitative aspects. These are derived from the social metrics and analytics. And metrics in turn, are computed based the social measures. A case in point is the analytic ‘network reach’ is dependent on the social measures – no. of followers in the networks, no. of new followers added in the last week, no. of FoF (friends of friends) etc. This analytic network reach however is not complete in itself and cannot be a great business value. So, we have a KPI called Total Value per Action (TVA) which is derived from other related analytics like the influence score, engagement score, number of leads generated from the advertisement, number of transactions triggered etc.
The following diagram shows how an insight, total value per action, is derived from the associated metrics and social measures.
Hope you find this post on the social business insights helpful. Please feel free to drop your comments and feedback. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: analytics, business, content, engagement, Facebook, influence, Innovative, insight, KPI, mainstream, mantravadi, measures, metrics, online, Pardha, Pardha Mantravadi, people, Saradhi, SBMM, social, social business, social media, social networks, solutions, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, TRP, value, web sites, YouTube
Posted in Information Technology, Innovation, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Friday, August 31st, 2012
Businesses, like individuals grow over time, adjusting themselves to the changes, situations, market demands and business drivers. Organisations mature in their processes, improving continually their products, services and operations. Often the maturity happens by doing, learning and unlearning from their own experiences. However, some other times, maturity could come in through vicarious learning i.e., looking and observing at others and their ways of working. This applies equally well to the social businesses which undergo different stages of progression. Social businesses join networks, identify their goals, create and innovate content and engage people. As they mature, the focus shifts from selling their products and services to building their brand. In this post, I will first touch upon the criteria for defining a successful social business and then discuss how you can drive your social efforts with the social business engine.
1. First define the goals and success criteria
In order to become successful, the first step is to identify and define in clear terms, what success means. The definition of “done” and the success criteria have to be specified and agreed upon well in advance. These will help the organisation, team members and also the stakeholders to understand the progress. To be able to understand whether you have reached your goals, you must first define what the goals are. For social businesses, as I mentioned in my previous posts, the goal is to become a people-focused business. This goal translates into the organisation delivering experiences instead of products and services. Success also depends on how well businesses help change the behaviours of their customers and users.
I think social businesses must focus on the following areas, to become successful.
- Brands, not just products and services
- People, not just customers and users
- Experiences, not just engagement and influence
- Habits, not just one time actions
- Insights, not just metrics and analytics
2. Identify the key drivers – People, content and business
There is no doubt that the social business engine powers your social initiative providing the direction and fuel for your social efforts. I view this engine as comprising three main components- people, content and business. The social business hinges on these 3 key components, and they are inter-related among themselves. People contribute and create engaging content, and this content leads conversations to transactions. Yes, its true that social networks are about conversations. But merely engaging people with interactive content does not help businesses become successful at social business. So, a combination of people, content and business working in tandem would help build successful social businesses. No wonder most successful social businesses have got it right with these three components of the social business engine.
3. Invest in people, the true asset to social business
The way organisations manage their relationships with people shift from one level to another, as they get matured in the social business. The maturity on this component of the social business engine varies from being a novice at identifying the right people within their networks to actively engaging them. In the initial levels, you put the efforts in finding and connecting with the right people in the target networks. You slowly start to follow them and their activities, interact with them in different ways to create some value in the process. But as you reach higher levels of maturity, you go beyond conversations and engage them with innovative content, and encouraging them to conduct commercial transactions. This happens as there is increased level of trust and also there is a sense of give-and-take between the people and you. At the highest level is the goal to influence and delight the people, coercing them to make or break habits, to the advantage of all involved.
Here are some top tips for getting it right with people-focus. Some of these are aligned with our Unified Experience Framework.
- Look beyond customers. Focus on People {customers, users, stakeholders, followers}
- Follow and be followed by the right people on your networks
- Enable people to change their behaviours
- Synchronise people’s online and offline behaviours
- Deliver unified experiences across multiple platforms and channels
- Cut out the noise and care for people’s voices and heartbeats
4. Create meaningful and engaging content
Curating, creating and innovating content is critical for the success of any social business. Curation of the content can happen when there is a value-add done by means of sharing it to relevant people and making changes to it. Social businesses can succeed when they could enhance the content and also innovate. Innovation with content can be done in many ways, based on the industry, size and nature of business. Essentially, businesses innovate when they create different types of content altogether. For instance, Apple created iBooks and gave power to small time authors who want to publish their books, quickly, easily and in a cost-effective manner. Many companies who have been traditionally printing books, started with digital publications. The content is still the same, but these companies innovated with different way of delivering it.
5. Social business goes beyond conversations
Engaging people on the networks with interesting content is key for social businesses, to start with. Also, encouraging people to be involved in meaningful conversations aligned to the business interests of the organisation is critical too. However, as the business matures, the focus needs to be to interactions leading to commercial transactions. Otherwise there is not much of a value-add for the business to be on the social networks. You should start to motivate people to do online transactions, review your products, recommend of their friends so that they become your customers too.
Hope you find the above points helpful in building your social business. As always, please feel free to drop in with your comments and suggestions. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: Apple, brand, business, content, engage, experience, habits, influence, Innovative, mantravadi, maturity, model, networks, Pardha, Pardha Mantravadi, people, Saradhi, SBMM, social, social business, social business engine, Social business maturity model, solutions, success, texavi
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 21st, 2012
A few days ago, I was thinking about what separates the great organisations from the good ones. I tried to connect a few successful companies with the secrets behind their success. Here is a small question for you to get thinking on this..what is common to Google, Apple and simple? Of course the letters LE, but the prize goes to the correct answer, “their commitment to make people happy”. Google and Apple have positioned themselves as people-focused firms, creating innovative products and services that not only work for people but also delight them. They have established a clear differentiation based on delighting their customers, stakeholders and followers with simple and easy to use products and services. In this post, let us learn how any organisation which aims to become a social business, needs to focus on ‘the people’ to be successful.
Focus on people – Make them happy
Businesses traditionally have been focusing on people in one form or the other. Every organisation works hard to keep their customers happy as that would guarantee their existence. Some businesses focus on keeping their employees satisfied with good facilities, pay and perks.These companies think that happy employees lead to higher productivity and thereby better results. A few large organisations with deep pockets can afford to keep not only their customers and employees happy, but also extend their reach to the stakeholders like shareholders and suppliers. However, a social business needs to do all the above and a bit extra as well. Let us see in the next section what social businesses need to do to get it right.
Social business – Internal and external people
Social businesses have to optimise their business strategies, operations and resources towards the ‘people’. The people here means those who are both ‘internal’ as well as ‘external’ to the organisation. Internal people are the employees and other key stakeholders such as the management, sponsors and the shareholders. They are critical to the success of any initiative as everything starts with them, from the business vision to strategy, from planning to execution and delivery. External people refers to the customers and suppliers. However, in the context of social business, the list doesn’t end here. These external people include the followers, friends and fans on social and professional networks. Social businesses succeed by putting the people’s interests first beyond anything. Their business objectives and bottom lines are all dependent on their people-focus. Social businesses have to ensure that both the internal and external people are happy.Here is how they can achieve this. :
- Involve, encourage and empower the right teams
- Find, connect and follow the right people
- Educate, influence and engage your followers
In the following sections, let us see how the organisations can become effective following the above rules.
Involve, encourage and empower the right teams
Teams make or break your organisations initiatives and attempts for successful campaigns. Great teams often are one of the biggest success factors behind great social businesses. You need to involve the team members from the very beginning so that they none of the team members feel left out. Also, this would help build ownership in them and increases their responsibility. Encourage and motivate the team members to start delivering towards the goals of social business. Empower them to take decisions on their own, try new things and implement their ideas. No matter if the ideas are bad or good, let the team work on those ideas and realise the efficacy of these ideas, on their own. Empowering the teams enables the team to own up the social business initiative and deliver activities and succeed, all by themselves.
For successful social business, empower the team and allow them to:
- Estimate the efforts and timelines
- Come up with the plan
- Commit and agree upon the plans
- Deliver on the plans
- Bring out the problems, if any, during the execution
Find, Connect and follow the right people
Whereas the teams working on your social business are internal to your organisation, you also need to look outside of your business. These are customers, suppliers and others, speaking of traditional businesses. Often in the context of social business, this extends to those people in your social and professional networks. Follow these simple rules to follow the right people on your social and professional networks.
- Define the profiles of the people who fit your business requirements
- Create a persona with the demographics and psychographics
- Search, browse and look out for the people fitting in the persona
- Connect to these people and follow their activities on networks
- Interact with them by liking and favouriting their content
- Engage with the people by sharing their content across networks
Educate, engage and influence your followers
Following people on the social and professional networks, interacting with with them and sharing their content is one thing. It is quite another level to get people to follow you. Even harder is to engage people consistently with content that they are interested in. Of course, the most difficult step in the social engagement is to be able to influence your followers, friends and fans positively and increase their trust in you and your brand. The starting point for all of these accomplishments is to start sharing content which aligns with the interests of your followers. Make it worthy of their likes, and encourage them to comment upon and share it with others in their network. Influence your followers
Given below are some useful tips to help you with engaging your audience and influencing them.
- Identify the target audience from amongst your followers, friends and fans on networks
- Understand their interests and focus areas
- Align your campaigns and content to be aligned with their interests
- Interact with them, encourage people to like your content and share it
- Reach out to friends of friends (FoF) and widen your network reach
- Influence your followers to trust your brand and make them your ambassadors
Hope you find the above suggestions helpful in your social business efforts. As always, please let me know your views for improving this blog. Until next post, Ciao!
Tags: agile, Apple, business, customers, employees, empowerment, Facebook, fans, followers, friends, Google, happy, Innovative, LinkedIn, mantravadi, media, networks, Pardha, people, products, professional, Saradhi, services, simple, simplicity, social, solutions, suppliers, team, teamwork, texavi, twitter
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
There is one news item that I have been following very keenly in the evening newspaper , going back home from work, daily. It caught my attention a week ago and ever since, it has been on my radar. The news is not related to the bad state of economy, nor connected with sports , movies or music. It is the ‘Get London Reading’ news story published on the front page of London Evening Standard newspaper. This caught my attention because of the very title of the campaign and the positive vibes being generated and the potential impact and change it would create. The very title of this initiative is a great example of a behavior definition, nevertheless if it is a tad bit broad and ambitious, if not ambiguous.
Behavior change is possible
In my last post, we looked at what behaviors are and the main types of behaviors. Some people actually asked me the difference between a behavior, goal and task. When I have seen the ‘Get London Reading’ campaign, it instantly occurred to me as an example to help clarify this. A quick look at the campaign page hosted online will give you an indication why I refer to this as an exemplary behavior change programme. Well, in this post , let us take the next step and understand the Behavior Model touching upon the relationship between motivation, ability and triggers. I wish to draw some insights from Fogg Behavior Model (aka FBM) proposed by Prof. B.J.Fogg, using my examples.
The Poppy Appeal – Persuasion success story
A couple weeks ago, people in the UK observed Remembrance Sunday paying tributes to the armed forces personnel who sacrificed their lives in the line of service. People from all walks of life came forward to commemorate the bravery of soldiers in various ways. There were donations collected in different forms , the most visible of them being the Web site making the ‘poppy appeal’ and of course, the sale of poppies on the roads. You would have seen many people in London and other cities wearing and flaunting these poppies proudly, to show their support to the Royal British Legion. The poppy appeal program is a massive hit, garnering generous amounts of funds, besides all the attention. I wish to take the poppy appeal case as a success s story to elaborate my case about persuasion and behavior change.
Will do -> Want to do + can do
Let us consider a case when somebody comes and asks you to donate funds for the cause of soldiers. How many people will donate the money? Notice that some people do want to donate, because it is serving the noble cause of helping the defence services personnel, albeit in a small way. But not always do you find that all these motivated people can actually give. So, it is not enough to want to give funds, but most importantly, people should also have the ability to donate amounts. Great, so you found some people who want to and also who can donate. Is the job done? Not exactly. They need to be asked, reminded and provided with ways to donate . These are all the various triggers used to facilitate these motivated and able people to take the step and donate the amounts. Then and only then, would the motivated and able people come forward to donate.
Fogg Behavior Model (FBM)
So, from the above example, let us try and generalize this using the Behavior Model proposed by Prof. B.J.Fogg, Director of Persuasive Technologies Lab, Stanford University. You would have understood that people will do a task, not only when they are motivated but also when they have the ability. In other words, the first step in the process of behavior change is to identify those people who have high motivation. The next step is to simplify the task or process, or to increase their ability to do the task.
However, it does not always happen that these people actually do the tasks, until they are triggered with the right call to action. These triggers have to be placed on the journeys or paths of these people, at the right time, in the right place and with the right visibility. That’s the secret behind many successful products and services, which have been able to bring about a behavior change in their users.
Change is in the air – Lean & agile
You would have seen that this persuasion and behavior modeling is all about change, but change of a different kind. Organizations and products have been trying to induce the behavior change in the people. The beauty of this model is that it perfectly aligns with the spirit of other successful contemporary models for change management . These include but not limited to Agile product development and lean startup. All these models and schools of thought have an almost similar ideology. Agile product development is about identifying and responding and managing changes with the right people, tools and techniques. Lean startup embraces the philosophy of doing something in a small way leading up to a gradual and sustainable growth model. The behavior model encompassing behavior modeling, behavior change and persuasive design combines the best practices from psychology, change management, design and product engineering areas.
Mantras for changing behaviors
FBM is a powerful model which is applicable across different industries, product lines and market segments. It is very apt in the scenarios where you wish to make a long term behavior change, with an aim to make a positive habit among your customers and users. Here are some tips and guidelines, given by Prof. Fogg, based on the points discussed in this post.
- Behavior depends on how motivated users are, their ability and response to the right triggers for action
- People’s behaviors can be changed by motivating them, making it simple and/or inciting them to act
- Place triggers on the paths of motivated people who are able to do the behaviors
- Habits can be formed in people through behavior change
- Focus on increasing ability by making tasks easier for users
- Help people do what they already want to do
Hope you enjoyed reading this post and it is as helpful to you as the previous ones. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: agile, appeal, behavior, British, campaign, change, design, development, Get, Innovative, lean, Legion, London, mantra, mantravadi, model, Pardha, persuasion, poppy, product, Prof. B.J.Fogg, Reading, Royal, Saradhi, solutions, Stanford, startup, texavi, University
Posted in Agile Development, Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Innovation, Product Development, User Analysis, User Experience, User-centered Design | 2 Comments »
Saturday, November 12th, 2011
Behavior change it is, if you are wondering what’s hot in the consumer space. I see this as a game changer , with organizations now looking beyond satisfying the explicit needs of users. Simply put, as a product or a services company, you have the power to change the behavior of your users. Apple, Google and Facebook are great examples of how well they understood the behavior modeling and persuasive design and successfully applied it in their products. Numerous products such as FitBit and DailyFeats-Jawbone UP use similar concepts to make people fit and healthy, bringing about a change in their long term habits, resulting in better health and lifestyles. We will talk about these products in the coming posts, in detail, but in this post I focus on the ‘persuasion and behavior design’ boot camp that I attended recently.
Persuasion and Behavior Design Boot Camp by Prof. B.J.Fogg
Last week I participated in the 2-day Persuasion Boot Camp held at San Francisco, USA. The workshop was conducted by Prof. B.J.Fogg, Director of Persuasive Technologies Lab, Stanford University. It was a great experience, learning directly from Prof.Fogg, who is an eminent thought-leader on this subject. In this post, I will briefly touch upon the next 2 paragraphs with my views and then give a few snippets and key takeaways from the workshop. I wish to share with you the learning from this workshop and also my experience applying it. Watch this space for interesting stuff to come in the future posts. For complete set of photos from this workshop, please visit www.facebook.com/texavi
Essence of Boot Camp in few words
I give below a few points briefly on how the workshop was conducted, why I think its different from others and the important takeaways from the boot camp. To start with, the following one-liners summarize the learning.
- Its all about users’ behaviors, not just product’s features
- Solutions, not just problems
- Focus on creating solutions quickly
- Ideate, initiate & Iterate
- This model aligns with the agile development and lean startup
Myths and misconceptions, shattered
The workshop helped address a few myths that we have about product design, development, human psychology and behavior design. I mention below a few misconceptions prevalent in the industry that we should be wary of .
- Blind trust in excessive academic research
- Focus on features is important for products
- Attempts to motivating people on a continuous basis without simplifying the tasks
- Focusing on attitudes, instead of behaviors.
- Everything big is good – big ideas and big initiatives are always successful
- Its difficult to make people adopt to new behaviors
Great content and context
The workshop was refreshingly different not only in the content but also in the context and delivery. Open-house discussions and interactive brain-storming replaced the more traditional ways of presentations. I can say that the highlight of the boot camp was that there was little or almost no usage of computers and Powerpoint presentations. Going by its apt title, the boot camp did its job aiming to make the participants experts in the specific areas. Prof. Fogg chose the topics very carefully and was even more meticulous in their delivery. He ensured that the core concepts are registered in the minds of boot campers using intensive hands-on sessions and role-plays rather than relying on typical pedagogic methodology.
Nice ambiance and a perfect setting
Far from the maddening buzz of the urban landscape, the workshop was conducted in serene ambience. Held in a beautiful guest house located by the riverside, the place was the best fit for learning and sharing . Also Healdsburg is a place surrounded with fertile land and so there is no dearth of natural vegetation. Every household here grows vegetables and fruits and no wonder you get the best quality natural products, direct from nature. This place also boasts of some fine vineyards and wineries around. All of these provide a great backdrop and a wonderful setting for the workshop.
And to wrap it up…
- Good use of different rooms and sometimes outdoors kept the workshop alive and participants active
- Outdoor activities and exercises were nice, thanks to the pleasant weather
- Perfect blend of individual and group exercises made the sessions insightful and interactive, as well
- Assignments right after discussions ensured that we applied the concepts to understand better
- Interactions with alumni and previous bootcampers helped understand the value of the boot camp
- Last but not the least, nice food and to top it all, a grand dinner arranged by the local wine trader
In the next few posts, I shall write more on the behavior model and how you can use the behavior design to create persuasive products and services. Hope you enjoyed reading this post. Until next one, ciao!
Tags: Apple, behavior, BJ, bootcamp, change, design, exercises, experience, Facebook, FitBit, Fogg, Google, habits, Healdsburg, health, Innovative, JawBone, Lab, modeling, Pardha Saradhi Mantravadi, persuasion, product, Prof, psychology, San Francisco, solutions, Stanford, technologies, texavi, training, University, Up, users, workshop
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Innovation, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
As you all know, during the recently held “Lets talk iPhone” event, Apple officially announced the launch of iPhone4S, iOS5 and iCloud. While it was a disappointment to some people who were expecting the big upgrade to iPhone4, that’s beside the point I want to make in this post. Rewind to April2010, when Apple first launched iPad, as the first ever consumer Tablet in the market. There was a knee-jerk reaction from lot of people, who rejected Apple’s new Tablet concept. There were more naysayers who expressed that they didn’t find any use for it and that the iPad was just a “glorified and bigger iPhone which can’t be used for calls”. Its everybody’s knowledge how that perception and reactions changed drastically over a period of time. Apple created the undisputed benchmark and a leader in the Tablets market, with many more companies bucking the trend and releasing their me-too versions. In this post, let us look at what it takes to create great products by managing users’ reactions and how you can better define the product.
Great products vs. good products
Some times, you would have come across products that not only have features and functionality to help you do the mundane tasks, but also fit in very well into your life and work. Discerning readers like you are very well aware that there is a difference between great products and good products. Great products differ in that they offer rich context, enable users to realize their goals and enchant them satisfying their implicit and unmet needs. These often go beyond the briefing and provide more than just nice features. Its true that not all products are created with this intent and that they gain users’ acceptance slowly over time.
How users relate and adopt to new products
I have seen an almost pattern-like behavior from users on how they react to products launched as groundbreaking new concepts which go on to become a huge success. I call this the 5A model of User reactions to new products. It starts with an almost hatred like feeling towards the new product. This is because users develop habits with the existing products and are happy using them the way they are. They perceive the new product as a change and a potential threat to their comfort. This could be because of the innate behavior of aversion to change and anything new. Then over time, due to various factors, both external and internal, customers tend to develop an acquired taste for the product.
The 5A model for product adoption
The perceptions and reactions of users to new products almost always follows a gradual progression of steps leading to great adoration for the products. I am not sure if anybody has patented this model already, but these terms came to my mind 3 months ago, when I was working on a new concept product for one of my clients.
- Aversion
- Acceptance
- Admiration
- Aspiration
- Adoration
I observed this model applicable to many successful products, tracing back to the times of their launch, how they changed with marketing, alignment to business and better product definition. One of the most successful product companies, Apple and its successful creation, the iPad are not an exception to this model, as we discussed above.
Ask what you are creating
The trickiest thing in developing new products is in understanding, defining and communicating what your product is and what it can do. Most products fail, not because they are designed badly or implemented in a technically incorrect way. They fail because the product vendors could not communicate the purpose and benefits of the product clearly to the customers and users. Or worse still, products are hit the hardest, when the product owners themselves are not clear about the vision and definition of their product.
How to define your new product
Innovation and thinking differently often help you in defining your product, which is a first step in paving the way for its success. The standing example for a successful application of innovation with thinking big is Metamorphosi which changed the way lamps and lighting are created.
While every other player in this market thinks of creating better and attractive table lamps, Artemide realized that they are not merely creating lamps, but helping keep people in better mood through their lighting. So, they decided their product definition as not just as a lamp, but a ‘lighting solution’! Small wonder that Artemide and Metamorfosi are equated to innovation in the home decor segment that triggered many admirers, followers and copy cats too, all around the world.
New product development checklist
The critical success factor in the product development is having a clear vision, direction and purpose for the product or application, that you are creating. You need to define the scope, intent and content of your product, which help in translating the vision into the product design, development and delivery. It is often necessary to go beyond the immediate form and name of the product under description. Do not get attached to, nor be limited by the physical aspects of your product. I always do a check with the following parameters to decide how well we are doing and whether we are on the right path. I use these as a definitive check list to assess the potential success of your product or concept.
- Business viability
- Technical feasibility
- Product usability
- Resource availability
- Consistent Quality
The above factors play a decisive and definitive role in the assessment of your product’s potential and performance. Do not underestimate the potential of validating your product against this check list. This would give you a very good measure of how your product is faring and in what direction it is heading to. You can then take necessary course correction and take preventive steps to steer your product back on track. We can talk in detail about applying each of these in the context of your new product, in a separate blog post.
Hope you found this post informative and usable. Happy Diwali to all my Indian friends and followers. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: adoption, analysis, Apple, applications, artemide, business, consulting, development, engineering, Innovative, iPad, iPhone, IT, mantravadi, market, metamorfosi, new, Pardha, product, Saradhi, solutions, technology, texavi, usability, users
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Innovation, Product Development, User Analysis, User Experience | 5 Comments »
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
After all these years of my experience in engineering software products and applications, I realized that there is one phrase that I tend to hate the most. No, its not “Give me a ballpark estimate” or “I need this delivered by e.o.d. today”, though these come close enough to be 1st and 2nd runners-up 
. The one I am referring to is “Let users figure it out”. It is a nemesis to developing successful products, often resulting in a shoddy product. The “Figure-it-out” syndrome as what I call it, could be an evil for product development which can be as bad as, if not worse than Featuritis. The plausible cure for this syndrome is when the product is made easy to use for those people who are using it for the first time. In this post, I touch upon the ease of learning and use and give some tips about making your products a breeze for your users.
Easy to learn and use
Let us be honest, how many of us got trained on using the ATM card to withdraw money from a cash machine? At the least, how many went through the user manual, supplied? Popularly known as Any Time Money, the Automatic Teller Machine was conceptualized and designed so that users from different segments can get to use it with little or no effort. This is a classic case of designing a product which is not just easy to use, but also easy to learn for new users as well. Easy to learn and use a product is a critical yardstick to measure its success and is often ignored to a large extent for various reasons. Lacking this, a product might become a nightmare and the product or feature puts off not only novice users but also some experienced users, some times.
But then it has the ‘user manual’
Training, setup guides, user manuals, glossary, help docs and other such documents are meant to support the new users in coming to grips with the product. Like a site map which provides a clear guide on how a web site is structured, most of the above artifacts are meant to make it really easy for the users. But then, there is a view prevalent among the Design community that site map comes handy only when a web site is not usable by itself. In other words, only when users are confused, puzzled and left with no option, that they would look at a site map. So is the case with the supporting documents and help guides that I mentioned above. No matter how effective and efficient your technical writing team is, your documentation goes often into the dust bin. The golden rule is ‘Customers and users don’t read user manuals!‘. Bear in mind that these are good supporting aids but they can never replace a well-designed product.
The ‘Figure it out’ syndrome
Whether its the apathy towards customers and users, or the need for speed in delivering the product to market, the figure-it-out tendency gains ground with the product development team. You don’t suddenly wake up one fine morning with the syndrome. It gets built up over time and plagues your product and users to no end. Here are the factors that can potentially contribute to it…lack of empathy and concern for users, a frog-in-a-well approach. Also, an unwritten but strictly-followed preference attached to functionality and technology over user experience tilts the scales against making the product intuitive.
Don’t undermine the impact of this syndrome, it could be long term, deep cut and manifold. It affects not just the product creators – the stakeholders and the development team but also the product consumers. For the creators, due to the relatively short-sighted aspects of their planning and execution, there will be heavy overheads of customer-reported defects leading almost to a total rejection of the product by the users. Some of the products tend to be so overly complicated for new users that they instantly give up and return them or pass on to others. There are umpteen examples of products which flopped not for their technological maneuvers, nor for their functional richness but merely because they are rather too complicated for users to start using it.
Steps for ease of learning and use
The first step in making your products easy to learn and use, is to know your users. There is an oft quoted saying in the User Experience industry that tells it all - “Know thy user and you are not your user”. The next step is to design and develop the product in such a way that it is intuitive and clear for users. Cluttered and dense interfaces, confusing controls, unclear messages, lack of help when needed- all of these make it hard for your new users. As Steve Krug puts it in his book, ‘Don’t make me think’, the moment you let your users start thinking about how to use any feature or functionality, you start to lose the user ‘s interest. Also, there should be a flow that lets users feel immersed when doing a task. This would make them not only feel that they accomplished the task but also delighted. I would equate this to the concept of flow as explained by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his classic book on psychology – “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”.
Who are you creating the product for
To be able to design your product better for ease of learning and use, you need to clearly identify who you are creating the product for. Going back to the ATM card example which we discussed above, the product was intended to be used by the larger number of users with little or no literacy, who would have never seen, leave alone using a computer before in their life. It was designed and developed knowing fully well that it needs to work with all the users with different backgrounds and literacy levels.
The beauty of the ATM product lies in that they cleverly disguised a computer into the machine. Without users’ knowledge, they are actually using a computer and its all made so much of a breeze to use it. No wonder, the concept and product caught up and it has changed the very definition of ’banking’ on a global scale. Another case in point is Intuit’s QuickBooks. While every other accounting product in the market was geared towards the accountants and qualified book keeping professionals, Intuit understood that there is a huge demand for a simplified accounting product for the non-accountants and novices. They launched QuickBooks with the sole focus on this segment of users and today it is the most successful product in that segment, popular for its ease of use among new and expert users, as well.
Expertise and experience make a big difference
I would suggest that you classify your existing and/or potential users, based on the following:
- Demographics
- Education and computer literacy
- Professional
- Psycho-graphic (attitudes, likes and behaviors)
- Tasks and scenarios
More importantly, to make your product easy to use, you must first profile your users based on the product usage experience. The following is a typical way of classifying the user groups, but you can adapt this and modify it to suit your needs.
- Novice /beginners
- Intermediate
- Advance
- Expert/experience
Specify your target
Now that you had a considerable start in the path of creating a great product, you now need to ensure that you have the right pick. The list below will help you in approaching the product definition in a structured way.
- Identify the composition and distribution of your existing and proposed user base
- Have a clear markup of the proportion of new users vis-a-vis advanced or expert users
- Specify which of the above user types you will target with the product
- This is applicable equally to the features and functionality and not only to the entire product
Here is how you can make IT easy
Beside the above suggestions from my experience, I offer a few other tips below to do a quick check on how effective your product or feature in the scale of ease of learning and use. You might use these as guidelines during the design and development of the product or as checkpoints to validate the features and functionality in your product. I am classifying them into the typical buckets of user experience, so that its easy to assess them individually.
Functionality
- What can I do with this product?
- What do I need to do, so that I can achieve my goals?
Navigation
- Where am I now?
- Where can I go from here?
Interaction
- What should I do to make this work?
- How responsive is it to my inputs?
Presentation
- Does this look pleasing to my eyes?
- Am I distorting anything to make it appear what it is not?
Help
- Can I get help when I need?
- Is help provided when I require it?
As always, hope you find this post informative and useful. Please do give me your feedback. Until next post, ciao!
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Tags: Accounting, analysis, ATM, bank, card, cash, Csikszentmihalyi, development, documents, ease, experience, figure, flow, functionality, help, Innovative, interaction, Intuit, Krug, learn, learning, mantravadi, manual, Mihaly, navigation, Pardha, presentation, product, QuickBooks, Saradhi, solutions, Steve, syndrome, texavi, usability, use, user
Posted in Information Technology, Innovation, Interaction Design, Product Development, User Analysis, User Experience | 8 Comments »
Saturday, August 20th, 2011
You might be slightly intrigued by the title of this post. Yes, you are correct in that the focus of any innovation almost always happens to be on customers and end-users. It ends up delivering value to users in some way or the other and that the most significant benefactor in the process of innovation is the user. No denying that truth, however, in this post I wish to look at innovation being driven by users and their needs. Let us look at a few instances which triggered the users to innovate and what it takes to nurture this user-centered innovation.
Defining innovation
From whatever I have learnt from my experience, I would define innovation as an approach to deliver value to customers and users, using the existing resources and working under the constraints. It could be a powerful combination of bringing in some simple ideas, adding some imagination and creating value.
This value-creation process can span across multiple industries, verticals, domains and market segments. Innovation is not restricted to products alone. Innovation can happen in the way you deliver services to your customers or even in the way you improve the internal processes within your organization.
Whose problem is it anyway
Innovation starts with identifying the right problems and can be said to be successful when the ‘right solution’ is created. What is a right solution? It is that which works for customers and users! But whose problems are you trying to solve? Its the users’ problem and if its their problem, who is best equipped to find a way out? Well, the people who have the problem did find the solutions too in some cases and in this post we shall touch upon a few of them.
Quality and process improvement initiatives such as Kaizen, TQM (Total Quality Management) and Quality Circles have been evolved in the later part of the 20th century. These initiatives came out after finding that the people who are close to the problems are the people are working on the shop floor and are working on the assembly lines. Many companies in the automobile industry have successfully leveraged Quality Circles to identify the problems and also soliciting solutions from the people who are working on the shop floors.
Improvisation vs. innovation
Innovation need not always be ground-breaking and involving rapid changes to the existing ways. It is not about big or small, high or low, but it is about the ability to deliver value in the first place. As the saying goes ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, it is necessity and not needs alone that drives people to innovate and invent. Note that the user is the person who has the problem or the need and he/she has the best ability to determine the scale of impact or outcome from the process.
A case in point is the video clip that you can view by clicking on the link below. I came across this small video clip being shared in the social media. I am really fascinated by the way the gentleman in the video found out a way to satisfy his need to look better in the eyes of the onlookers, when driving his car. Sometimes, its the urge to look better that makes us think for better way of doing things leading to innovation. This proves that innovation or the ability to make things better need not always be on a large scale nor involve massive machinery.
Manual Power windows_innovation demo_Video Clip
Innovation is not expensive
User-centered innovation need not be a huge investment involving millions of dollars. It need not be even be seen as an investment in some cases. It is more a process of improving the things or merely doing the same things in a different way to bring about the value.
I am reminded of the story during the cold war space programmes by USA and the USSR. NASA invested millions of dollars to invent a pen which writes in zero-gravity space conditions. They invented this space pen ( also called as Fisher’s space pen) after a lot of effort, time and cost of research. The Russian Cosmonauts on the other hand, used a cheaper and smarter way…they used ‘pencil’! My friends in India might recollect the famous scene by actor Amir Khan in the popular movie ’3Idiots’.
I saw this Fisher space pen (also called as Bullet Pen) when I visited the Smithsonian’s NASM (National Air & Space Museum) in Washington D.C. Of course, the above is just a story and not completely factual, as the NASA did not develop the space pen but acquired it from the company that manufactured it and later the Russians too started using the space pen. However, the moral of the story is that innovation need not be expensive all the time.
Measuring innovation
A true measure of innovation is the value delivered to the users. But I would not measure the value as high, medium or low. I would not even quantify the value delivered because that would defeat the purpose of innovation as a continual or should I say continuous process of making things better.
Native intelligence and improvisation
Innovation does not require high end technology nor using huge number of resources. Some times , as they say at grass roots level, this can be witnessed through using native intelligence and improvising in a small way. A small example to prove this is the case of mobile vendors of vegetables who went innovative in the rural areas of Vijayawada in India. I witnessed one such instance in a remote area, Gollapudi in the outskirts of Vijayawada. This area has a few colonies which came up recently but they are too inside the town to be closer to any everyday things such as vegetables and groceries.
Their application of native intelligence and innovation starts right from the vehicle they use for moving from one house to another. The local vegetable vendors hired a truck, took a few select vegetables in bulk and went about advertising the arrival of their truck. The truck is customized to suit the needs of the vendors. They announce that they have come onto the roads using a microphone. The lady who uses this microphone seems to be more comfortable with a telephone, than a microphone. Also, considering the comfort factor too, the mike was remodeled into a telephone receiver using which interactive and sensible announcements are made by the vendors. Now, that’s what I call user-centered innovation.
Hope you find this post informative. We will touch base in the next post, till then ciao!
Tags: circles, improvisation, innovation, intelligence, Kaizen, manipulation, mantravadi, Pardha, pen, pencil, problems, processes, product, quality, Saradhi, services, solutions, space, texavi, TQM, users, vegetables, Vijayawada
Posted in Business Analysis, Innovation, Life, Product Development, User Analysis, User Experience, User-centered Design | 24 Comments »
