Getting it Right
To break the cycle we need to embrace ’small’ failures, get closer to customers and users, create physical models or simulations to test alternatives.
Fail Small
When our children were in preschool, each day began with play-time. Children sat cross legged, either individually or in small groups, building towers, putting dolls to bed, or arranging furniture make-believe rooms. There was no ’sunk cost.’ They were just pretending. In child’s play, there is no “equity.”
When our children were in preschool, each day began with play-time. Children sat cross legged, either individually or in small groups, building towers, putting dolls to bed, or arranging furniture make-believe rooms. There was no ’sunk cost.’ They were just pretending. In child’s play, there is no “equity.”
But when dollars are attached to those minutes, the pressure is on. The concept of ‘investment’ becomes real. The more “concrete” an idea becomes, the greater the equity invested. In developing new ideas, products and services, the central problem is dealing with the costs of failure when the invested equity is high. If throwing out an idea is expensive, people and companies won’t want to do it.
Get Closer to Customers and Users
One of the inherent difficulties of developing new solutions on behalf of a future customer is the knowledge gap between those who develop new products and those who ultimately have to use them. People who develop products are experts. Customers and users, on the other hand, represent a broad range of experience and expertise, and in general, are substantially naive to advances within a field. The challenge for developers is to be able to apply the leading edge knowledge to a sufficient level of transparency that naive users can experience the benefit without the expertise. Whether it’s the design of a website, a product or a retail environment, the people who are developing them have a hard time imagining what real customers and users might experience when they’re approaching the product for the first time.
One of the inherent difficulties of developing new solutions on behalf of a future customer is the knowledge gap between those who develop new products and those who ultimately have to use them. People who develop products are experts. Customers and users, on the other hand, represent a broad range of experience and expertise, and in general, are substantially naive to advances within a field. The challenge for developers is to be able to apply the leading edge knowledge to a sufficient level of transparency that naive users can experience the benefit without the expertise. Whether it’s the design of a website, a product or a retail environment, the people who are developing them have a hard time imagining what real customers and users might experience when they’re approaching the product for the first time.
Just as it is hard to remember how difficult it was to learn to walk as a child, it is virtually impossible for experts to become surrogates for a naive user. The problem is compounded by the fact that the factors that influence a satisfying experience for a user are almost never obvious to the user or customer prior to extended use. Had you asked someone in 1975 what form of headphone would be appropriate for an ipod, they simply wouldn’t have known. Before the ipod had been popularized, most consumers weren’t aware that they were going to jogging every morning. The concept of wearing headphones while they were jogging would have seemed like a ridiculous proposition.
Experts trying to imagine how a naive consumer might experience a product run the risk of misjudging just how different users are from engineers. Although we are all practicing ad hoc sociology when we observe users and try to understand the meaning of their grunts and moans, the process of translating engineering and marketing knowledge to a satisfying user experience requires a new approach, integrating many more formalized sociological and behavioral research methods than are now used in common practice.
Getting Physical (Fast)
Although product development teams need not become sociological or psychological researchers, the success of their efforts will be inextricably tied to the ability of innovators to preview and evaluate possible experiences customers and users have with products before specifications are defined. Essentially we need to be able to successively “try” a product, recognize its failings and make the changes early in the process to know that what we are specifying is really going to be better. Development teams need to create an environment that allows for a series of “failures” before product specification to increase the probability of success for the product that is ultimately engineered and manufactured.
Although product development teams need not become sociological or psychological researchers, the success of their efforts will be inextricably tied to the ability of innovators to preview and evaluate possible experiences customers and users have with products before specifications are defined. Essentially we need to be able to successively “try” a product, recognize its failings and make the changes early in the process to know that what we are specifying is really going to be better. Development teams need to create an environment that allows for a series of “failures” before product specification to increase the probability of success for the product that is ultimately engineered and manufactured.
The underlying assumption for creating such an environment is that experiencing a product or service takes place in time and space; it is a “physical” activity. The physicality of experiencing products makes it paramount that product developers have ways to “get physical” with products, services and experiences early enough in the process so that the essential characteristics of the experience can be identified and understood before resources are devoted to engineering and production. Only by getting “physical” early in the process can we hope to successively approximate enough experiences to know the characteristics of those that are better than others.
Dan Droz is Chairman and CEO of Droz & Associates: Marketing, Branding, Design, Public Relations, Advertising, Web Design, Interactive Marketing for Pittsburgh and surrounding regions.
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
The holidays are a great time to reach out to current and potential clients. The reason: holiday greetings and online gifts provide an excellent opportunity for viral marketing. Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Like regifting… only they can be regifted a gazillion times. Viral marketing typically involves messages, greetings or information that are free, interesting or fun and leverage existing and easy to use communications networks, like email. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive games, images, or even….fruitcakes.
Determining the best promise or ‘claim’ for your product or service isn’t just a matter of defining the message. You have to make it engaging, relevant and differentiated. So many claims (and copy) use words like ‘biggest,’ ‘cheapest’ and ‘best,’ that are platitudes at best and probably not true. More importantly, they waste the most valuable opportunity to engage and differentiate you. Here are two simple tests you can do in the privacy of your office to evaluate your claims and headlines.
Until about 200 years ago, the design process was quite immediate in that there was a very direct connection between people who made things and the people who used them. If you wanted a canoe, you’d use the time-tested method of getting bark off a tree, and shaping it like your forefathers did. They learned what worked over time, by the process of boats sinking, or floating. There was an evolution to the forms that products, buildings and packaging took. The person who designed and built your boat probably lived down the street. There wasn’t really a mass market.
Because no firm has the budget to do everything they want, marketers are constantly trying to weigh the tradeoffs. Therefore, it is important to understand the underlying strategic issues that drive marketing tactics, the most important of which are the sources of new business because different sources of business demand different levels of investment.