Role of emotions in product success

Marty Cagan in his book "Inspired: How to create products Customers love" talks about the characteristics of inspiring and successful products. Apart from the popular ones such as usability and visual appeal, one specific characteristic that struck me is the importance he has given towards human emotions and the role they play in creating a winning product.

Being a key enthusiast of marketing strategies driven based on consumer behavioral aspects, it felt like a "aha!" moment while I was reading the chapters on the role of emotion in products.

Marty says, "People buy and use products largely for emotional reasons".

It could be a positive emotion that is triggered by the product or a negative emotion that has been wiped off by the product. For example,

• Facebook users might feel friendship, love and pride by being part of their social community and being in touch with their friends
• Anyone who had to make an urgent phone call might have felt irritated if he couldn't locate a PCO/STD booth nearby. A mobile phone has helped to ease off this negative feeling.

The potential consumers of a product can be segmented based on the different emotional needs that will be addressed through the product. For example, an online travel booking portal addresses different emotional needs such as annoyance, frustration, apprehension, trust, amazement etc. Each of these emotional needs are addressed by means of various benefits offered by the product.

A mapping of such emotions and the corresponding product benefits are listed below:
Annoyance - higher product performance, usable interface, seamless booking flow
Frustration - booking from the comfort of one's home, transparency in the display of travel options available
Apprehension - secure payments, quick processing of refunds
Trust - booking receipts, confirmation calls
Amazement - discounts/cashbacks, loyalty programs

While ideating on a product, we should list down those emotions which are to be addressed. Personas can be helpful in segmenting the different emotions of potential consumers.

As part of product definition and conceptualization, we should work towards identifying how these emotions will be addressed through user experience, interaction and visual design, customer support etc. Prototype testing can be used to check if test users were able to feel such emotions (both positive emotions being triggered and negative emotions being shunned) through the product.

As humans, we are in a constant state of oscillating emotions and moods throughout the day. The various products we use / depend upon can also be a source of trigger for such emotions (ask anyone who tried to book a Tatkal train ticket through IRCTC first thing in the morning and how their day went after that experience). So it is important that product managers should focus on identifying and addressing these emotional needs during product ideation and conceptualization process.

Perspectives on organization culture

I was going over the recently published HubSpot's culture deck a few days ago and was mighty impressed and inspired by it. Many points resonated with my thinking in terms of building and maintaining organization culture.

I always believed that vision/mission/values statements shouldn't just be something that a firm creates for the sake of it, with some jazzy words and jargon laden phrases, stuck on the walls of every conference room in the office premises. It has to mean something and represent in everything the firm does.

I highly recommend you to go over this deck. Some of the points which I noted down for my future reference:

"Solve for the customer, not just their happiness but also their success"

This statement is relevant not just for organization culture but also while envisioning a new product. Understanding customer's problems and creating a solution through your product is just not enough. We should take a step forward in empathizing with the customer and understanding how the solution can help him/her to succeed in his various walks of life.

 "Power is gained by sharing knowledge, not hoarding it"

Quite true. I have seen many people, especially veterans in software development teams who wouldn't want to share/disclose knowledge that they have gained over the years to a new software developer in the team. It could be an architecture overview, high level code walk through or simple tasks like setting up your development environment and build processes. Hoarding information doesn't make one superior or indispensable to the organization. Many man hours get spent when a new developer has to learn everything related to a product from scratch. If organizations incentivize senior developers/technical leads to share knowledge, it helps new developers to come on board faster and pushes the team to perform effectively.

 "We don't penalize the many, for the mistakes of the few"

This is exactly how I felt, when Marissa Mayer announced a ban on work-from-home policy for all Yahoo employees. There could be a few who might have misused work-from-home options to take care of their personal work and not even logged onto VPN. But there could be many who seriously had to be at home to attend to their sick child or elders in case of an emergency.

I agree that collaboration and interactions happen when teams are physically present in the office premises. But there could also be days when there are so many ad-hoc meetings and random discussions that prevent any focused attention needed for some tasks like research, coding a piece of complicated functionality, designing wireframes or writing product specs. Under such circumstances, I usually prefer to work from home the next day to get some quiet, peaceful time to make progress. A change in environment also helps if one is stuck with some issue or a nagging bug that needs to be fixed.

"Results matter, more than the hours we work"

"Results matter, more than where we produce them"

These two statement echo my hatred towards "clocking" certain hours everyday irrespective of whether you have work or not. Software development is not like a machine assembly line where work steadily keeps coming in from one side. Sitting in office just for the sake of getting through 8-9 hours is so unproductive. Most importantly, rewarding people who stay in office based on the number of hours they hang around is even more disastrous. Individual productivity should be measured based on the results they produce and the positive impact they have on the team and the organization.

One of the five attributes that HubSpot values in people is being humble. I'm glad that humility is still being valued in the world. This statement in the deck perfectly describes what humility actually means - "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less"

The other interesting points worth noting down are

"Don't hire to delegate, hire to elevate"

"We would rather be failing frequently, than never trying new things"

"Remarkable outcomes rarely result from modest risk"

"Simplicity is a competitive advantage"

"Influence is independent of hierarchy"

Trial in e-retail

In my earlier article on product trials, I briefly touched upon how product trials happen in the online world. This is something I'm really interested, especially in the case of e-retail and personal goods such as clothing, jewelry and perfumes.

Consumers would always choose to try out these personal items before they make a purchase. Apparel brands and retailers satisfy this expectation by providing trial rooms with full length mirrors in their retail outlets. Jewelers also help consumers to try out their varied designs before a purchase. In the case of perfumes, one actually experiences the fragrance and the feel when the customer care executive sprays the specific brand of perfume on your wrist.

Clearly, the different dimensions of experiential marketing come into play while we decide on these personal products in a physical store. Many e-retailers have been trying to recreate a similar experience while you shop online.

Appealing to the sense of sight, most of these e-commerce stores display the product offerings in bright and eye-catching pictures which make them look very appealing to consumers.

To experience the physical touch and feel of the product at your homes, many of them offer a try and return policy. Myntra and Jabong provide a 30 day return/exchange policy which help consumers to try out the offerings (clothes, shoes etc) at their homes and can exchange (if it is a size mismatch) or return the product.

Yebhi has recently launched the "Try-n-Buy" option where consumers can first try the product and if they like it, they can purchase it using cash-on-delivery. 

Their marketing efforts are focused around the same theme, with their latest TV ad campaigns emphasizing the trial-ability of the products.

Apart from trial-at-home, e-retailers have also started to provide virtual trial options. Zovi has a virtual trial room feature named Zovi Eye, through which consumers can virtually try any outfit using their webcam. 

There are also platforms available such as Imaginate's TRIALAR and Zugara's webcamsocialshopper which e-commerce stores can leverage to provide virtual trial benefits to consumers. If consumers are concerned over privacy issues, then such virtual trial feature will face resistance. Even if the resistance is lower, the bandwidth related issues will prevent wider adoption of such feature.

Innovative ways by which e-commerce stores can help consumers to try out personal products BEFORE making a purchase decision can be a sure shot differentiating factor. Return/exchange policies are good but because of the logistics and upfront payment, consumers feel the perceived risk and may not want to proceed further.

I was thinking of ways by which virtual trial can be implemented without privacy concerns. Instead of asking the consumer to allow access to his/her webcam, he/she can be asked a set of parameters to describe himself/herself. The parameters could be based on appearance, size and age. Based on these parameters, an appropriate mannequin can be used to wear the outfit. This would actually help the consumer to visualize how he/she would actually look rather than a perfect skinny model wearing the same outfit. Fitiquette's offering is similar to this idea.

E-commerce firms can also use the help of fashion designers to match right parameters with possible outfit options and can recommend mix-and-match combinations during virtual trial.

It would be interesting to see how the story unfolds in the next few years in the e-retailing scene in India, with a combination of the right technology, working around the bandwidth related constraints and helping consumers to experience their choice of clothing before they make a purchase.

Exploring the mobile app landscape

The recent trend of burgeoning mobile apps has piqued my interest in the last few weeks. Though I'm late into the smartphone segment as a consumer, it's quite interesting to observe the market dynamics, especially in India.

First, a few statistics that might be of interest:

   * 70% of India's population has mobile phones
   * According to the latest Mary Meeker's Internet trends report, the smartphones user base is just around 4% of overall mobile phone users. In China, the smartphone user base is around 24% and globally, this segment is around 17%.
   * Though the previous data point may not be encouraging, the smartphone subscriber base in India has grown by 52% in 2012 as compared to 2011
   * Only 12% of India's population are Internet users
   * Mobile Internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet usage in May 2012

From a demand perspective, the smartphone user base is growing and as a result, the need for innovative and useful applications is also on the rise. From the supply side, a lot of action is already happening in the mobile application development space. Android's marketplace Google Play has around 675,000 apps and Apple's app store has more than 700,000 apps available for download.

This supply-demand situation poses quite a few questions and challenges:

  1. Do users get what they want?
  2. Are users aware how they can leverage the apps that are available in the marketplaces?
  3. Are app developers able to market their idea/app to their target segment in an affordable way?

The first 2 questions are from the consumers' point of view. There is a problem of app discovery that has to be solved. Sifting through the loads of apps that are available in the marketplace and finding the one that you want might seem like a horrendous task.

These two statements that I came across summarizes the problem clearly:

From cnet
"both consumers and application retailers need to figure out a better way to surface the best content and weed out the useless stuff."

From Tim Bray's blog
"there are nuggets of gold among all the dross, things that would enrich buyers’ lives and developers’ wallets if they could only get noticed. "

Will an app search engine solve this problem? There are a few such mobile app search tools that are available such as quixey, appsfire and uquery
Will a business model similar to that of Google search evolve in this case? Sponsored apps similar to SEM? Mobile app optimization similar to SEO?

The third question is from the developers' point of view - the problem of app distribution. Presently, most of the smartphone users choose an app based on editor picks in their respective marketplaces, top downloads/ratings or based on third party reviews.

For a new developer building a niche mobile app, the only way to get the first few downloads is to take the viral route and market it through his/her social circle. Word-of-Mouth has been the main source through which consumers share their favorite apps with friends/family. In most of the social apps (Instagram for instance), the virality is built into the product. The most popular categories of mobile apps fall under games, music, social networking and productivity. The app development teams are incorporating collaboration, sharing, interaction and other gamification aspects into the apps to spread the word and thereby, increase the visibility for their respective apps.

I plan to explore further on the app distribution aspect which is the crucial element in app discovery from a consumers' point of view. This seems like an interesting and challenging problem. I'll continue to share my thoughts and learnings as I read up further on the overall landscape. Meanwhile, feel free to share your comments or thoughts on the whole mobile app eco-system.

Paradigm shift in learning

The last decade has seen a tremendous shift in the way we learn, just about anything. I remember vividly during my Engineering days (not so long ago) when learning meant picking up a text book or a reference book, sit down with a pencil/marker and read. There wasn't much collaboration, interaction or discussion during or after class hours. It was a one-way source of communication from the lecturer to the student. Internet was still at a nascent stage and neither accessible nor affordable (browsing centers were few and used to charge anywhere between 30-50 Rs per hour).

As I look at the way things have changed for the better, I feel inspired, excited and at the same time, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff one can learn in a lifetime. Being in the technology sector, I spent the initial years of my career, googling for tutorials and learning programming languages along with the skills needed at my workplace related to databases and data warehousing. It was still mostly text based where you read online instead of a book. But there was one distinct advantage. Given the need for practice when it comes to programming, you can immediately fire up a terminal/text editor, try out problems and code right there. Learning became much more involved because of this flexibility.

The next shift was interaction through various tech forums where one can post questions/doubts and someone would voluntarily help out from somewhere in the world. At one point of time, searching through such forums is sufficient to get answers to just about any queries.

Then came the videos and podcasts where demonstrations and structured sharing of views/theories enables anyone interested to pick up a new skill. The combination of visual and auditory learning has enhanced the overall experience.

Today, there is a proliferation of numerous learning platforms - Khan Academy, Code Academy, SkillShare, MIT open courseware, Coursera to name a few. And there are audio books, TED talks, e-books and much more. All one needs is commitment and passion towards continuous learning.

I'm a firm believer of the thought "Learning shouldn't stop with education. It should continue till you are around". This whole paradigm shift in the learning opportunities is exciting and it would be interesting to observe how my daughter goes about the whole learning curve once she starts school.