Anuradha Sridharan

In an earlier post , I briefly touched upon what goes into a MWP (Minimum Wow Product). There are a few aspects which I want to detail out to provide more clarity. I believe there are 5 attributes that are a MUST for a MWP before it is launched. 1) End-to-end experience The product's promise of solving a particular problem for the user should provide a complete experience. The user shouldn't feel that there is something broken in the whole flow. Take the core feature and ensure you think through the flow step-by-step from a user point of view. For example, a content publishing product should not only support composing, editing and publishing the content but also support social sharing. 2) Unexpected surprise This is where the "WOW" factor comes in. As you talk to more potential users and gather enough insights about the problem, you will get an idea of what the users' expectations are. Brainstorm possible ways by which you can exceed the expectations. Think throu...

More of a rant but hoping it resonates with you too! So read on! Over the years, I have realized that our listening abilities have deteriorated so much. One can observe this everywhere in the professional world - meeting rooms, one-on-one discussions and even social media conversations. Though we can attribute this change to our over-reliance on tech gadgets, something inherent in our human behavior has also changed. Is it lack of empathy? care? attention? I'm still searching for the right word. Consider this scenario - a typical conference room with 4-5 people, trying to discuss a problem and take some important decision. X decides to talk, he shares his point of view and elaborates for 2 minutes. Then X turns towards a peer/senior (Y) and asks, "so what do you think?" . Y was lost in his own world, fiddling with his smartphone or looking at his laptop. He lifts his head and says, "Oh I'm sorry, I got lost. Can you repeat what you were saying?" Which one of...

Ask any product manager about one of the crucial challenges he/she is looking into, especially those who drive consumer web products/apps. Most of the answers would be centered around "increasing user engagement" . How many users are coming back to your product/app? How many users are so happy with your product that they are voluntarily inviting their friends to join in too? User engagement is a factor of retention rate and referrals. In an earlier post , I had shared a couple of techniques by which user retention could be measured. In this post, I would like to expand further on insights to be derived related to engagement. Josh Elman , who worked with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn has shared some interesting perspectives on how his team went about driving growth in these organizations, especially in Twitter. He differentiates between visitors and regulars and how it is important for any business to increase the regulars to their product. "If all you have is visitor...

When I was working on a product that expects a behavior change from its users, I started digging into research work that has happened in this field. That's when I came across this new term named " captology " and related work happening in Stanford's persuasive technology lab. Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors. Dr.BJ Fogg directs this lab and his model on behavior change is extremely useful to understand the elements required for a behavior to occur. The three elements that need to converge at the same time for behavior (B) change to happen are - Motivation (M) - Perceived Ability (A) - Appropriate trigger (T) The equation of this model => B = MAT When the motivation is sufficient and the user has the ability to perform the desired task, that specific moment is called the " acti...

I have become quite fascinated with the theory around gamification, more so after completing the course by Prof. Kevin Werbach (Highly recommend you sign up for this course whenever it is offered next, if you want to understand gamification beyond points, badges and leader board) It was exciting to come across an app like " QuizUp " that has applied the best practices and principles of game design and game mechanics in a fun and engaging way. QuizUp is a basic trivia game on the mobile that challenges you on various topics ranging from Math, English grammar and spellings and even on the popular sitcom "Friends".  You pick any topic you like, start the quiz with any player in the world who is using the app (or challenge your friends from your social circle) and play the trivia which lasts for 7 rounds. Points are rewarded based on your performance in each round and the final end state. You gather points to reach different levels and the game progresses further. What...

Much has been written about Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - its relevance, expected outcome and its pitfalls. There have also been many variations of MVP, among which I personally like these two - Minimum Viable Transactions and More Valuable Product . One of the attributes of a product manager that I personally like is that a PM should have a view of the world. It needn't be a fool-proof theory or a validated hypothesis but something you frame in your mind, which will obviously be based on your previous learning, ideologies and biases. So here's my view of the MVP concept. The primary idea behind an MVP is that it allows you to test the waters with minimum effort. You want to validate your idea/hypothesis with a sample of the target market and get a better sense of the reaction, which helps you to formulate your future course of action. Looking at it from a customer/user perspective, he comes across *yet another* new product/app. With information overload from so many sources...

A couple of weeks back, I was chatting with a wannabe-startupper. The key problem he wants to solve is that consumers spend a lot of time on purchase decisions by visiting online e-commerce sites as well as offline retail stores. He plans to build a price aggregator (somewhat similar to what compareindia does). We discussed about many aspects of decision making including - involvement level of product categories - different stages involved - showrooming behavior During our chat, I did sense an urgency towards building the solution, rather than understanding the context and framing the problem statement. It's quite natural as engineers that we want to jump into the solution to the problem for which we have a reasonable understanding. But is this knowledge sufficient? In this specific scenario, I suggested him to pursue a few initiatives in parallel to building out the solution. - Narrow down a specific product category, preferably one that requires high involvement like consumer ...

As discussed in my last post , customers try to satisfy their needs by going after specific goals. They evaluate a product/service to see if it helps them achieve these goals. The evaluation criteria is based on multiple factors but the bottom line is to conclude whether the product helps to achieve their goal or not. When I came across the jobs-to-be-done framework by Professor.Clayton Christensen and the famous milkshake example, it felt like an "aha" moment. The key learning is that people choose to "hire" a product or service to do a job. Couple of his lines that made a lot of sense to me: "marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need." He also emphasizes that every job has a social, functional and emotional dimension to it and that's where a marketer's focus should be. " the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes...

It all started with diving deep into the phenomenon (yes, it is!) of user retention. What makes a user come back to a product/service? Books, blogs, articles, research papers - my search continues and takes me to interesting directions. I haven't reached a conclusion yet but all roads seem to be leading to the basic premise that a user takes the help of a product/service to achieve his/her goal. After the first use, if he "believes" that the product will help him reach his goal, he is sure to come back. This belief has to be reinforced with each visit, until the user accepts the product as his support / companion that helps him accomplish his goal. For product creators, the key challenge is not just ensuring that user * gets * this connection (user's goal <=> my product) but also to understand what these goals are in the first place. Talk to any product manager about his job profile and the first thing he would say is that I need to " understand my customer...