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Your product’s biggest competitor may not be what you think

Several years ago, I was given a yoghurt maker as a Christmas gift.

A (nameless) relative had been quite astute, having heard me remark on at least a couple of occasions “yeah, we take yoghurt on our breakfast now…”  Maybe they had heard it too much. Having identified what appeared to be a need, they presented us with a shiny, new yoghurt maker. 

Sadly the gift went unused. The contraption remained tucked away in the corner of a cupboard until it made its way to a charity shop some months later. Not the outcome my thoughtful relative intended.

What went wrong?

It’s not that I was ungrateful. My relative was making a thoughtful gesture. They knew that this might be a source of limitless yoghurt for years to come. Maybe I would try my own recipes. Save some money on store-bought yoghurt.

My relative could not have known was that they were asking me to change my behaviour. Moving from pots of inexpensive yoghurt with the weekly shop, I would now need to:

  • Learn how to use the yoghurt maker
  • Buy individual ingredients
  • Find time to make the yoghurt
  • Find space in the kitchen or fridge for the yoghurt maker itself

 Rather than do all of that, I stashed it away.

Adoption is a challenge for all products and innovations. At the core of this is the requirement to replace incumbent routines or habits. This requires moving people away from how they currently do things and using your product instead. As far back as the sixties, Everett Rogers was addressing these concepts in his influential work Diffusion of Innovations, focusing on new products in the medical and agricultural industries. Years later, digital technology has enabled and accelerated the development of new and diverse products, all still facing the same fundamental challenges.

“Never underestimate the power of inertia” – Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Outcomes are the successful manifestation of behaviour change. At its simplest, a change may mean starting to do something new (physical activity, for instance) or doing more of something (perhaps managing tasks in a to-do app). A full spectrum of behaviour change was mapped out comprehensively by BJ Fogg as a part of his work in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. The Fogg Behaviour Grid remains a seminal reference on the topic.

No matter how delightful it may look, a successful product must facilitate and inspire the behaviours that motivate its adoption, and ultimately deliver successful outcomes.

This link between adoption and desired behaviour in the product is often missed by product teams, who tend to work in a fictional future where their product is thriving. Designers in particular need to be aware of the process that a product is replacing, and which behaviours are inherent to that process. Helpful questions to ask include:

  • Which elements of the current process will be hardest to let go of
  • Is the current process handled by another product or multiple products?
  • Do the outcomes have any dependencies?
  • What behaviours do you need to alter to deliver success for your product?

It is tempting to interpret this challenge as one of on-boarding, and creating a delightful first-time run experience. It can help, of course. But doing this alone and then hoping for the best is blind faith.

No matter how delightful it may look, a successful product must facilitate and inspire the behaviours that motivate its adoption, and ultimately deliver successful outcomes.

 In her book Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change, author Amy Bucher Ph.D. spells out the need for tracking behaviours over time, including both:

  • short term measures that indicate early successes.
  • longer-term tracking confirming that behaviours have changed, indicating that the product has achieved adoption.

A new product may represent innovation in a sector or industry, but the path to change is littered with friction. This can be particularly evident in businesses where incumbent processes affect multiple departments and teams. Ripping those processes out can be painful, and take time. Innovation can be intimidating and, no matter how positive, will not always be welcomed with open arms.

Understanding this need for behaviour change, whether replacing old or creating new, is a key milestone for designers wanting to achieve ever-greater meaning with their work. As choice architects, designers hold responsibility for facilitating the behaviours they want to see articulated in interactions with the products we design. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of user motivations and what they perceive as success.

By understanding the behaviours which need to change, designers can better anticipate and address the inertia which could otherwise leave their product festering on a shelf, an unwanted gift.

Image credit: Illustration 103204057 ©Alexlmx — Dreamstime.com