Posts Tagged ‘users’
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
“There is no Average Joe Bloggs” – reads the copy on the billboard advertisement of an insurance company. I couldn’t agree more with this, especially in the context of designing and developing new products for end users. No matter how much I like Statistics, we just cannot apply it to all things in our personal and professional lives. While its good to be number-savvy, we need to balance the quantitative with qualitative aspects, to get it right. More so in the case of product design and development, the “law of averages” doesn’t quite contribute to the successful product development. We are all familiar with the concept of user profiles and personas used in the design and development of products. These help a great deal in understanding the real needs and goals of your target audience. In this post, I will dwell on why designing for average users is a misconception and how we can make use of user profiles and personas in developing successful products.
All customers are not users
This is the biggest notion among my clients that customers are well, users of the products. Not always true! The good thing is that both customers and users are both people, the similarities end there. I think that “Customers” is a favourite term for Marketers whereas Designers and User Experience professionals connect better with the term “Users”. Customers are the people who purchase your products and services, while consumers or users use these. In some cases or well, most cases customers and consumers are the same. As in the case of some daily use products, white goods, FMCG, customers and users are the same i.e., people who buy your products use them as well. But in the case of high-end products, enterprise applications and productivity solutions, buyers could be different from consumers. For instance, office supplies, financial services, technology products like computers etc., the people who pay are different from those who suggest. These in turn are different from the people who decide and yes, the people who actually use the products or services could be completely different from the above groups.
First, know your Users
Knowing your users is the most important step in the approach to developing great products. By knowing your users, I mean to say that you must understand the goals and needs of the users. This understanding will help you in shaping your product or service, make it more suitable and appealing for the users. You can’t just create a product in thin air and then retro-fit it to the benefit of some people. As they say, the most important question in any business is asking “whose needs is the idea/concept/product going to solve?” . Texavi’s Unified Experience Framework has a whole phase dedicated to help you get to this. The “Know the Needs of your Users” phase has all the tools, techniques and technologies to ensure that we understand the real needs of the users. These are often unwritten, untold, unexpressed and even unknown to the very users. So, its a big challenge to get to the real needs of the users.
User profiling holds the key
It doesn’t make sense to design and develop your products for all the people in the whole world. There is a danger of missing out on most people, as they think it doesn’t suit their specific needs and goals. Also, on the extreme end, it doesn’t make sense to design your products for one or two users. This argument lends weight for some people to think the middle path and rely on the law of averages. So, they think that the best path is to design and develop for average user. But hold on, what is an average user? How can you get to that person and define the characteristics of average user? The answer to this question lies in the user profiles and personas. User profiles are essentially the characteristic grouping of users based on various properties, traits and behaviours. This doesn’t mean that you are defining an average user. Instead, you are trying to understand the essential aspects of your users. Using the profiles and personas helps the team to have a common language of understanding. This not only helps them in having a good picture of the end users, but also gives them a great affinity to the users, because of the name, form and physical characteristics.
Personas – archetypes not stereotypes
You might have heard of the term “persona” used in the context of marketing, research and product design. A persona is a representative user from amongst the group, but does not point to one user from within the group. It is a powerful design tool that helps the design and development teams and client relate to the target audience. Persona is not a stereotype of the users, but rather an archetype from the user group. In a persona, you give a form, a name and a picture to the representative users, so that all the team members and concerned people can relate to that person more effectively and easily.
Benefits of user profiles and personas
While there are many benefits of using the user profiles and personas in the product development life cycle, I list below a few of them that really stand out.
- Understand the real users who you should target from amongst the many people in the population
- Help prioritise the target segments within the groups of people
- Know the real needs and goals of the target audience
- Support in connecting and relating to the real needs of the users
- Design, develop the products in a more practical and pragmatic manner
- Evaluate and test the products, keeping the real users in mind
- Minimise the effort, time and cost of development and rework
Hope you agree with me now that the average user is a myth and acknowledge the power of profiles and personas. Please keep writing in with your suggestions and comments. Till the next post, ciao!
Tags: Consumers, customers, design, development, innovation, Innovative, marketing, Pardha Mantravadi, personas, products, profiles, services, software, solutions, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, Unified Experience Framework, usability, user experience, users, ux
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Interaction Design, Product Development, Requirements Development, User Analysis, User Experience, User Studies, User-centered Design | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 29th, 2013
Today our lives revolve around the mobile, agile and social aspects that have global appeal along with local flavours. Their impact factors could be attributed to the surge in various platforms, channels and devices that we use for both professional and personal lives. The PCs of the 90s are now complemented with the handy Smart Phones, ubiquitous Tablets and numerous trendy gadgets. Post (Snail mail) is giving way to Email, which in turn is waning in popularity compared to chatting, texting and gaming. There has been a massive shift in the roles of technology, business, products and services. Nowadays, there is one thing on the top of mind for clients, product designers and developers. No prizes for guessing the answer…Responsive Design! How can we deliver similar, if not identical experiences to our customers and users, despite the varied number and nature of the things around us? In this post, I will touch upon Responsive Design, as I see it in the light of delivering consistent and unified experiences.
The case for Responsive Design
Let us try and look at this from a technology perspective, especially computing technology at that. Till the late 90′s we were all familiar with the PC as an alternative to the manual operations. Back then there were only 3 major types – Windows, Mac and the more Open Source flavour – Unix. Applications and programmes had to be written specifically for 2 major mainstream platforms – Windows and Mac. Since the execution of the programmes depended completely on the underlying Operating System (O.S.), these had to be written and deployed specifically for these two platforms separately and explicitly. However with the advent of Java programming language, came the paradigm shift – “Write once, run anywhere”. In the early years of 21st century, Microsoft aggressively pushed its Dot Net platform and associated languages such as C-sharp. Both these were successful in ensuring the universal delivery and adoption of programmes and applications that were platform-agnostic.
New Technologies, same old problems
When the PC domination was waning, the cross-platform problem only got aggravated in exponential proportions. Thanks to the explosive usage of laptops in the early part of the 21st century, computing has gone mobile and portable. But this didn’t create many problems to the application and technology product vendors. Largely it was only the foot-print or size of the application that got impacted due to the new addition to the PCs. Following some other innovations in the programming and scripting languages, developers had some respite from grappling with re-writing massive applications to suit for multiple platforms. But it didn’t solve the problem completely. It only took a new shape with the onset of different browsers and their versions, numerous sizes, resolutions and vendors.
Solution to “the problem of plenty”
The good old sayings – “Variety is the spice of life” and “More the merrier” are applicable to most business scenarios and our own lives. However, with the advent of Internet and adoption of Smart Phones and Tablets, customers and consumers today are faced with the “problem of plenty”. This can be witnessed in the exponentially increasing numbers, varieties and ranges of platforms, operating systems, channels and devices. These are all increasing at such an alarming rate that often customers are pushed to the brink of confusion, chaos and frustration. But don’t lose your heart yet, there is a good news – the effective solution for these problems is a comprehensive methodology that comprises the approach, tools, techniques and resources. You can now analyse, design,develop, deliver and support solutions, products, applications for multiple platforms, channels, devices and browsers. In the following sections, we will look at how we can approach Responsive Design through the Unified Experience framework.
What is Responsive Design really
Design, by definition needs to meet the needs of the user in the right place, right time and right manner, of course, for the right users. Essentially, it is about creating products, applications and services that work and look the same across all systems, platforms and devices. While there are lot of definitions for Responsive Design, I would define it simply as designing, developing and delivering “Unified Experience“. Whether it is a product or service, the objective for product vendors is to deliver consistent, panoramic and unified experiences to their customers and users. Irrespective of the platforms, devices, underlying operating systems, numerous channels.
What makes a Design, Responsive Design
In the context of technology and programming, there had been a perennial debate on graceful degradation versus progressive enhancement. Despite the growing number of platforms, operating systems and devices, users want consistent experience. This consistent experience can be delivered only when you take care of the underlying navigation, content, presentation, functionality and interactions. Don’t forget that the customers and users are the same, their profiles and personas are not varying across the different platforms or devices. The first step in this approach is to identify, specify and communicate clearly the problems, opportunities and needs. Then the the conception, conceptualisation and implementation of suitable solution will follow through smoothly and in a structured manner.
How to create Responsive Design – Tips & tricks
I give below a few guidelines to get it right with minimal rework, redesign and repurposing. When implemented initially in the development cycle of any product or application, these would help achieve the responsive design and offer optimal experience to your users.
- Think ahead, far and wide
- Build eco-systems not just stand-alone products and tools
- Consider all possible options – short term, medium term and long term
- Go beyond technologies, assess real business needs and goals
- Use minimally the platform-specific services and components
Hope you got some insights about Responsive Design that you can take away and implement practically. Love to hear from you on how we can improve the Blog. Until next time, ciao and yes, Happy Easter!
Tags: agile, Apple, applications, Apps, browsers, computer, customers, design, development, Dot Net, Innovative, Internet, Java, Mac, Mobile, Pardha Mantravadi, PC, platforms, products, responsive design, sites, smart phones, solutions, Tablets, technology, texavi, Unified Experience, users, web design, Windows
Posted in Agile Development, Information Technology, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012
For the nth time, I am mentioning this, at the risk of sounding cliched, “User Experience is not the same as Marketing”. This is more true in the context of referring to customer and user research. While some terms and activities such as profiles, personas and interviews do happen to be common to both User Experience, that does not give us a blanket permission to assume that they both are one and the same. The very use of the words “Customers” and “Users” says it all – marketing is all about customers and prospects, whereas User Experience is well, about “users”. The importance of this topic came into the fore once again, thanks to a recent conversation with one of my clients. In this post, I wish to draw the main differences between User Experience and Marketing/Sales. Hope what you read and see below, will help shatter a few myths and misconceptions out there in most people’s minds.
Marketing helps build brands
I am not Philip Kotler to define what Marketing is. However, to my mind, Marketing is about the planning, activities and the outcomes related to understanding the needs of customers. The function of marketing helps organisations to create products, services and offerings to meet the needs of the existing and potential customers. And yes, marketing is about the brand that encompasses Marketing is a function of the 4Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. And of course a fifth P was later added, which stands for Positioning. But I would say why stop at 5Ps? The sixth P that I would add for Marketing is “People”.
User Experience helps create Products
Like Marketing, User Experience is also about people and understanding their needs. However, as the words have it all it is about “users” and usage experience and not customers or prospects. However the focus for UX is on the consumers of the products and services more than anything else. It tries to look at the various elements of the experience such as satisfaction speed of performing the tasks. The 5E model of User Experience focuses on Ease of use, Easy to learn, Effectiveness, Efficiency and Error-free nature of the products and services. Over the years, UX has been catering to products more than services.
Similarities between Marketing and User Experience
While most of the other disciplines help provide the perspectives internal to the organisation. These range from operations, administration, finance and other support processes etc. Whereas Marketing, Sales and User Experience offer an external perspective on the organisation, brand, products and services. Both Marketing and User Experience are cost centres. Both of these rely extensively on quantitative and qualitative data. They use similar tools and techniques such as interviews, discussions, tests, among others. Both can be used to test the concepts, ideas and new products in their early stages. In marketing, you call it as Market Testing or test marketing, whereas in User Experience, we refer to it as User Testing.
Differences in Marketing/Sales and User Experience
I give below a table with the differences between Marketing and User Experience, for your quick reference. After all, its important for me to market my User experience skills 
Hope this post is helpful to you. As always, I welcome your feedback for the improvement of the blog content and coverage.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 2013! Happy Holidays
Tags: 4Ps, 5Es, brands, Consumers, customers, ease of use, effectiveness, efficiency, innovation, marketing, Organisations, Pardha Mantravadi, Place, Positioning, Price, products, Promotions, services, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, usability, usage, user experience, users, ux
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2012
A recent report on social media by ACSI, American Customer Satisfaction Index puts Facebook behind other social networks such as Google+ and Pinterest on user satisfaction. Yes, going social is not enough anymore, nor is creating a Facebook page for your business, tweeting on a regular basis or having a LinkedIn profile. Successful businesses are no longer just about being active on social media, and collecting analytics on engagement and influence. Time has come to move beyond the fads and integrate your brand and reputation management activities to deliver congruent and unified experiences to customers and users. In this post, we will have a look at the various channels available for businesses and how these can be leveraged to successfully manage reputation in an increasingly competitive market.
1. ORM is not just managing ‘Online’ reputation
There are many different ways in which you can reach out to your customers and users. The evolution of the various channels and media can be considered as a continuum over the past decades or even centuries. From the times businesses have been used to traditional channels like print and word of mouth to today’s social media, communication and reputation/brand management channels championed the cause of businesses. Texavi created a framework that traces the various channels and also maps how easy or hard it is to implement each of these channels. The infographic given below provide a perspective on various channels such as traditional, digital, web, mobile and social platforms that contribute to the organisation’s reputation.
2. All channels are not the same
All channels don’t have the same flavour and they don’t behave in the same way. They vary in the way they are created, maintained and delivered through. For instance the traditional channels such as the print media might require initial installation and setup. On the other hand, the social channels such as social media networks like Facebook, Twitter accounts etc., need to be created, connected and integrated. These media differ on various aspects, each having its own set of characteristics and behaving in its own way. However, the real trick lies in how well you identify the right channels for your business and use them smartly. The following sections will help you in selecting this so that you will succeed at managing your organisation’s reputation.
3. Mix and match the channels for balance
Relying only on one channel at the expense of the other will only give negative results. That is why businesses need to focus on choosing the right mix of the channels and resources to manage their brand and reputation in a holistic manner. The above infographic also charts the evolution of these various channels/media and the ease of their implementation. Success in managing reputation in today’s world lies in identifying and using all the possible channels, based on the organisation’s expectations and experience. Also, note from the above infographic that the ease or difficulty in implementation could vary depending on industry, product, market dynamics and the specific organisation which is implementing it.
4. Get to know the critical factors
While some channels say, the print media could take longer time to implement whereas its comparatively quicker to create some others like web sites. Besides, other factors such as cost, resources required etc., could vary from one channel to another. You need to compare and contrast these various factors across the channels. I give below a list of some key factors that must be considered before you take any decision:
- Cost of implementation
- Speed of implementation
- Manpower required
- Materials and physical resources
The following framework provides maps the various channels on the cost vs. speed of implementation. You can see that there is a tradeoff and it is wise to choose the right channel(s) suitable for your industry, products and customers.
5. Don’t go by fads and trends
Just because everyone has a Facebook page, you don’t have to create one, unless your business really need one. Following latest fads will only leads you into frustration and confusion, as you don’t see the expected results coming out of them. Before adopting and implementing a programme, it is important that you carefully consider the past experiences, resources available and the expectations of your organisation. Also, keep in mind the critical factors like cost and time for the implementation of the selected channels. For an integrated, well-oiled reputation management initiative, I suggest that you should aim for a perfect balance by choosing the best among the available channels and media and using them in a unified manner.
Hope these tips help you in getting it right with your ORM initiatives. Please drop in your feedback and inputs for making our blog better. Until the next post, ciao!
Tags: ACSI, brand, business, channels, Facebook, GooglePlus, infographic, LinkedIn, mantravadi, media, online, ORM, Pardha, Pinterest, reputation, Saradhi, social, texavi, tips, twitter, Unified Experience, users
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 11th, 2012
For any business in this world, these words hold true
Yes, your customers look for fresh and new
All you need is to give them a small cue
To find the best solution among their preferred few!
Realise that your customers look very much like ‘you’
When they get products/services that give value
And those that delight them in whatever they do
I promise, they will stick to your brand for life, like glue
Unified Experience, not just user experience anymore
Tags: business, customers, experience, Innovative, mantravadi, Pardha, people, Saradhi, social, solutions, texavi, users
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Social business, User Experience | No Comments »
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
“The old computing was about what computers could do…the new computing is about what people can do“, Ben Shneiderman’s saying is as much relevant today as it ever was. The impact of social business and social technologies on our professional and personal lives is so profound that businesses now are re-thinking their strategies in the light of ‘social’ context. The social web offers a lot of opportunities by harnessing the tremendous potential offered by multiple disciplines ranging from marketing, consumer behaviour, information technology, design, data analytics, gamification and customer experience and cognitive psychology, to name a few. The nice thing with the social strategy is that virtually anybody or any company can get on the board, however it does not guarantee success to all players in the game. The definition of ‘success’ in this context is debatable and fairly open, so I shall consider effectiveness over success. In this post, I wish to highlight the key pitfalls you must avoid, which would help you to get it right with your social strategy.
1. Giving only lip service to ‘people power’
All along, we have been hearing companies and people claiming “we are in the people business“, or “I am a people person“. In the context of Social web, these phrases are now acquiring new meaning and perhaps ‘the correct’ meaning. Now more than ever, opportunities are opening up, which will enable you to really do what you mean and put people in the rightful place they belong to and given the attention they deserve. Whether its the customers who bought your products, users who are facing problems using them or those people, who you think, know you by your name or brand are becoming your potential target audience. The nets are widening to reach out to the larger audience and in the broadest of contexts. The social channels are helping organisations reach out, listen to customers’ heartbeats and not just their voices, and providing support to the needy in real time. I have seen instances on Twitter when British Gas attempted to respond, advise and resolve the issues of their customers, on Twitter.
2. Getting aboard all the social trains
Resist the temptation to get on to every social and professional network available. As the old saying goes, “tell me your company and I shall tell you who you are”, the same holds true with the social channels and networks. Carefully consider who your target users are and identify those networks where your presence adds value to your brand, offerings and customers. For instance, just because everybody is creating a Facebook page, you don’t have to create one, when your product is targeted to the older generation users or high-security defence-component manufacturers. Look out for the maximum buzz and check if it suits you to have your presence there. Also, sometimes it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality. For example, Facebook and Twitter might have millions of users, but just focusing on them may not work well, if you are a large brand with global presence and rich legacy. To better leverage your interests and aspirations, a different network, say Pinterest could be a better bet, considering that it is the fastest-growing social network specially for the big brands out there.
Answering the following questions will help you choose the networks, wisely!
- Who are my target audience?
- What is my real offering and how does it help the users?
- Where (which online networks) can I find my target audience, the most?
- What is the nature of my business offering – social/professional?
- Which networks should I consider for my presence?
3. Thinking “Social is the flavour of the season”
From businesses, news corporations, traditional media houses, celebrities and common people, everybody is getting active on the social networks. Don’t just focus on the social aspects at the cost of losing the advantage with traditional media. You need to ensure that there is harmony and congruence in your offline and online presence. Yes, it is true that to host a campaign on Facebook or run a series of hashtag tweets on Twitter it might be a lot cheaper or perhaps costs nothing. Add to that it could be the easiest thing to create, track and manage campaigns on these online networks. However, without careful consideration and calculation of cost-benefit analysis, don’t ditch the traditional marketing channels and rely solely on the social channels. With all the positive vibes going around with the social media, there is also another side that needs to be looked at. These social media can make or mar the reputation of your brand in no time with as much ease and speed you had in creating the campaign. For instance, McDonalds ran a campaign on Twitter with the hashtags #McDStories and #MeetTheFarmers, but the campaign backfired thanks to the comments by some ‘enthusiastic’ users and their sarcastic tweets on McDonalds and their products.
4. Excessive focus on your products and services
Gone are those days when only your customers and users were talking about the products and services that they bought and used. You were happy interacting with the people you know – whether its your preferred partners, loyal customers or willing prospects. Now the context is changing rapidly and the landscape has been extending further to prospective customers, friends of users. The World is indeed becoming one global village with inter-connected networks and individuals, intersecting each other in a criss-cross fashion. The interactions that you encourage among the various stakeholders, customers, users and followers need to be focused on the brand and not necessarily the products or services alone. Newer measures and metrics such as awareness, engagement, influence, reach, buzz and total customer value are complementing the good old measures like sales per product line, customer satisfaction index.
5. Quitting before you start seeing the benefits
Let us accept it, just because you have hopped on to the social strategy earlier does not make you a leader in your industry. Getting social has become a sanity factor and more of a tick on your checklist, than a well-thought strategic directive. Often it takes more effort, time and perhaps other resources such as people, money too, to take off to a proper shape. Don’t give up just yet. Here are a few tips that will help you get better at the game of social media.
- Set realistic goals which need to be tracked on a continual basis
- Be persistent with your efforts
- Learn from the leaders and follow the paths which worked right for them
- Monitor the impact of social operations on your core business
- Track and analyse the key measures and metrics to assess how you are performing
Hope you find the above tips helpful with your social initiatives. Don’t hesitate to mix and match different things that could work wonders for you. Do share your feedback. We shall discuss more interesting stuff in the upcoming posts. Till then, ciao!
Tags: Ben Shneiderman, brand, British Gas, business, campaign, computing, customers, Facebook, Innovative, mantravadi, McDonalds, Pardha, Pardha Saradhi Mantravadi, people, Pinterest, social, social networks, social web, solutions, strategy, success, support, technologies, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, twitter, Unified Experience, users
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Last week, Cadbury UK launched its new product Bubbly through their Google+ brand pages. I think this is a brave new attempt that augurs well for the social networks and the businesses, in general. Social media are fast becoming the mainstay digital platform and are eagerly waiting to get alongside the traditional marketing channels. Not just the consumers and media, but technologies and businesses too are drifting towards the ‘social’ side, thanks to success and reach of Facebook, Twitter and Google. No wonder that we have social networks, social technologies, social business…everything has a ‘social’ touch today. But what are the effects of this socialification (I don’t want to use the word socialization, for obvious reasons) on your products and services? How can you leverage these social trends to your advantage and bring about the positive changes in the way you operate & deliver? In this post, I give you some tips addressing these questions and also touch upon some key aspects of our Social Experience Framework.
1.Get social – The emergence of ‘social’ everything
There is little doubt that the buzz word today is social and the whole world is now geared towards a ‘social revolution’ of sorts. From the revolution in Egypt to the ‘Occupy…’ movements, social platforms are aiding the way people connect, unite and demonstrate for a cause. The revolution is not just restricted to mass protests and demonstrations. It is expanding its reach and making inroads into our lives and work. Just a few days ago, Google began including the content from their social platform, Google+, when searching and showing the search results. This is yet another example of how ‘social’ content and interactions are getting into the mainstream content. There are more people now who, before buying a product, read the reviews of “other people”. Before saying anything good or bad about anything, some people “google it” or when in doubt, check it out on the “Wikipedia”. The growing emphasis on the relevance of big data and open source technologies and tools, is only adding more ammunition to this social revolution.
2. Focus on people and their social interactions
Yes, they are all people. You once used to call them customers, users, partners and vendors. Your sphere of influence was restricted only to these stakeholders and perhaps extended to prospective customers. But now with social media and technologies, the reach has increased and the scope is broadened to cover more number of people. This includes not only prospective customers and product reviewers but also potentially friends and family members as well. Now is the time to make your business, and technology, products and services more people-centric, for real and reap the rewards. Listen, observe and understand the various ways people interact online and offline too. Make these interactions more meaningful by providing context-sensitive information which they can use readily and easily. Simplify their interactions and enrich them by offering value-add through seamless channels and platforms.
3.Make it work on multiple platforms, devices & channels
The developers and testers among you will agree with me that its a real nightmare to design, develop and test applications on the ever-increasing number of channels, platforms and devices. However, this is great news for all the customers and users as they have a plethora of options (often to the extent of getting spoilt for choice). With newer technologies coming into the fore to help you, it might not be as complicated as it might sound. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, XML and other technologies, accompanied by the all-powerful bowsers, offer great ways to develop and deliver rich, interactive applications to your users.
4.Deliver social experience, not just user experience
As you have seen in the recent past, there has been a proliferation of computers, laptops, mobile phones and Tablets. Also, there has been a significant raise in the Internet usage for education, work and entertainment. All along you have been focusing on delivering great customer and user experiences through your products, services and solutions. With the advancement of social context, it is just not enough if you try and look only at your customers and users only. The experiences have to be broad based, reaching out to friends, prospects, family members and ‘people’. I call it the ‘social experience’, covering all these. Our SoX Framework is an integrated experience delivered via multiple channels, devices, platforms and media. SoX is a pervasive, personalized and persuasive experience, delivered in context-rich, yet simple way.
5. Not just quantitative, but qualitative
There is a plethora of online analytics services that measure the social media usage. From Klout to PeerIndex and recently PeekAnalytics, these have been serving up measures and metrics on the engagement, influence and network reach based on the activities you do online and especially on the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. All of these provide the scores, ranks and numbers. While analytics are good, they can only be useful, if applied to the right cause. As business leaders and product owners, one needs to balance the quantitative measures with the qualitative aspects. How do you get to the qualitative information? Be open and actively participate in the social networks and reach out to the audiences. For instance, Dell appointed CLO (Chief Listening Officer) whose role is to follow and listen to the noise and voice of customers on the social networks. British Gas resolves customer issues on Twitter, using it as a platform for understanding, tracking and closing people’s complaints.
To summarize, social businesses, technologies are already in and we are left with no choice, but to embrace them and use them to our advantage. Delivering social experiences require today’s businesses to broadbase their focus to ‘people’, listen to them constantly and help them instantly. Let me know if you have a suggestion, question or comment. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: Bubbly, business, Cadbury, channels, customers, devices, Facebook, friends, Google, HTML5, Innovative, Javascript, mantravadi, media, networks, Occupy, Pardha, people, platforms, products, revolution, Saradhi, services, social, solutions, SoX, technologies, texavi, twitter, users, ux, Wikipedia
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | 4 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, 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 »
