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Experience-Driven Product Strategy
I thought for my first post I’d share some points from one of the sessions I attended at Web 2.0 Expo a few weeks ago. The session was held by Todd Wilkens from Adaptive Path and while many wouldn’t consider the content to be groundbreaking, there was some real value in the approach presented by Todd when thinking about product strategy driven by user experience.
An important message during the presentation was: The Experience is The Product. What does that really mean? Well, in many instances the approach has been to think of the product as being built from the bottom up. 
You have Data, add a layer of Logic on top and and then a User Interface (UI) to facilitate user interaction. With experience driven product strategy this notion is flipped around. As always, you consider the problem you’re trying to solve but then focus on the User Interface (UI) and the User Experience (UX). Let these elements decide the shape and strategy of the product. This might seem like a basic concept but what Todd is really getting at here is that when we consider The Experience as The Product we understand the product from the user’s perspective. The user doesn’t see the logic layer and they don’t understand (or want to know) how things are working in the background. To them it is all magic, a black box, and all they interact with when using your product and the only thing they can truly evaluate is the UI and UX.
You might be wondering, is this concept that important and does it really matter? It does and Todd gave an obvious example of how the iPod experience was able to displace the Diamond Rio MP3 player in a rather short amount of time even though the Rio had a considerable head start, had more features, and cost much less than the iPod. You may have all the latest and greatest features but if the user finds your product/service too complicated and overwhelming to use you will lose them.
I should note that what constitutes a good User Experience is not necessary limited to flashy designs, pastel colours, rounded corners, etc. Take craigslist as an example, it isn’t much to look at but it focuses on creating a simple, ad free, and consistent user experience that has obviously worked very well across many geographies and cultures.
Whether you’re familiar with this concept or if this is the first time you’ve been introduced to it, hopefully you will begin to think of focusing on the user experience from a top down approach and remind yourself that there is merit in planning and continuously revisiting an experience-driven product strategy.
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June 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Amen! It’s a bit of a Murphy’s Law in product development that it seems like if you design products with the traditional “user is the end consideration” approach, the stuff you spend the most blood, sweat, and tears getting “right” will be the stuff the users utterly ignore or passionately hate. And the stuff you despise and cringe at incorporating will be their unanimous favourite.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I don’t think you can talk about this topic too much. The performance of your database queries or the elegance of your architecture are worthless if users don’t like, or want to use, the product.
Of course, there are exceptions. Consider this: if the UI and UX are such important success factors, then why don’t more people use a Mac? More is going on here methinks.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:03 am
You’re right James, there are a lot of factors that can determine what makes a good UI/UX. Not many products, no matter how well they’re designed can come along and displace a large incumbent. Apple seems to be good at this (the iPod and iPhone are good examples) but the PC market has been much tougher for them. I think historically Windows PCs offered a user experience that was good enough for the average consumer and in many cases one that was better than the Mac. You have to consider that the experience for Windows (as long as it worked properly) was probably better than the Mac for most people since Windows was the “standard” and there were thousands of apps and games that could run under Windows while software selection for the Mac was far less. Windows PCs could be easily upgraded, were cheaper, and the kid down the street could fix it for you, etc.(obviously consumers can be hard to predict) Combine this with the fact that people became accustomed to using Wintel at work and the best UI/UX for them was Windows because that was what they were used to, it made sense to them. Price may also be a factor here…the marginal benefits of the Mac UX (if the person perceives them to be there) may not be worth the extra $$ required to purchase the computer when you can grab a Windows machine for half the price. Apple is making headway though and the Mac market share is closing in on 8%. I think the lesson here is that, as you pointed out, there are other things going on here but more importantly people are not always rational and the User Experience is not limited to the product itself but is affected by anything that relates to the product which can sometimes be out of your control.
It will be interesting to revisit this post in 2 years to see how things have shaken out…I have a feeling that the Mac market share will have grown considerably (in North America) by then since many of the factors I pointed out above are becoming less of an argument everyday.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am
[...] Peter over at the Tech Capital Partners Blog posted an article about Experience Driven Product Strategy. In a nutshell, using such a strategy means to approach [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
[...]Peter over at Tech Capital Partners in KW has a good post on the topic where he articulates thoughts on “The experience IS the product” and the importance of establishing and maintaining a superior user interface.[...]